Meditation is considered as a great boon for today’s stressful world. Our mind is constantly busy fighting all the worries of present competitive world. It hardly gets time to relax. There so many things going around those need to be focused. In order to achieve this focus, many people practice meditation. There are different types of meditation techniques and focused meditation is one of them. Focused meditation is best suited to relax our mind. As the name suggest this meditative state is achieved by centering all your concentration on something. It aims at one thing and allows you to get away from all the problems and issues that keep continuously running in your mind.
There are several ways of performing focused meditation. Although each technique has different name, but the aim of all techniques remains same. The major difference is with object of focus. It is simple to practice and not necessarily requires guided meditation. Some examples are listed here.
• Most popular focused meditation is where focus is our own breathing. With eyes closed the meditator tries to focus on breathing process. This is achieved by breathing slowly but deeply and then allowing your mind to focus on each breathing movement. While doing so your thoughts are listed in your mind and it begins to wander. To avoid wandering, you have to bring your focus back to breathing process. This way you try to bring all your thoughts to still and get completely involved with your inner self.
• Visual meditation works on same principle but focus object now would be visual object like statue or candle flame. You focus on the object and continuously observe it till your mind becomes completely quiet.
• In the music meditation, focus is on music. Different types of meditation music are easily available. Here you listen to music and concentrate on the sound it creates. You connect yourself to music and try to achieve meditative state.
It is not important what focus object you choose; important is to achieve ultimate relaxed state of mind. It is immaterial if object of focus is auditory, visual or constant process like our own breathing, if we are able to focus on the detail of these processes, we can reach meditative state. Senses play vital role in this type of technique.
Focus meditation unlike other meditation techniques allows you to quiet your mind and feel the present moment. You concentration is centered on what is happening now, at this very moment irrespective of what had happened in the past or that would be happening in the future. It allows you to associate you with your inner self. It kills all the worries and unwanted thoughts running in your mind and brings it to utmost relaxed state. This improves your ability to concentrate and focus on what is most important to you.
All the meditation techniques help to blow off negative feelings and inculcate positive attitude. Focused meditation also helps with same, keeps you in a more wakeful state by increasing brain activity. This helps us to remain healthy and enables to work with enhanced energy and concentration.
Jill Magso is a member of the Silva Team and contributes to spreading enlightened ideas and sharing teachings about meditation practices. The Silva Method encompasses a variety of powerful exercises that take you deep into Alpha and Theta levels of the mind so that you can work within your subconscious as well as your conscious mind.