Qigong energy meditation is a practice of energy development and control.  At the beginning stages one first learns to identify and concentrate their internal energy in the lower abdomen through deep adbominal breathing and concentration on the seat of energy, located an inch below the navel and an inch within the body.

At intermediate stages one has a clear sensation of their internal energy, as well as sensitivity to its movements and improved control of it through mental focus.  Advanced stages of practice open the door to energy channeling, healing, martial arts technique enhancement, and self healing.  But these skills are not developed overnight, and to even attain a moderate sensitivity to your internal energy, Qigong Energy Meditation should be undertaken at least once a day, every day, for a few months. 

Time spent can vary, but generally sitting, focusing, and breathing until you find yourself hitting a wall or losing focus is a useful guideline.  This could last anywhere from from 3 to 30 minutes, depending on your level.

Mindfulness meditation is one of the most rewarding practices one can assimilate in their daily living.  It requires little time relative to the rewards, and it aids in healing a lifetime of poor thinking and ego driven selfish decision making. 

But mindfulness meditation should not be seen as an isolated practice, but should be seen as ‘concentrated’ living, living fully in the moment without distraction or judgment.  And these moment should eventually lead to more mindful living 24 hours a day.  It is difficult to live a normal life and at the same time live mindfully, but most of us are far from exhausting the level of sensation, awareness, and innocence that can be cultivated throughout most of the day. 

Live fully in the present, and the present becomes much more full.  A moment becomes all consuming, pure life.  And life after meditation becomes that much more rich.

Everyone wants to be able to take control of their lives and their emotions, but sometimes because of circumstances it becomes hard to do this. Finding peace and happiness in a world of chaos and turmoil can be difficult, and worries and stress always find their ways into our mind when we least want them.

Meditation allows you to take a look into your mind and calm yourself. With meditation, you can let go of stress and find peace within yourself. This way, you will be able to control yourself even when the situations can be depressing, and you can think clearly to find a solution and find happiness in the midst of sadness.

Sometimes our minds can be a hurricane of thoughts and emotions which can confuse even our own selves. Our situations usually dictate our emotions, which can cause lots of stress and sadness. Our outside factors affect our minds and our minds affect out actions. This is why we must meditate to gain control and understanding of our minds.

By training yourself through meditation, you can make a place in your mind where you can think clearly and make sense of your situations. You can clear your mind and keep your mind balanced so that you can be happy and calm all the time; rather than being unbalanced and being either very happy or very sad.

Since meditation releases stress and worries, you can also benefit it from it medically. Your immune system goes down when you are feeling down or pressured. So if you meditate, you will be able to have a stronger mental and physical state.

When you meditate, you are more aware of your own thoughts which you may have been suppressing from yourself. Also, it allows you to focus on what is most important, rather than listening to thoughts that can be depressing and can bring you down. When you are more aware of yourself and the things around you, you will gain wisdom.

The great thing about meditation is that you don’t need to have any special equipment or anything else for you to meditate. All you need is a quiet space for you to meditate and the will to learn how as well as the discipline to practice every day. You can meditate no matter what age, gender or race you are and it will definitely bring you benefits for your life.

So that is why you should learn to meditate. It is a very easy task that anyone can do and it has so many benefits that will help you in life.

The first thing that you have to have before you can start to meditate is a place where you can meditate. It should be a place that is quite and peaceful and other people shouldn’t be able to bother you. Find a place in your spot where you can sit comfortably on the floor with a cushion below you. Or, you can have a hard chair to sit on.

Remember to sit with proper posture, but without straining your back. Do not slouch forward or lean backwards, since this can hurt your back and cause back pains later. If you have back problems and you can’t sit on the floor, then use a chair instead.

Once you have your meditation area, close your eyes and start breathing slowly. Breathe in with your nose, and breathe out from your nose. Breathe naturally and properly, don’t force it. Breathe deeply and slowly, though it might take a while to do this.

While you are breathing, you may notice that you have gotten calmer and relaxed. Don’t think of anything except your breathing. Think about the breath as it goes into your nose and out of your mouth. If you start to think about something else, then pull your attention back to your breathing. This may happen a lot your first time, but it is completely natural. Just remember to think about your breathing.

When you exhale, it should take a longer time than your inhale to let in fresh air in. You can choose to meditate with music, but make sure that it does not distract you. You can choose music that sounds like nature or are instrumentals. There is meditation music CDs available, so you can get these if you’d like to meditate with music.

Meditation for beginners can be uncomfortable if you don’t eat enough, or if you’ve eaten too much. So make sure that you have a bit of food in your stomach before you meditate. If you are pressed for time to meditate, you can set a timer so that you can end your session when you need to.

You can count your breath if you want to since this may help you concentrate on your breathing and stop thinking of other things. Once you believe you have taken enough time for your meditation session, you can open your eyes and do other things. You may need to stretch to get your body out of your position then you can go out and do what you need to do.

Breathing meditation is just the first step in learning how to meditate. Once you find yourself comfortably meditating, you can start with more complex meditation techniques to get better at it. How to meditate for beginners starts with this one step, so take it and be on your path to better self awareness.

Though easy to think of, it is one of the toughest regions of meditation. It needs extensive practice and determination to achieve. However, once you achieve such a state, you break free into the cosmic word of possibilities where no ailment can reach you. With persistent discipline and persistence, you can learn how to practice healing meditation. From there on, you will easily overcome any stress, depression, worry or tension enacted by your daily life.

This meditation technique is based on the rich ancient culture of the central Asian denizens. Available records show that this technique is one of those practiced by the Buddhist meditation gurus with an intent to foster concentration, peace of mind, maximal self awareness, enhanced creativity, higher consciousness and more importantly, spiritual development. This set of states is a perfection of natural health and well-being. If you can strive for and attain even three of these states, then you will have enriched your health with a power beyond any conventional drug. At the heart of any meditative healing session, lies the need to elevate the three units of the self into harmony, peace and calm.

If you are suffering from any sort of physical pain or emotional trauma, then healing meditation might be the one thing you need. You are guaranteed of great health benefits that are going to impact permanently in your well-being. This must however be accompanied by proper dieting to help the body derive healing abilities from the benefits activated through meditation. You only need basic guidance in the start of the program and once you learn the concept, you can reach any height of meditation all by yourself.

The following is the beginning point of a healing meditation session. Try to see if you can attain it. This will help you gauge whether you need guidance or whether you can do it alone. To begin, lie lying down on a flat cushioned surface and hold your hand across the chest. You can alternatively sit in a comfortable meditation chair with your back supported. Begin the session by relaxing the entire body with deep breathes that are deliberate, gradual and full. Ensure that your attention is focused on the breath as it enters and leaves your body. Feel the air interacting with your body as you breathe.

You must now try to relax the entire body as a single unit, visualising deep into the heart. Retain maximal concentration and do not let any part of the body to pull away from the oneness. That is the beginning of the meditative healing session and if you can attain that, then it would be easy to transcend barriers to higher levels of meditation. Read and consult widely on how you can take that state further into the cosmic visualisation of health and well-being.

The happiest lot of individuals have learnt to relax and to approach everything with a calm, tranquil mind. You must elevate your perception and comprehension to a point where you are not challenged but stimulated by phenomena. You have to drive your mind from the past and into the now. The best way to do that is to use relaxation meditation.

The main paths of relaxation meditation include breathing, muscle relaxation, visualisation and meditative elevation of the self to heights of infinite tranquillity and peace. The following is an illustration of how you can execute the meditation session. This however is the beginning; you have to let your self free until you can tap to greater dimension of absolute relaxation. Take a meditation seat and assume an upright relaxed posture, starting by breathing gradually and fully, until you can feel the air entering and leaving your body.

The fact is, if you have ever participated in any meditation session, then you have the background from which you can propel this technique to the highest level. If you are green when it comes to meditation however, you need to struggle through the beginning stages of attaining a relaxed self and then coercing the three facets of the self to a peaceful one.

Next, try to stretch the facial muscles and then gradually relax them. Feel the facial lines and shades created by the relaxation and then maintain them at that relaxed state without effecting any strain on the muscles. Enhance your visualisation gradually until total relaxation is attained on the face. If you succeed, a feeling of calm will begin welling up down the entire body. Once the face is done with, try another body part like the legs, the stomach, the hands and so on. For each of the body part, go through similar motions. Once you have revolved around the body parts, you are ready to start the higher meditation levels.

The only chief requirement in relaxation meditation is that you find enough time to harness your from anxiety and stress. The ancient wisdom of many spiritual cultures was harnessed through meditation. These indigenous people found beauty, cure and peace of mind that we have failed to gain from improved scientific prowess and industrialization. The promises of technology and of conventional medicine have failed us in a big way, especially if you look at how chaotic our societies have become.

The emphasize of relaxation meditation is to allow your inner self to discover the infinite correctness, wisdom, tranquility and peace resident in you and which can drain out all worries and stress in the muscles, in your mind and in your soul.

Mindfulness meditation is an exercise that reconnects us with our present reality and leaves behind the ‘I’. By selflessly experiencing the present in non-judgment we find the fullness and beauty of life. There are various methods of practicing mindfulness meditation including walking, eating, or sitting quietly. All of them are defined by an awareness and sensitivity to the present that rarely exist at other times.

In all things, doing them for a purpose is what removes us from the present. Performing actions with full attention and without a goal in mind will result in a mindful experience. Don’t eat breakfast to rush off to work, eat breakfast to eat breakfast. Taste each bite fully and take in the texture, smell, and sounds. Virtually every activity can be mindfully performed, but perhaps its easiest to start with sitting meditation.

Mindfulness meditation has little formality, but sitting meditation has a few guidelines. You’ll want a quiet and natural setting if possible. You’ll want good posture which allows for a full deep breath. And you’ll want to practice deep abdominal breathing, drawing the breath into the lower abdomen rather than the chest. Begin by simply observing your breath. Watch it come and go attentively. With time your consciousness will expand to encompass more than your breath, but also internal and external sensations and even your thoughts. Observe all of this without judgment and mindfulness meditation will result in genuine and peaceful experience.

How to Meditate for Power
Qigong, meaning energy work in Chinese, is meditation that develops sensitivity to our internal energy, as well as the ability to manipulate it for healing and power. Outwardly this meditation may look the same as mindfulness meditation. Some forms of Qigong are standing, some moving, and some quietly sitting. But they all have a few things in common.

In terms of basic sitting meditation, all factors remain the same as above in terms of posture and breathing. There is a point about two inches below the belly button and about two inches deep in the body that is the seat of energy. When drawing in your breath you should focus on this point and either observe carefully or imagine your breath fueling a fire that is very small and dense. Each breath adds heat and weight.

Your tongue should be pressed against the roof of your mouth just behind the palate. This connects the two major meridian lines which travel along the front and rear of the body. When these lines are connected and energy moves freely then your healing ability will be at its highest. One should initially work to develop and accumulate energy in the lower abdomen until intense heat or swirling sensations can be felt.

There is no timeline for practice. The first stage of training may take someone 3 weeks or 3 years. The second stage of meditation is the conscious movement of this energy from the lower abdomen throughout the major meridian lines in a constant circular flow. Energy will travel in with the breath to the lower abdomen, down between the legs, up the back to the crown point at the top of the head, and down to the mouth where the cycle begins anew.

Higher stages of energy work include channeling this energy to certain organs or through the limbs for purposes of complete energy circulation or projecting energy outside of the body in order to heal others. In the case of martial arts this energy may be used to enhance martial technique, speed, power, and mental acuity.

When learning how to meditate, we are learning about ourselves, not something external. Meditation at its core is honest awareness of the self, as well as an honest relationship with ‘experience’. What I mean by honest is simply experience lacking judgment. Judgment is something we bring to nearly every moment of our adult lives. This tastes good. I feel uncomfortable. That is noisy. This is a pleasurable film.

We rarely observe things simply as they are, independently of the way we think and feel about them. And it is this thinking and feeling about things that cause us heaps of discontent in our lives. Our thoughts and feelings are conditioned responses or logical operations on past experience. Past experience is dead, and to the extent that it is so, it inhibits honest experience of the present. It is like judging a new acquaintance because they bear some resemblance to someone you knew from the past. We could be correct in our judgment, but are most likely not. Either way, we are not looking at the person in front of us, but a figment of the past.

I am not advocating we have a psychological disconnect with our own memory or history. But I am suggesting that our identities and associations cause us pain and suffering. And if we are able to see those experiences as they are and were, fleeting moments of beauty or pain, without associating them with personal values or judgments, then we open the door to genuine meditation. And we allow the beauty of life to manifest.

So to get back to the ‘how to’ part of how to meditate, self awareness is the beginning and the end. We need to look at ourselves within our environment. We need to taste our food, listen to sounds, watch our own thoughts, and be ever mindful of immediate experiences as well as our own judgments of them creeping in. When committed to self awareness we gradually begin to deconstruct these identities we’ve spent a lifetime building, identities which separate us from truth and reality. Perception of this causes its dissolution, and the result is unconditioned meditation, unconditioned and free thinking.

Simple exercises for meditation are aimed at removing distractions and creating sustainable relaxation and comfort in ones posture for the sake of concentration. But these things are not meditation. True meditation can happen anywhere, any time. One can meditate while eating, in battle, in a brothel, and even at work. The human mind can realize beauty and life whenever it is allowed to function and experience without selfish judgment.

This kind of self awareness requires a commitment to the truth that extends well beyond a few minutes of quiet time throughout the day. One needs to be committed to asking why? Why did I just say that? Why did I do that? Why are my legs crossed at this moment in time? Why did I not make eye contact with that beggar? Why are my arms crossed while talking with my mother? And when we begin to see the conditioned elements in our behavior, the door opens for the unconditioned. We can relearn natural and passionate behavior. Innocence will return to our lives, and with it energy and compassion.

If you watch a sleeping child breathe, you’ll notice their chest doesn’t expand and contract the way an adult’s would. Their lower abdomen however does expand and contract with each breath. Eastern philosophers speculate that this derives from our fetal energy source, the umbilical chord. Nevertheless, for those practiced in deep abdominal breathing, that same childlike energy and passion for life is present, and we can all relearn this vital skill.

But besides this consequent benefit of deep breathing and meditation, deep breathing is also a valuable tool for reuniting with present reality as you learn to meditate. Breathing is dynamic and constantly changing, just as life is in constant flux. When we allow ourselves to be mindful of our breath, we are drawn back to the present, and so are one step closer to the beauty and truth of life.

Breathing meditation should not be forced and unnatural. It should be regular, slow, and deep…within reason. Our backs should be straight and hands and feet in a comfortable position, whether standing, seated in a chair, or reclining on the floor. Our breath should sink deep down into our lower abdomen, and should slowly flow back out. And our minds should be there, be there with the breath, its movement in and out.

Should your mind begin to wander, be aware of that too. Don’t force your mind back to your breath; simply watch your thought without judgment. You’ll see yourself in truth, and that awareness will generally cause the thought trail to cease. Once you find silence again naturally, watch your breath again. And in this breathing, you will learn to meditate. In fact, breathing itself in this manner is an act of meditation.

If you’re alone, examine the room you’re in or look out a window. If you’re in a public place, look at the faces of those around you. Most of us, when we ‘see’ things, we see them as we knew them. We know what a tree is, a dog is, our mother is. We don’t observe these things as they are in the moment, but as a familiar object or thing, one that is understood and needn’t be experienced beyond that.

In this habitual categorizing and familiarity with things lies the stain of past experience, and the reason meditation is so important. Our lives have become unconscious strings of associated experiences and thoughts. We no longer ‘see’ the tree, because it’s a tree. We no longer ‘see’ our girlfriend, because we know her. As such, our present experience is the overlap of dead thoughts and ideas.

For most people, this state of living feels normal, and they can’t fathom a way of life that doesn’t come from selfish judgments and perceptions. For those of us who realize the inherent selfishness in not appreciating the beauty in our immediate experience, and who realize there is a truth and beauty to life far beyond our current level of experience, then meditation is for us.

Meditation is merely a return to reality, not escape from it. When you eat your breakfast, do you taste it? Or do you think about the day ahead, or an argument with family, or do you read the morning paper? Did you taste every bite? Did you take notice of the colors of each part of your breakfast, the smells, the sound of each bite? This is meditation. This is being in the present. You needn’t run from experience. You needn’t tune out sounds and sites, or concentrate furiously on not thinking.

You should be aware. You should listen. You should feel. You should see. There are many kinds of ‘meditation’, all aiming to reconnect the lost spirit with reality. But most of them include self-control and effort. These methods augment our ego. They are manifestations of desire, as they are goals we are trying to achieve. This is contrary to what meditation is, which is fundamentally selfless. It is not about you, it is about true experience of the now.

So now that we have an idea of what meditation is, let’s begin. There are many kinds of meditation, and I’ll elaborate on some of them in following posts. But for this week let’s start with the most basic. Choose one meal of the day, every day, and eat it. Don’t devour it while thinking of other things or watching tv. Eat it. Be there. Be in that moment with the activity itself. Watch yourself as you eat. See the truth in your movements, the food, and the experience of eating. Don’t judge it. Accept it. You are one action closer to happiness, and we’ll take steps further together as you learn how to meditate.