Are you one of those looking to de-stress and keep calm then meditation for calm is what you need. It’s inevitable to experience stressful moments in our daily lives, but it’s how we deal with stressful situations that become important. Yes, we need to be calm but it’s not always the case. So how do we achieve the much needed calm in life? Well, meditation has the answer to it. Mastering a calming meditation is a great way to prepare to meet those emotional challenges.
Calming meditation techniques can be incredibly helpful in calming and relaxing your body and spirit. Let’s admit in today’s world most of us spend busy lifestyles, which is more or less responsible for making us distant from our own emotions and things and people that do matter to us. Meditation for calm can help us in rekindling our awareness and stay in touch with our feelings by providing a sense of calm.
Everything we do has a changing effect on our brain in some or the other way. For instance when we learn a skill or do some activity, the brain region that we use enlarges. And when we don’t use the brain it shrinks. This shift in the size of the brain is neuroplasticity according to science.
We know meditation helps regulate stress. Meditating causes physical changes in specific parts of the brain that help control the stress response. Meditators have a smaller amygdala that works like a trigger governing the body’s fight-or-flight response. A smaller amygdala might reduce your tendency to freak out during stressful situations thus enabling you to approach situations in a calm manner.
The techniques of meditation for calm are many but these are some of the most common meditations for calm.
Mantra Meditation
With its roots in ancient Indian tradition, the Mantra meditation technique is a great method of meditation for calm. During this meditation technique you silently or mentally repeat a calming word, phrase, or mantra. The repetition of the mantra replaces all busy thoughts and helps you shut out the outside world thus finding peace from within, and consequently calming your mind and body. Using positive affirmations such as “I am calm and relaxed”, or using the mantra Om will do positive for you.
Mindful Meditation
Mindful meditation is another very effective practice to bring calm into your life. Mindfulness is the art of increasing your awareness of the present moment. It involves techniques such as focusing on your breathing or the sensation of your feet touching the floor/ground thus keeping your thoughts from wandering. Mindful meditation or mindfulness is very simple and quite flexible as it can be performed anywhere while you are engaged in several different tasks such as doing the laundry or walking.
Guided Meditation
There are some guided meditations that are specifically designed to calm the mind. Guided meditation can be instrumental in learning how to manage stress and stay calm. This meditative form brings you calm and relaxation by making you listen, stay focused and let the meditation do the rest. A calming guided meditation may lead you through body relaxation, give you soothing visualizations to focus on, or support your calm meditation session with pleasant background, music, or sounds.
The effectiveness of guided calm meditation is not unknown and often athletes, businesspeople use this practice to calm their nerves.
Progressive Muscle Relaxation
This simple meditation technique has great calming benefits. It effectively relaxes different muscle groups in the body. Here, you tense and relax each muscle in your body progressively. You either start at your feet and progress upwards or begin with your head moving downward. Each muscle is tensed for at least 5 to 10 seconds, released, then moving onto the next muscle.
While the above mentioned calming meditation techniques may differ the way they are practiced, below is a quick 2-minute calming meditation step to follow. You can even go for a guided meditation from an experienced practitioner/teacher for better effectiveness in achieving calm.
Take two deep breaths. Inhale from the nose and exhale from the mouth.
Then bring your breath to normal, breathing in and out through the nose. Follow your breath with full attention. Notice the sensation at your nostrils.
Follow the movement of the breath from your nasal passage into your lungs and down to your belly, feeling your belly rise and fall.
Notice everything about each breath - the temperature of the air, how it feels at the tip of your nose and the back of your throat.
Take around 8-10 of these fully conscious breaths and notice the change in how you feel when you are done.
