Meditation is a state of consciousness when your mind is free of thoughts.
Meditation is flow of your mind towards concentration. You have to develop concentration for meditation.
Why concentration is important for meditation?
Meditation is nothing but making your mind free from all thoughts. When your mind will be free? When you narrow your thoughts to specific object or thing and concentrate on that object.
Your mind will be concentrating on that specific object leaving behind all the thoughts. If you have thoughts in your mind, they will distract your concentration.
How to improve your concentration?
You have two techniques to improve your concentration: number meditation technique and visualization meditation technique.
Number meditation technique depends on numbers. Close your eyes and start counting from number one while exhaling. When you visualize number one in your mind breathe in and start visualize number two in your mind. When you see number two breathe in. You continue this process fifteen to twenty minutes.
Visualization technique depends on visualization of objects. Close your eyes and think about any object in your mind and try to visualize it. Suppose if you think of a clock in your mind, get the clock in front of your eyes and visualize it. You continue visualizing the object, the color of the object and the shape of the object.
By following these techniques you can improve your concentration. After improving your concentration, you can do some concentration exercises which help meditation
Concentrate on breathing: concentrate on your breathing as you exhale and inhale. After you breathe in, hold for few seconds and then breathe out. Your mind should be free from all the distractions. You should concentrate when you breathe in and when you breathe out. Nothing should be in your mind.
Concentrate on the object: keep any object such as flower in front of you. Concentrate on the flower with your eyes half closed and half open. You should not see other objects in the room when you are concentrating on the flower. Now you narrow your concentration to a part of the flower such as tip of a petal. As you are narrowing your concentration, your concentration increases and you are in the deep state of meditation.
Concentrate on your heart beat: you have to concentrate on your heart beat and nothing should be in your mind. You have to hear your heart beat and concentrate on it and nothing should draw your concentration.
You have to select a comfortable place for meditation. There should be sufficient ventilation and outside disturbance should be less. You can keep pillows and blankets for your physical comfort to do meditation. The temperature of the room should be minimum and lighting should be low.
You can sit quietly or lie down with your eyes closed in the room created by you to perform meditation.
Initially you may feel some discomfort. Whenever you are feeling discomfort, stop meditating and start after some time. As you practice meditation, you can do meditation any where but try to select a calm and quiet place.
