When we hear about meditation most of us think of a person sitting down in a traditional meditative posture such as the half lotus position with a straight back, closed eyes and a very still body.

Of course the above picture is a very common one and it is a correct one too. This is one of the best ways to meditate and still the mind – with a still body and a quiet mind in a tranquil ambience. But this is not the only way to meditate either. In fact the concept of meditation can be practically stretched to include other forms which do not involve a sitting still posture.

Some meditations are done when the body is active such as when walking or doing some physical activity. In Zen Buddhism, walking meditation is a well known and established form of meditation.

Is it possible to meditate while walking, running or being active?

Yes it is. Meditation is not about switching off your mind but about switching it on. It is about opening up your awareness to your surroundings and inner body. It is about tuning in to the present moment and living the freshness of it instead of blurring in to hazy thoughts and daydreaming.

So it is possible to be more mindful and aware while walking, cycling or running because your mind becomes engaged in the awareness of the surroundings. The body would be moving but the mind would be defragmenting and settling into stillness.

How to do meditation while active?

There are many different ways to do active meditation but all methods depends on directing your awareness into the activity you are doing irrespective of what that activity is. It is about opening up your perceptual awareness and letting your mind flow in sync with your activity.

Here are a few tips to practice mindfulness meditation while in activity:

1. Before engaging the activity stop for a few minutes to prepare your mind on the objectives you want to reach. This is like affirming to your self what you want to achieve. This is an important step for it directs your mind to stay on that track instead of wandering about distractively. I call it the warming up of the mind. Before we start a physical activity or sport we stretch our muscles and warm up our bodies. Same thing with the mind.

2. When you start the activity take some time to direct you awareness to your body. How does your body feel in general? Are your energy levels high or low? How do your muscles feel? Is your breathing deep or shallow? How do your feet feel? What is your general mood? Are you feeling any subtle energies changing in yourself as you do the activity?

3. Now turn your attention to your surroundings. If for example you are walking, enlarge your observation window to include those details that usually go by unnoticed. Patterns in buildings and stone, colors, shapes, sights, smells and sounds. This is mindfulness meditation in action. Your perceptual awareness expands until your mind opens up to a new dimension and everything becomes alive.

4. When your activity is over, take some time to observe how your mind feels different now. Are you more relaxed and focused? Are your thoughts more coherent? Is your general state of being more peaceful and calm? This exercise is important to extend your awareness also into the benefits of the meditation itself so that it becomes reinforced into our mind.

Related posts:

1. Mindfulness Meditation: My Path
2. 10 ways to improve your meditation significantly
3. Learn the programming language of your mind: Learn to meditate

Photo by mslori411

“Awareness implies that you are not only conscious of things (objects), but you are also conscious of being conscious. If you can sense an alert inner stillness in the background while things happen in the foreground – that’s it! This dimension is there in everyone, but most people are completely unaware of it”. Eckhart Tolle – A New Earth

I wasn’t planning doing a second part to ‘Developing Awareness’ today, exactly following the first part. I was planning to let some other few articles in between.

However, I was flipping through pencil-written bookmarks and side notes I left on Tolle’s  book*, when I came across the verse quoted above.   It struck me a second time as being an important practical tip worth noting and sharing.

I would also love to hear your thoughts on this.

The alert stillness in the background:

This phrase says it all. For me it completely defines what I feel during mindfulness meditation.

It can be called stillness because your awareness feels still, centered, grounded and solidly whole but at the same time it is alert. Sounds like a contradiction but it isn’t.

The alertness comes from the freshness of being grounded in the present and the aliveness of giving soft attention to your surroundings and experience. You are there present with your being not floating in some hazy daydreaming or in anxious thoughts about things you have yet to sort out.

This alert stillness can be described to be in the background because it doesn’t come out in the forefront of your consciousness and awareness in any obvious way like thoughts or perception. It is subtle and sedimentary. It is felt when the constant stream of thought subsides and there is less intensity in the forefront (that is why some point at the ‘gap between thoughts’ as the access point to your inner awareness). The foreground noise is cleared and so the background signal emerges clearly.

When I first succeeded in having a proper mindfulness meditation experience it was nothing like I had previously expected. Before that day I had imagined that in a purely meditative state, the mind will be purely absorbed in nothingness as if no thought existed. When I then experienced a state of mindfulness meditation, I could exactly describe it as “an alert stillness in the background while things happen in the foreground.”

Thoughts were still happening in the foreground (although less in number and intensity) but they did not distract me or annoy me because my awareness was grounded in the alert stillness in the background.

Does this ring any bell to you whether in meditation or otherwise? Did you have any experiences of the alert stillness in the background?

Space Consciousness:

Tolle uses the concept of ‘space consciousness’ to describe this undercurrent of awareness.  Space consciousness can be distinguished in contrast to ‘object consciousness’.

Object consciousness is when your reality is fully anchored to the world of objects and believe that there is nothing more to it. It is unfortunately the reality of most people who take life at face value. For them the only concrete reality is that that of things, objects, thoughts and petty human conventions. There is nothing more than that.

“Space consciousness means that in addition to being conscious of things – which always comes down to sense perceptions, thoughts and emotions – there is an undercurrent of awareness.” A New Earth

This Dimension is there in everyone:

This awareness Tolle is pointing at is easily missed because of its subtlety yet it is there in every human being. It is there in you right now. It is always present there in the background but we are never taught to single it out. We take it for granted that outer reality and thoughts about that outer reality is everything there is.

If you do not have a concept of something, you can’t see it even if it stands right in front of you and slaps you in the face. We can only recognize patterns that we have a previous concept of. It’s the same thing with the awareness of our inner stillness – our space consciousness.

Since we are not guided into being aware of it, we never identify it even if I’m sure that everyone experiences it at some point in time.

The bottom line is this: If you have at least a foundation of it as a concept and recognize that it exists, the mind can more easily identify it when it arises.

The second step is watching out for it. I suggest using the observation on awareness I laid out in part 1.

Once you recognize it as part of your experience you know where to look for it next time because you would have opened up the space for that possibility. You would start having a ‘feel’ of your inner space – your space consciousness.

*(Even though I read the book some time ago I still keep it as a reference for some notes and concepts. The book was given as a gift by my special friend Valerie who I thank from my heart. )

Related posts:

1. Developing Awareness – Part 1
2. A Note on Happiness
3. How to Meditate while Being Active

photo by h.koppdelaney

Since I started practising meditation, I have been trying out different things – little changes here and there – that although may sound small and petty, they have improved my meditation significantly and consistently.

I have written this article especially for people who have started doing meditation, take the practice at heart and are keen on improving it and taking it to the next level.

Does this describe your present situation? Have you started enjoying and feeling the benefits of meditation but would eagerly try out a few simple tips to significantly improve it?

Learning how to meditate takes a lot of time and patience in the beginning. It’s a slow and gradual progress because we have to learn new things that our mind and body are not accustomed to and unlearn old habits that we have been conditioned to for many years.

Yet there are ways to make this learning process more efficient and effective.

Tip #1. Find your spot:

What I mean by finding your spot is to try and test different spots and orientations within the space you decided to meditate in until you are feeling that you are in the right place. It’s sort of doing some ‘Feng Shui’ for your meditation spot. It may sound funny I know but I believe that space has different energy spots that affect us in different ways.

I initially chose my place casually and arbitrarily. I felt something was not right. I was not comfortable with the place. Then I started changing places and even orientations (I used a compass and took notes) until I finally found the spot where my meditation improved significantly.

Tip #2. Set your intention:

When I started doing meditation I would start the session with no plan and intention in mind.

My intentions weren’t clear. I would have different objectives for the same session such as developing awareness, concentration, visualization and if possible a bit of insight too! Of course this used to put my mind in a knot and my attempts to meditate were often unsuccessful for this reason.

That’s when I understood that I need to set my intention beforehand. If I wanted to do mindfulness meditation, for example, I would say this clearly to myself. This kept my mind from interfering with the process by having a one predefined objective.

Tip #3. Keep a journal:

This is important to help you track your progress and use feedback to keep on improving.

I use a journal to keep notes on each of my meditation sessions. I would start by logging the date/time of the session and the type of meditation.  Then I add in observations about my mood,  state of mind and body before meditating.

After the session I then take notes about the outcome of the session.

Tip #4. Find the right time:

Different people have different times when their mind and body is in better shape and more responsive. For some people it may be early morning, for some others it might be afternoon or late in the evening after unwinding from a hard day of work.

You have to try which time of the day works best for your meditation. Keeping a journal is a sure way of knowing this.

Tip #5. Exercise your body before starting meditation:

One big obstacle to meditation beside your wandering mind is your body. Sometimes you may be tense or tired and this may make your body twitchy and hard to find a comfortable and steady position. Most of my failures in meditation came from having a tense body.

Doing exercise before starting your meditation helps you immensely. Do some stretching, Yoga, Tai chi, waking or whatever gets your body moving. I found these 12 Qi Gong sitting exercises as particularly effective in improving my meditation.

Tip #6. Use Brain wave entrainment technology:

Brain wave entrainment uses sound waves with the same frequency as our brain waves when we are in particular states if mind (for example the alpha frequency when in a relaxed state).

These sound waves that are recorded on CDs, help the listener to automatically synchronize his brain waves with those frequencies and hence alter its states.

I use BWE myself for my meditation and I can attest to its efficacy. After a few minutes the mind starts ‘defragmenting’ and enters a more coherent state of mind. This drastically facilitates entering into meditative states.

Tip #7. Use the power of water:

Water has such a healing or revitalizing effect on the mind and body.

There are times when you find it difficult to meditate because you are too sleepy in the morning or too lax in the evening. In this case take a reinvigorating shower to lift up the spirit.

If on the other hand you are too tense and hyper-vigilant, take a warm bath with some bath salts to unwind your mind and relax your tense body.

Tip # 8. Do some breathing exercises to open up your lungs:

Good breathing in an essential practice in healthy living that we often overlook. It is also very important for good meditation whether you are focusing on your breath or not.

In ancient Yogic tradition, the working on the breath (Pranayama) has been considered to be an essential part of the journey to self-liberation.

Check out these breathing exercise here. I find these to have a very positive effect on my meditation when performed just before I meditate.

Tip #9. Choose a Mantra that sounds good to you:

If you use mantras for meditation, make sure that you choose a mantra that sounds good to you or you feel comfortable with. Traditionally, a mantra was chosen by a guru or master and then handed down to his student.

I have heard that a lot of people are given a mantra by their teacher or as suggested in a book but then find difficulty in using it. It somehow doesn’t click.

Since people have different tastes and dispositions I find it makes more sense to find a mantra that you feel comfortable with. After all a mantra is only an arbitrary tool that helps you anchor your mind.

Tip # 10.  Switch off electronic appliances around you:

If there are any electronic appliances within range (not just in your meditation room) such as PCs, TVs, mobile phones, etc, switch them off.

These appliances are not only a distraction because they emit audible noise but also because they emit radiation than can interfere with the coherence of our brain waves and hence with our meditation.

Related posts:

1. Mindfulness Meditation: My Path
2. 8 Ways To Improve Your Handwriting
3. The Fountain Meditation Technique to Replenish your Life Energy

Photo by premasagar

Your brain is the most precious and advanced thing you’ll ever own. Unfortunately it does not come with an owner’s manual. Nobody has one and it is nowhere to be found or purchased.

Still, even if we don’t have a technical manual explaining in detail how it works and how to maintain it in optimal condition, there are still ways to access it and reprogram it.

I am using computer-related metaphors here not because I am upholding the mind-computer analogy. That is so 70s and 80s. Yet the metaphor rather serves to  remind us that most of our beliefs, ideas, attitudes, perspectives and reasoning have been conditioned or programmed by our immediate experiences, society and circumstances. A good part of this programming might have taken place without an intention or design and some of it might be of no benefit for us but on the contrary limiting and hindering us from authentically growing.

Meditation is and has always been the best available method for reprogramming the human mind. It has been proven to work for thousands of years. Moreover it is free, always available, requires no resources and is highly effective.

The benefits are numerous and varied ranging from reducing stress, improving health, memory and concentration to enhancing creativity, curing depression and expanding one’s consciousness into higher states of being.

It always really boggles my mind how in our day and age meditation is not that wildly diffused in the western world and around the globe. It strikes me as so out of sync with our times that meditation is not universally recognized by humans as one of the most fundamental practices for a healthy society. Imagine every single individual on this planet learning meditation at school from a young age. Imagine the benefit on a planetary scale. How there would be balanced emotions, harmony, creativity and peace on a collective level. No more wars, atrocities, greed, famine, crime, domestic violence, over-spending in health, law and order. The possibilities are infinite.

Anyway let me stop here before I get too idealistic. I just wanted to express my personal opinion on how important meditation is. If you wish to start learning meditation or if you have already you might find the following resources useful. I have sifted through tonnes of material to select what I think is technically good quality material.

I hope you find them interesting and helpful. Please send me your thoughts and comments on whether you found the material useful or if you want to suggest more. Thanks!

1. Meditation for Beginners

• An article by Alan Wagener Showing the benefits of meditation and how it helps you cope with stress.

• Gil Fronsdal offers a 5 or 6 week instructional series for beginning meditators. Here is some handout material in PDFs and audio recordings from the beginners’ classes.

• Meditation for Dummies – A great comprehensive introduction to meditation from the ‘for dummies’ series.

• A blog article from Zen habits giving practical tips on meditation for beginners

• An article by Chris Joscelyne in which he gives a step by step guided meditation. This type of meditation is called light meditation in which light is visualized during the meditation.

• Meditation for Beginners –   an audio book by Jack Kornfield. Jack is a meditation master and teacher. He was  trained as a Buddhist monk and has travelled extensively teaching meditation around the world.

2. Online Meditation

• Online courses in meditation, Buddhism and practice in daily life.

• Free practical meditation tips on Posture, breathing, loving kindness, walking, mantra meditation, six element practice.

3.  Guided Meditation

• Other seriously  good resources from audiodharma.com this time giving a series of guided meditations.

• A nice guided meditation with Anusari Yogi Bridget Woods Kramer

• A series of short guided meditations lasting between 3 to 10 mins each from learningmeditation.com

• A full guided meditation 22:36 mins

4. Mindfulness Meditation

• A great Google talk by Jon Kabat-Zinn, a master in meditation and a Bio-medical science whose lifetime work was dedicated to bringing mindfulness into mainstream science.

• A guided mindfulness meditation from Angela Carole Brown -

5. Zen Meditation

• Introduction to Zen Meditation: Still Point with John Daido Loori, Roshi, Abbot of Zen Mountain Monastery

• A guided Zen Buddhist Meditation method

6. Transcendental Meditation

• The Transcendental meditation program offers a comprehensive course in meditation. The program is backed up by a high profile organization founded by David Lynch and based on the teaching of the world famous guru Maharishi Mahesh. The course fees are a bit on the high side but it is definitely worth a look.

7. Buddhist Meditation

• How to Meditate.com – A site dedicated to teaching on Buddhist meditation.

• In this series Tan Ajahn Jayasaro, gives an introduction to Buddhist meditation, being part of a path leading to profound happiness, inner peace and liberation from suffering.

8. Yoga Meditation

• A series of 5 videos from the documentary ‘Spiritual reality’. The videos are animations rather than real life filming. I had watched the full length film of ‘Spiritual reality’ once and it was very inspiring.

• Introduction to yoga meditation and the importance of breathing in yoga in this free how-to video on kundalini yoga and meditation training

9. Mantra Meditation

• Simple 7 steps on how to do mantra meditation

• A good article describing how mantra meditation works

10. Vipassana (Insight) Meditation

• A good video giving a clear and simple explanation of Vipassana or insight meditation

• Matthew Flickstein explains insight (Vipassana) meditation

11. Meditation and Health Research

• A very good site dedicated to scientific research on meditation

• An excellent  Google Talk by Philippe Goldin on the neuroscience of mindfulness meditation or in simple words the study of the effects of meditation on the brain.

12. Meditation on Twitter

• Meditation Room

• Heart Meditation

• Visit yourself

• Inner space

• 24hr Meditation

• Twit Meditation

13. Music for Meditation

My all time favorite meditation music – The Japanese artists known as Kokin Gumi in this album named Zen Garden. Probably the only music that still manages to shift my consciousness every time I hear it. Purely wonderful. Here are three tracks I found on youtube by someone who added them as background to his/her videos.

• Daylight

• Snow

• Feng shui

There are even better tracks in the album. I suggest you buy the CD for your meditations here: http://www.amazon.com/Zen-Garden-Kokin-Gumi/dp/B00004Y2DV (this is not an affiliate link)

I also loved the music from this 5 minute meditation video

14. Meditation accessories

• Meditation supplies and accessories – a list of suppliers

Related posts:

1. How to Meditate while Being Active
2. 10 ways to improve your meditation significantly
3. Mindfulness Meditation: My Path

There is a lot of literature to read about the subject of Meditation, its spiritual and practical aspects or the different ways it is practiced throughout different traditions and for different ends. There are tonnes of information and I feel that I would be adding little value if I add more of what is already available and write articles about the subject per se.

I think it is more suitable in this context for me to write about Meditation through my own experiences and point of view on the subject. After all, there are no strict objective rules and know how on the matter. It is much more like a personal journey that one enters or walks along in his own particular path.

Of course there are general guidelines and valuable clues one has to pick up and learn. For example, one introductory book which I’d always suggest is ‘Meditation for Dummies’ – which I think the title betrays the fact that it is a very comprehensive and well written guide which has lots of valuable information for both beginners and even seasoned Meditators. Those of you who have read some of the ‘For Dummies’ series know that most of them have very good editorial quality.

There are also genuine and highly experienced teachers and Masters and it is always highly recommended to be guided by them.  I am not a student of any Meditation teacher. I have chosen to go out for the path on my own. It’s not that I disagree or dislike the idea, it’s just the way I set it out to be. This is my account of it.

The Journey Begins

I started practising Mindfulness Meditation quite recently, about a few months ago. Actually I had started doing some Meditation sessions sparingly and irregularly since a few years back. It was a different type of Meditation I used to do then. It was what I later learned to be called, receptive or insight Meditation.

The thing about this type of Meditation is that it is not based on focusing the Mind or anchoring the awareness but on setting the mind free and accept whatever feeling, intuitions or images come up. Often, after some time, the mind would spontaneously break free from its more rational and conditional patterns of thought and immerse into a more metaphorical, intuitive, and insightful stream of consciousness. I think this has to do with a shift to right-brain dominance, the part of the brain which is responsible for metaphor, creativity, intuition and holistic understanding of ourselves and our surroundings.

Recently, I got back to a more committed and resolute approach to Meditation. Having been deeply touched by the concept of Mindfulness, I started exploring one of its paths through the practice of Mindfulness Meditation.

Mind over Chatter

Mindfulness Meditation is a type of Meditation that is straightforward in essence but because of years of conditioning, the mind finds it quite difficult and unnatural to grasp at first. It’s like when as newborns we feel quite at ease in water but after some years that natural affinity is deprogrammed and the next first encounter with swimming in water feels rather unnatural at first. It’s the same thing with Mindfulness.

The key to Mindfulness Meditation is being in touch with your present moment. It’s about having your awareness in the present and not having your mind drifting on a never-ending train of thoughts. Of course, this is the tricky part and those of you who Meditate know very well what I am talking about.

We have what some Buddhists call a Monkey Mind constantly jumping around from one branch of thought to another. For those of you who have never tried meditation, I suggest doing a little thought experiment and try to keep your awareness focused on an object, a picture or your breath for just five minutes. Can you keep your mind free from chatter for five minutes? Probably not because naturally a thousand thoughts will come rushing up and all we need is just hop onto one of them and in no time we’re drifting away thinking about how long I haven’t phoned my friends or what to cook for dinner or fantasizing about some holiday somewhere and so on.  That’s OK. We are all naturally subject to that but the good news is that we can practice to leap over this hurdle.

It takes patience and commitment. I am still learning my way through it little by little. However I can say with solid confidence that it is worth every single minute of it. The results are immeasurably too beneficial to undervalue.

Beware of the unchained Awareness!

Generally in Mindful Meditation practice, you turn your awareness away from floating in a haze or in thoughts and towards something like your breath, your bodily sensations or fixed on some mental image.

I like to start by keeping my awareness on my breath first, just observing the inhaling and exhaling and how it feels in my nostrils, lungs and belly, then widen my awareness to also include bodily sensations such as the way my fingers feels touching each other or the way my hands feels on my lap or the way I perceive the position of my body in space. The key is to stay in your present.

If my mind starts drifting off, I redirect my awareness back to my breath again without judgment as if nothing happened.

There can be two main distractions. One comes from outside in the form of noise, hence quietness is a prerequisite, and the other comes from your monkey mind which protests like a bored little child and tries to sabotage you by talking you out of your meditation session (literally though discursive thought and vocalization).

Of bubbles and Anchors

Another thing which can be of an obstacle is expectation. When I first started mindfulness meditation, I had a certain expectation of what it is about.  For instance, I thought that the goal is to reach a state of thoughtlessness and a total dissolution of mind (Wow!). Expectation can barricade your inroads into your meditation by letting your mind expect an outcome rather than letting it arise on its own.  When my first real success in mindful meditation happened (it was Christmas day) , I was surprised to find out that it was quite different than I expected.

It happened something like this: As I was expanding my awareness from my breath to parts of my body there was a point in time where my awareness ‘locked’. The analogy is to an auto-focus lens that very quickly goes in and out of focus until it locks on to its subject. That is exactly the way it felt. Thereafter it was an incredible confident feeling of rock solid focus and calmness. The strange thing was that thoughts were still arising, although much less in number, however they were completely not affecting me. Like soap bubbles they were quickly bursting out of existence.

The analogy this time is that of an anchored boat. The awareness feels like an anchor and the monkey mind is the boat floating above. It sways a little but cannot drift off because now it is chained to your awareness.

Upgrade your mind with Meditation

Mindfulness Meditation has been a life-changing practice for me and hence can potentially be so for anyone. It’s hard to describe all of the benefits I gained from it in a limited space but I will try to bring out some of the main ones in brief points below:

• More focus and moments of Mindfulness in the everyday things I do
• Less fragmentation of thought and more wholeness of being
• More calmness and much less stress and anxiety
• Improved analytical skills & memory
• Enhanced creativity & problem-solving skills
• More Happiness and appreciation of life
• Insight into the fact that my being is different than my thinking and doing
• Greater inspiration
• More motivation
• Brief moments of bliss hours or even days after a good meditation session

The list goes on and I must reiterate that I am still in the beginning of the journey. The prospects look good and I would recommend Mindfulness Meditation to anyone more than anything else.

I think of Meditation as being a natural programming language that we can use to hack our minds but very few people do so because we are not born with an operating manual for it. Learning Meditation is, in a few simple words, accessing that manual and using it.

Related posts:

1. 10 ways to improve your meditation significantly
2. How to be a mindful parent
3. How to Meditate while Being Active