Having excellent control of your mind and body can help you overcome any craving that can lead to long-lasting addictions. Many therapists also recommend taking meditation as a way of dealing with addictions. But, most people don’t realize there are different types of medications they can try.
What is Meditation
Meditation involves using a technique, such as mindfulness or tapping into spirituality to focus on a particular activity, object, or thought. The idea is to promote a clear and stable emotional state.
Meditating is an activity where the mind and body try to connect and stay in sync. Thanks to its wholesome nature, meditation is one of the most popular techniques to remain calm and relaxed. There are many ways to meditate. You can practice guided meditation or unguided meditation. It depends on what you are trying to achieve.
4 Types of Meditation Practices to Consider
While most people think meditation is to sit down and breathe, different types of meditation bring different benefits. Here are four types of meditation and the benefits they can foster.
1. Mindful Meditation
One of the most insightful ways to meditate, this type of meditation requires a great deal of self-examination to build a great connection with your feelings, sensations, and thoughts. Mindful meditation requires you to be very present in the moment. It emphasizes where you are and what your thoughts are. It involves being alert and allows you to be more aware of your surroundings.
2. Spiritual Meditation
With spiritual meditation, you remain silent to establish a connection with everything around you. It can help you establish a relationship with your idea of God, with nature, or with the universe as a whole. It is one of the most often used types of meditations for religious groups like Hinduism or Taoists. Some recommend adding essential oils, relaxing scents, and other elements to help you relax and engage better with your meditation.
3. Movement Meditation
As the name suggests, this type of meditation involves gentle forms of movement. A common practice is to walk around a garden, the woods, or a park. As a means to connect with your reality, it tends to be very effective. It may not allow you to transcend your current state or keep you focused like other types of meditation. Still, it’s ideal if you’re looking to have a stronger connection with nature and everything around you.
4. Mantra Meditation
Mantra meditation involves repeating a specific word or phrase. This repetition will help you achieve your meditation goals. If, for example, you are using meditation to break away from an intoxicating behavior, repeating your mantra will help you set free. Deciding on what mantra to repeat could be a tricky part of this process, so it might be recommendable to consult with a professional on what can work best in your particular situation.
Types of Meditation Techniques
There are also two types of meditation techniques that can be practiced and that are very effective: body scan and loving-kindness meditation.
Body Scan Meditation
Body scan meditation consists of focusing on different parts of your body to achieve a relaxing state. For example, you can set your mind to feeling your feet on the floor or over a pillow. You can move your legs or arms as you breathe slowly and relax these parts of your body.
Repeating this process will allow you to keep your mind and your body connected as one. If you’ve tried to meditate before and can’t keep your concentration when breathing, this technique will help you. The body scan meditation technique will help you raise awareness of your body.
For people who suffer chronic pain, it will help them reduce stress. If you put your mind to it, it can help ease tension on your body, almost like getting a massage but working with your mind. Listening to your body can help you reduce your stress levels and keep you away from self-indulgent pleasures.
Loving-kindness meditation
This meditation technique can help you increase your compassion levels as well as your appreciation of yourself. It involves opening your mind and heart to positive emotions like love and kindness from the people you know. As you meditate, you send out tender thoughts to your family and friends that can change your entire mindset towards them.
If you’re struggling to accept the love others have for you or send your way, this type of technique will help you be more connected to those feelings. It will help you let go of negative emotions like resentment, anger, or hatred of others.
Benefits of Meditation
With all types of meditation, there are benefits. Recent studies have shown a relationship between meditation and increased health. Frequently taking a couple of minutes of your day to meditate can help your mental and physical health. Meditation often helps reduce substance abuse, toxic substance consumption and even helps avoid relapses.
Some of the mental health benefits of meditating are:
- Helps lower the levels of stress
- It reduces anxiety levels
- Reduces worrying thoughts
- Improves your mood throughout the day
- Helps you stay balanced and focused
- Increases your feeling of calm
- Helps you stay mentally relaxed
There are also plenty of physical benefits from meditation:
- Reduces high blood pressure
- Helps with irritable bowel syndrome
- Reduces anxiety
- Reduces depression
- Helps eliminate insomnia
- Relieves pain
- Helps overcome smoking addiction
- Helps with ulcerative colitis
Meditation even helps cancer patients deal with the stress and pain of their sickness. Meditating reduces low self-esteem and fatigue. It can also help people who suffer from chronic pain sleep better and improve their overall mood.
Sources:
https://www.healthline.com/health/mental-health/types-of-meditation#mindfulness-meditation
