Open in app

Sign in

Write

Sign in

The ultimate guide to meditation: why, when, how, techniques, 9 levels, tips

Jf Brou — BecomeYourBestVersion
9 min readJul 2, 2019

--

The #1 habits of all the greats

Would you like to BECOME YOUR BEST VERSION? ❤️💸🚀
Do this FREE workbook filled with the most effective tools that I spent thousands of dollars to get and years learning from the best in the business.
➡️➡️ http://bit.ly/Workbook-Become-Your-Best-Version

Meditation is the ultimate daily practice of solving a thousand problems. Don’t be too harsh on yourself, it takes time to be good at it and fully understand it’s superpowers. You will need a minimum of 200+ hours to even start understanding some small potential effects on your daily life.

Meditation is a whole domain, not a single subject. The best way to do an analogy is with Sports. There are many types of sports and many ways to practice sports but you won’t be a good athlete if you are obese. Same way with meditation, you won’t be able good meditator if you don’t control your awareness, your attention. See awareness as a “muscle”, as you’ll work on it, it will expand, it will get stronger.

Your first step as a bigger is to do 12 minutes of concentration meditation to work on your awareness “muscle”, then you’ll be able to try other types of meditation.

Here’s a list of side effects benefits of meditating:

-Mindfulness practices decrease depression
-Help regulate mood and anxiety disorders
-Reduces Stress
-Controls Anxiety
-Promotes Emotional Health
-Enhances Self-Awareness
-Lengthens Attention Span
-May Reduce Age-Related Memory Loss
-Can Generate Kindness
-May Help Fight Addictions
-Improves Sleep
-Helps Control Pain
-Can Decrease Blood Pressure
-Mindfulness meditation fosters creativity
-Long-term meditation enhances the ability to generate gamma waves in the brain
-Improves information processing and decision-making
-Relieves pain better than morphine
-Improves learning, memory, and self-awareness
-Prevents you from falling in the trap of multitasking too often
-Increases awareness of your unconscious mind
-Mindfulness meditation fosters creativity
-Meditation reduces blood pressure
-Helps prevent asthma, rheumatoid arthritis, and inflammatory bowel disease
-Reduces the risk of Alzheimer’s and premature death
-Helps manage the heart rate and respiratory rate
-May make you live longer
-Loving-kindness meditation improves empathy and positive relationships
-Loving-kindness meditation also reduces social isolation
-Reduces emotional eating

To achieve maximum results you need to physically use those meditation tricks:

- Sit on the floor to the ground with your Root Chakra (red color)

- Have your back straight, shoulder and chest strong, spine vertically straight to have all your energetical channels open

- Put the tip of your tongue behind your upper teeth, removing your tongue from your the top of your mouth will relax all your face muscles and your jaw

-Have an inner smile with the left and right tip of your lips turning up a bit

- Sit in half lotus and full lotus to not block the blood circulation in the feet touching the ground

- Put your hands on your lamps facing up toward the universe while connecting the tip of your thumbs with index together and keep the three other fingers stretch and relax. This is the Gyan (or Chin) mudra, a gesture that facilitates the flow of energy in the subtle body. The intention to improve concentration, creativity, sharpen your memory, and to gain knowledge.

- Keep your chin tucked in slightly while maintaining length in the back of your neck. Correctly positioning your chin helps you to maintain your posture. Keep your face relaxed. You may find that turning the corners of your face up slightly helps to release any tension in the face.

-Avoid squeezing your eyes shut. Softly closing them will help you keep your face, eyes, and eyelids relaxed.

-Don’t move, imagine your brain in a jelly bowl. Once you move the bowl slightly, you lose the full and pure stillness of your mind.

Tips for beginners:

-Start with shorter practices, and increase as you feel comfortable.
- Your first milestone is to do 12 minutes of concentration meditation then 24 minutes
- Focus on your breath moving in and out through your body.
- Keep your breath slow, steady, and smooth.
- Observe all thoughts, feelings, and sensations as they arise and pass.
- Remember that these can be positive, negative, and neutral.
- Gently bring your mind back to the present without judgment when it wanders.
- Be conscious of the silence and stillness within.
- Bring your awareness to the sounds around you one by one.
- Feel the air or clothing touching your skin and feel your body touching the floor.

There are many types of meditation focusing on different intentions:

- Loving Kindness Meditation
A simple practice of directing well-wishes towards other people

- Body scan or progressive relaxation
You mentally “scan” your muscles looking for areas of tension. Whenever you discover an area of tension, gently move the muscle to loosen it, and then relax it.

- Mindfulness meditation
A mental training practice that involves focusing your mind on your experiences (like your own emotions, thoughts, and sensations) in the present moment

-Theta Healing Meditation
Connect to the universe energy to heal instantly

- Breath awareness meditation
Practice giving full awareness to the breath

- Tonglen Meditation
A traditional Buddhist meditation often referred to as “taking and sending,” in which we take in the pain of the world with our inhalation, and breathe out our own comfort, healing, and goodness.

-Kundalini yoga
A magical science that uses sound, mantra, energy healing, exercises, and meditations to release trauma from the energetic body, which surrounds the physical body.

- Chakras Meditation
Focus on a specific chakra link on a problem you need to work in your life.

-Sedona Method
Release trapped emotions in 4 steps while focusing on a sensation/feeling in your body link to a problem you are trying to resolve.

-Vision Manifestation Meditation
Bring your vision to your Third Eye chakra, then bring an emotion link to it in your Sacral or Solar Plexus Chakra and finalize by bringing both in the core center hear chakra, feel deeply in the present moment bliss, ecstasy, peace, love. SMILE!

-Zen meditation
Zen is a Japanese school of Mahayana Buddhism. The purpose of meditation is to stop the mind rushing about in an aimless (or even a purposeful) stream of thoughts.

- Transcendental Meditation
A form of silent mantra meditation, developed by Maharishi Mahesh Yogi. The meditation practice involves the use of a mantra and is practiced for 20 minutes twice per day.

- Vipassana Meditation
Vipassana can be translated as “Insight,” a clear awareness of exactly what is happening as it happens. Samatha can be translated as “concentration” or “tranquility.” It is a state in which the mind is brought to rest, focused only on one item and not allowed to wander. When this is done, a deep calm pervades body and mind, a state of tranquility that must be experienced to be understood. Most systems of meditation emphasize the Samatha component.

- Guided Meditation
Guided meditation is a process by which one or more participants meditate in response to the guidance provided by a trained practitioner or teacher, either in person or via a written text, sound recording, video, or audiovisual media comprising music or verbal instruction, or a combination of both.

- Taoist Emptiness meditation
Also spelled “Daoist” refers to the traditional meditative practices associated with the Chinese philosophy and religion of Taoism, including concentration, mindfulness, contemplation, and visualization

5 Categories Brain waves to access deep meditation:

Slower wavelengths = more time between thoughts = more opportunity to skillfully choose which thoughts you invest in and what actions you take.

1. Gamma State: (30–100Hz)
This is a state of hyperactivity and active learning. Gamma state is the most opportune time to retain information.

2. Beta State: (13–30Hz)
Where we function for most of the day, Beta State is associated with the alert mind state of the prefrontal cortex. This is a state of the “working” or “thinking mind”: analytical, planning, assessing and categorizing.

3. Alpha State: (9–13Hz)
Brain waves start to slow down out of thinking mind. We feel more calm, peaceful and grounded. We often find ourselves in an “alpha state” after a yoga class, a walk in the woods, pleasurable sexual encounter or during any activity that helps relax the body and mind.

4. Theta State: (4–8Hz)
We’re able to begin meditation. This is the point where the verbal/thinking mind transitions to the meditative/visual mind. We begin to move from the planning mind to a deeper state of awareness (often felt as drowsy), with stronger intuition, more capacity for wholeness and complicated problem-solving. The Theta state is associated with visualization.

5. Delta State: (1–3 Hz)
Tibetan monks who have been meditating for decades can reach this in an alert, wakened phase, but most of us reach this final state during deep, dreamless sleep.

There are 9 stages of meditation mind training of Mahamudra:

The scale of the image above:
The Monk = the Meditator
The Elephant = the mind
The Monkey = emotions, ignorance, lust
The Rabbit = restlessness, the quickness of the mind to be unsatisfied
The color white on the animals = the process of purification

*Each level is around 1200 hours of meditation

1 — The meditator is like a rocky boat in a turbulent ocean. There’s virtually no control over the mind. The concentration at this stage ends up wherever the drift of thoughts takes it.

2 — It shows progress. It means the meditator is able to have short periods of quality meditation when the mind is devoid of thoughts. Think of a flag that flutters whenever the wind blows. No wind no fluttering. Similarly, the mind at this stage is stable for a short period before the winds of thoughts start to blow again causing waves in the stillness of consciousness.

3 — We are able to detect their dullness arising in meditation. Restlessness or stray thoughts are still a great challenge at this stage.

4 & 5 — While the meditator makes a giant leap by even greater taming of restlessness and dullness, a new challenge presents itself. A state of calmness which makes the meditator goes into a sort of torpor or laxity. Often, most meditators who get even a tiny glimpse of this calmness, mistake this as the ultimate state of bliss

6 — The meditator has mostly tamed the body, mind, and distractions, he’s able to lead them, but, there are still subtle elements of excitement or stupor that can distract the meditator.

7 — The meditator has nearly perfected the art of attention. They experience lucid awareness during the meditation but there’s still a chance of feeling excited or restless. Think of a still pond where dropping even a tiny pebble causes ripples.

8 — Restlessness has completely disappeared for this meditator and a constant state of bliss always leaves them calm. But, sometimes in this state of bliss, the lucidity of their awareness is adversely affected. Think of someone under the influence of a mild intoxicant. At this stage, the meditator hasn’t yet learned to rise above the bliss.

9 — Bliss has become a close companion and it no longer interferes in any worldly activity. All mental and emotional battles cease, the war of thoughts stop and there’s virtually no effort in meditation now. The meditator has become the meditation.

Here’s a more in-depth explanation:

Books suggestion on Meditation

Top resources to check now on the topic

Would you like to BECOME YOUR BEST VERSION? ❤️💸🚀
Do this FREE workbook filled with the most effective tools that I spent thousands of dollars to get and years learning from the best in the business.
➡️➡️ http://bit.ly/Workbook-Become-Your-Best-Version

Mindfulness
Meditation
Vipassana
Awareness
Stillness

--

--

Jf Brou — BecomeYourBestVersion
Jf Brou — BecomeYourBestVersion

Written by Jf Brou — BecomeYourBestVersion

11 Followers
34 Following

EMPOWERING THE 19–24 while promoting OUR CORE ORGANIZATIONAL VALUES: ENTREPRENEURSHIP // SELF-DEVELOPMENT // LIFE CHANGING TRAVEL. Visit jfbrou.com

No responses yet

Help

Status

About

Careers

Press

Blog

Privacy

Terms

Text to speech

Teams