Learn How to Meditate: Three Tips to Get You Started

Learn How to Meditate: Three Tips to Get You Started

Want to meditate, but don’t know where to start? Our Yoga Curator, Amy G shares three of her favourite gateways to engage a regular practice as an introduction to our Ease into Meditation Course starting in February.

Meditation is a natural state for the body. It’s a time for the body to rest, relax, repair and heal itself. To gain perspective on the things that have been worrying you, and take action with the things that you have forgotten about.

Meditation is a deeper rest than we have in sleep. Some say 20 minutes of effective meditation can equal eight hours of a good night’s sleep. This is due to a greater utilisation of oxygen in the blood and reduction in overall oxygen consumption. We can induce this state by doing anything simple and repetitive. This helps to promote the little details of life around us, so we can move in the world with more alertness and relaxation.

Here are some simple tools to explore to help start your meditation practice.

Breath Meditation:

There are many ways to utilise the breath in meditation. Try these either seated or lying down and on any given day you might play with them one at a time, or do all three in a little loop.

When you are with your breath notice the endless rhythm, the giving a receiving, the fullness and emptiness, the expansion and contraction. Feel how the breath makes you feel, can you feel your life force pulsing within you effortlessly, asking for nothing in return.

Even Breath Count: 4 in, 4 out, repeat as many times as desired. You can also take pauses between the in and out and notice the stages of your breath cycle: 4 in, hold for 4, 4 out, hold for 4. Start to extend the exhale to encourage the sympathetic nervous system to calm the body. 4 in, 8 out.

Salute to the Senses:

Let your awareness travel around your sense of smell, taste, sight, sound, touch and movement for a more mindful meditation. 

How does it feel to immerse yourself in a bodily quality? What subtleties do you notice? How does connecting with your sense of small, taste, sight, sound or touch feel? You can do these one at a time, or all together.

Embrace each sense and remember a time where you loved something with that sense, how it makes you feel at home in your body. Allow every sense to be felt and enjoyed, so your whole being feels vibrant.

Bhavana Meditation*:

This feeling state meditation allows you to come home to feelings and sensations that feel good in your body, that the body wants to be in love with, that the mind desires to immerse with. 

Remember a quality you love. 
Merge a quality you love with your Body
Merge a quality you love with your Breath
Merge a quality you love with your Thoughts
Merge a quality you love with your Emotions… Relax and let go
Welcome your Emotions infused by love
Welcome your Thoughts infused by love
Welcome your Breath infused by love
Welcome your Body infused by love
Remember you are meditating and return to the flow and vibrancy of your feeling state… 

*Inspired by Dr. Lorin Roche and Camille Maurine’s meditation techniques from The Radiance Sutras.

Remember, that meditation is a natural occurring state. Give permission for the body to rest, to heal, to play in stillness, and it will eventually feel very comfortable to do so. Embrace the moments of action as much as you embrace the moments of stillness.

A meditation practice can be varied on any given day, allow your body to move with the natural rhythms of what you need to find a place to play in stillness.  


Want to learn more? Starting February 20, Amy G is hosting an Ease into Meditation workshop series that will outline the what, why and how of building a personal and fulfilling meditation practice. 

Reserve your spot today: https://www.selph.com.au/events/ease-into-meditation-how-to-create-a-practice-that-you-love/.