Meditation for Stress Relief - Part 2

Now we come to the most important part, the meditation itself. Many believe that in order to meditate you must clear your mind of all thoughts. This is somewhat misleading, especially for beginners, because it can be extremely challenging to shut down your thought process.

Others believe that you must focus on one particular thing and stay focused on it throughout the meditation process. For this purpose, it's said that you can focus on a candle flame (your eyes will need to be open for that, of course), your breathing, a certain sound, and so forth. This is actually where the "Ohm" chant comes into play because you focus on that particular sound. The advantage of this focusing-on-one-thing technique is said to be that if you consciously focus on only one thing, you will not think of anything else because our minds are not capable of being focused on more than one thought at once.

This approach is misleading as well because the whole point of meditation is passive observation. This means that you do not need to avoid thinking, but simply to avoid actively thinking or active participation in the thinking process. To achieve this, you simply let your thoughts flow freely in and through your mind without paying attention to any particular thought. The goal is to become detached from everything during that time.

You can easily achieve this state of passivity by imagining that you are "releasing" every thought that comes to mind. So, while meditating, if you are having a thought, don't fight it or try to ignore it. Simply acknowledge it briefly, and then let it go. Do the same with all the other thoughts that pop into your mind. You can also imagine your thoughts as physical things such as a stream of water, bubbles in the air, leafs blown in the wind, or anything else that suits you. Imagine this stream of water, bubbles, or leafs passing you by. Although you are acknowledging their existence, you are not interfering with it since it is external to you.

With time, this process will become easier and easier, and you will automatically begin to "let go" of thoughts, and the process of passive observation and detachment will trigger naturally when you are meditating.

Finally, a lot of people are unsure of how much time they should spend meditating. Truth is that there is no set amount of time since it is specific to each individual. You can meditate for two hours a day or for five minutes every other day. With that said, experience and studies have shown that twenty minutes of meditation a day are a good rule of thumb to achieve the most benefit. The key is that you do not meditate more than you want to. If you become restless during meditation and you feel that you had enough, don't force yourself. If you do, all that will happen is that you'll become annoyed and stressed, which will defeat the whole point of meditating altogether. Even if you strive to meditate five minutes every day, you will reap the relaxation benefits from it.

Don't worry if you don't feel like meditating for long. With time, as you go into meditation and start feeling how rewarding it is, you will naturally be drawn to do more of it more often. Remember, meditation is supposed to be an enjoyable relaxing experience and not a chore.