Yoga Meditation: A Beginner's Guide

Everyone has heard at some point or another about yoga meditation, and it is indeed a practice that elicits a lot of curiosity and interest. If you're looking to get started, it's a fairly simple process and well worth it. But first, let's start at the beginning.

What is yoga meditation?

Yoga meditation is meditation in the way many people imagine it. Its main intent is to relieve stress from the body and to allow people to reflect on their state of being and to get to know their own bodies. It's a great form of relaxation and stress reduction that ultimately lends people to have a happier state of mind. It attempts to bring you closer to yourself by heightening your awareness not just of the world around you, but about your body and your inner conscious.

One of the most important aspects of meditation is the "living in the now". It takes away the past and future and really focuses on the present. During the main part of meditation, it is common to focus your mind solely on one thing (generally breathing) and not letting it wander to other subjects. This brings focus and clarity into our brains and helps us concentrate more throughout the day.

What are the benefits of meditation?

Many people don't want to start a new practice without first knowing exactly what they're going to get out of it. Fair enough. So here is a list of benefits that meditation has on the body:

- Reduction of free radicals (harmful cells that attack cells in the body)

- Improved blood pressure

- Lower cholesterol levels

- Improved air flow to the lungs (this is especially helpful for people, like myself, that have asthma)

- Slows down the aging process

- Decreased anxiety

- Decreased depression

- Decreased irritability and moodiness

- Improved memory capabilities

- Increased happiness

- Increased emotional stability

So, as you can see, there are clearly more than enough benefits to make meditation well worth it for both a healthy body and a healthy mind.

So how do I actually being meditation?

That's a very good question, and one that requires just a little bit of research and reading. Fortunately, since it's such a popular practice, there are more than enough sites that explain how to being.

This is a wonderful site that gives helpful suggestions and tips for beginners to keep in mind while they attempt their first meditations and such. It gives a lot of good information and advice.

This is another really good site that I would definitely recommend. Not only does it tell how to begin yoga meditation, but it also gives various poses, advice on how to start, and the basic principles about meditation. It's a very handy website to have when just starting out.