Once upon a time, meditation practice was associated with hippies, beatniks, and those who wanted to go against “the system”. Today, it is widely accepted and learning how to meditate has become a trend in Western society. Part of this acceptance is not because of what it once stood for, but the positive benefits that one can achieve because of it.
However, it’s not just the everyday man or woman on the street who is learning how to meditate; professional athletes, celebrities and other business leaders have also taken the plunge. As a result of the high profile people taking up the art of meditation, they are not afraid to discuss how meditation has benefited them, especially in improving their performance at work, on the field, etc.
So the question you might ask yourself is how can I learn how to meditate? Well, there isn’t one specific way you can learn. It used to be that if you wanted to learn the art of meditation, you had to go on a retreat or to a far away land and stay for at least a month or more at an ashram. The instructors at these places, which still exist for the dedicated learner would teach the group about meditation techniques.
These days, and because of the high cost of meditation retreat, books have been written on how to meditate. However, they have been found to be ineffective as well due to the fact that there is no audio or personal interaction with the instructor to make sure that one is performing a meditation technique correctly.
With guided meditations on CDs or even on MP3s these days, listening to meditation exercises and visualizations it has become easier as well as effective to introduce the public to meditation itself.
In addition, DVDs or other similar online videos have also become an easy method of learning meditation because it gives the student a visual guide on not only how to do meditation correctly but also the steps it takes to do so. Even if one has to close their eyes, they still have the audio and even some meditation music to use as tool in their learning.
While sticking to one meditation method is ideal so that one can feel comfortable with the concept of meditation, its best to learn different kinds of meditation to find which one is the most comfortable to stick with and perfect. Once this happens, the practioners can then customize the meditation to suit their own needs.
