Meditation

Meditation

‍

I’ve talked about mental skills before, diving into the importance of visualization and how to use breathwork to reset our body and nervous system. Today I’m discussing meditation. In simplest terms meditation is a mindfulness practice. It is learning how to pay attention to our surroundings and being present in the moment. It allows us to clear out mind and better connect to our situation because it focuses on being present. 

‍

Meditation is a skill and like many skills it needs to be practiced for us to become better at it. A meditation can be as simple as five minutes. Allowing us to slow down our breath, focus on what is going on and just let our mind wander. Additionally, Meditation is an embodiment practice and allows us to be present in the moment and bodies and out of our heads. In such a fast paced society we rarely find time for just us and to properly slow down and reflect. Meditation gives us a quick opportunity to do just that. The beauty of meditation is that it can also be used in conjunction with the other two mental skills I brought up before: visualization and breathwork. 

‍

Combining these practices can be even more beneficial, but a visualization exercise is not a meditative exercise. They might use similar techniques but they are different tools. As I mentioned in my visualization post, visualization is a tool to become familiar with the unfamiliar and to create confidence in unknown situations. While there might be meditative elements in the visualization, the main focus is the visualization. The same thing happens when combining breathwork and meditation. 

‍

Breathwork is a way to focus on the breath and to calm and reset the nervous system (a topic I’ll discuss in the future). While practicing the breathwork exercise your mind might wander and share some elements of a meditation but again, like the visualization example from above, the focus is the breathwork. 

‍

The fundamentals of meditation is to take a seat and close your eyes, be comfortable, notice your body - what are you hearing, smelling, feeling, etc… tap into the senses and become aware of what is around you. Then slowly just sink in and see what happens. Your mind will wander, that is ok, heck it is even encouraged. However be kind to your mind and thoughts, just let the thought be and just fade back into the nothingness. 

‍

After a specific period of time, recenter yourself back to where you are, slowly open your eyes. And just like that you completed a meditation. Like I mentioned above a meditation practice can combine elements of a visualization or breathwork but the main focus should be bringing attention back to the present. 

‍

In my visualization post I talked about a meditative visualization that is a visualization exercise that uses meditation as a foundation for the visualization. White these skills may all seem similar; they are probably more adjacent to each other. While there is no perfect balance of mental skills, practicing it is important to remember that these skills are tools and you should do the one that you feel is most beneficial to you. 

‍

Meditation is a great tool that can help you calm and declutter the mind and come back to present. 

‍