How to Meditate

Learn how to meditate is similar to learn to how to tame your mind. You will need practice, constance and time, and then you will be able to access your inner calm no matter what’s going on around you. This discipline attempts to get your mind into a deeper state of relaxation and awareness. There are different methods, and in Ananda Marga is essentially as follows:

1. Make time to meditate: Is better if you set specific daily times to meditate. Every time you meditate would be about 20 minutes each session. We recommend to do it twice a day, first in the morning before having breakfast, and second at night before having dinner.
2. Find a quiet environment: Especially when you start is better to avoid any kind of distractions or interruptions to attention.
3. Sit correctly: Ideally you will sit at level ground, but specially at the beginning if that feels uncomfortable you can use an cushion. The legs are crossed in the popular lotus position. Try to keep the back straight, and the rest of the body relaxed.
4. Close the eyes: Again to avoid distractions and let your mind flow.
5. Breath deeply and slowly: should be done using the abdomen rather than the chest.
6. Focus your attention: the natural tendency of the mind is to wander from one point to another, we need to relax and focus our thoughts in order to stop this behaviour. There are different ways to attain this, like listening your breath, visualising a calm place, or the one that we found more effective: recite a mantra.
7. Silence your mind: after practice focusing in something, we would be able to focus in nothing. This is an advanced step, and requires a lot of practice and discipline. But like we like to say: practice makes perfect.

Obviously all this steps can have a more profound explanation, so if you feel like trying, or you tried without success in the past, please feel very welcome to our free classes.