Photo Courtesy of Integral

When many people think of meditation, they think of sitting down and having no thoughts. While this is partially correct, it isn’t completely true.

Meditation is an art of being mindful and allowing your body control over your thoughts. A common practice like said before is too sit down and try to block out all thoughts. While this can sometimes work, for many people it can be a struggle. Their are many other forms of meditation however. Meditation is anything that allows your brain to relax and not have an “explosion” of thoughts.

I consider exercise and writing to be forms of meditation. Free-writing allows you to funnel your thoughts onto something; writing down things allows your brain to not think of it as much. For this reason, many people decide to journal. Many forms of exercise also allow a similar feeling. I find that running especially is incredibly efficient at allowing my mind to “slow-down”. Running also releases endorphins, which allow for yourself to feel better overall.

The more traditional way to meditate, sitting down and closing your eyes, can seem daunting but it gets easier over time. A smart strategy is to put a background noise during it. Normally, a background noise would be something the mind can focus on. The best background noises in my opinion would be rainfall or a fan noise (it’s also really nice to go to sleep with these noises). A more advanced way of this strategy of meditation is too also hum.

Although the word “meditation” can seem daunting and boring, their are a variety of ways it can be done. Many people likely already do subtle forms of meditation and do not realize. Meditation allows people to be more mindful and in control of their thoughts. Although it may seem boring, if you ever have any time, you should give it a try.