If you think that 'turning off the mind' is something that only those who have been practicing meditation for a long time are able to do, today we invite you to test 3 simple meditation techniques that you too can learn and put into practice immediately.
1. Relax your gaze and eyes
After you have assumed the position in which you want to meditate, still with your eyes open, begin to relax your gaze, as if you were looking at the sea horizon without focusing on anything. Confidently carry on with the first of your new meditation techniques. When vision begins to blur, contact the sensation of your eyes and keep your presence on them: you will feel them gradually softer and more expanded. Then close them slowly, keeping your presence on your increasingly relaxed eyes and then start to meditate.
2. Listen to your breath
Breathing is the easiest tool to bring awareness and not get lost behind thoughts.
With your eyes closed, simply be present to the physical sensation of your breath flowing, from out through the nose into the body and from within the body out through the nose. Listen to it with your senses, without forcing, stopping or holding it back. Just feel its free flow. The more you stay in touch without interruptions with the sensation of breathing, the more thoughts don't distract you and slowly disappear, leaving room for new perceptions. After listening to the breath for a couple of minutes, start meditating. If you realize that you can't keep constant attention on your breath, I suggest you train your presence in the body by counting the number of your breathing acts (an act is an inhalation and an exhalation). It reaches up to 28 and if you lose count it starts again from 1, until you complete the 28 breaths without getting distracted. You can do this breath workout anytime you want, not just before you meditate.
3. Listen to your whole body
Bring your attention to the top of your head: the hair, the skin of the skull. From there slowly go down with your conscious presence in the whole face and then the rest of the body, proceeding from top to bottom and reaching the feet. Basically scan your body, feeling every part and every sensation manifest, without interpreting or looking for the reason for what comes to your awareness. You will probably notice that sensations of expansion, warmth, and tingling arise in your body: they are nothing more than the extension of your perception to subtle states of your being that usually go unnoticed. Stay with the physical sensations, if thoughts or memories come let them flow without letting yourself be "kidnapped" by them, without following them: slowly they will disappear. After arriving at the foot he begins to meditate. The effectiveness of these simple tricks lies in that when we bring attention to a part of the body or one of its functions, we activate one or more of our five internal senses grouped under the term proprioception. Specifically, they are the sense of pressure, heat, muscle contraction and release, skeletal alignment, and pain (usually only pain really leads us to listen to the body, and this happens because the body responds to our not listening by generating pain).
The activation of the internal senses awakens what is called "deep mind" or "no-mind": a state characterized by the almost complete or total absence of rational thought. You can also use these techniques in sequence from the first to the third, you will get a deeper effect.
If you have a very active and thinking mind, the thoughts may even increase in the first few times: don't be discouraged, keep applying yourself and you will see that they will gradually begin to thin out. And remember that it is through practice that we get results.
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*The information contained in this article is for informational purposes only. They do not replace the advice and follow-up of doctors, nutritionists and other health professionals.