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Meditation has been proven to have amazing benefits both for your mental and physical well being. Scientific studies have shown long term meditators have lower blood pressure and produce far less stress hormones than people who don’t meditate.  They also produce more beneficial chemicals such as DHEA – the precursor to all hormones in the body. When you meditate what you are actually doing is slowing your brainwaves down. As you slow your brainwaves down the hustle and bustle of everyday life disappears and you can access your subconscious mind. This allows you to receive insights and flashes of understanding that you wouldn’t be able to while you were awake because your conscious mind gets in the way. Simply put you are quietening the ‘noise’ so you can listen to your unconscious mind. Over the years practitioners of meditation have noticed that imagining yourself ‘going down’ (as in the physical direction towards the core of the earth) helps massively when you want to enter a meditative state. When I first started meditating this was the one most helpful to me slowing my brainwaves down. Since everyone is different there will be likely be one of the techniques that follows that will jump out for you after you try them all. You will feel the difference when you find the one that works best for you.

The Slope

Simply imagine yourself slowing walking down a hill or any sloped surface. Some people like to pick a grassy hill, others find it easier to imagine a road. This is a fun one to do because you can get as creative as you want – if you want flowers and trees – add flowers and trees! Or it can be a road that you know from your local neighborhood (as long as always slopes down, never up – it is fine for it to be flat in places, but they key to this technique is communicating to yourself that you want to ‘go down’ deeper into yourself). Some people find it helpful to ‘feel’ the change in height with each step they take (Left: “down a little” more, Right: “down a little more”) It doesn’t matter how fast you walk or the height of the slope – as long as your unconscious gets the message that you want to go down (or ‘deeper’).

The Elevator

As the name suggests imagine you are in an elevator then - at a speed that you find comfortable visualize elevator moving down. If you are a visual person you might find it helpful to see the elevator front made out of glass and going down into the earth, and seeing all the different colored layers of soil. But if imagining yourself in a normal opaque metal elevator and looking at the display that says what number floor you are on works then feel free to do whatever works for you. There are no rules here! What we are trying to do is communicate to our unconscious mind that we want to go deep down inside ourselves, and everybody will have different internal images that speak in different ways to their unconscious mind.

Help! I’m sinking!

Lie down on your bed, get comfortable and take a few deep breaths, then start imaging yourself sinking down into the bed – almost like warm melting chocolate.

The Countdown

Here is a very common technique that is used by many people across the world. In your head start slowly counting backwards from 200 to 1. (Don’t worry if this sounds like a lot of effort – you likely won’t get there if this method works on you.) So “200… 199… 198… And so on and so on. The sort of speed you are looking for here is either: as slow as you like or no faster then one number every 2 seconds or so. Don’t worry if you forget to count or lose your place, simply start again where you can last remember being. Our objective here is not to get down to number one – it is actually to completely sink so far into your consciousness that you are in a trance and forget to count. If You Find Meditation Difficult If you find mediation too hard or too tedious to do everyday – don’t worry you are not alone! While many people enjoy meditating some people find it a mental strain, others find it mind-numbingly boring. If you are one of these people don’t worry - it doesn’t mean that you have to pass on all the many mental and health related benefits meditation can give you. (Not to mention all the highly pleasurable brain chemicals released during deep meditation.) Scientists have discovered a way to encourage your brain to go into a extremely deep meditative state - without any effort needed from your conscious, awake mind. It is so easy to use it has been called ‘The lazy man’s way to meditate’. If you have trouble meditating then this may be the thing that you are looking for. Using this method, someone who has never meditated in their life before can experience extremely deep meditation as if they had been training for years. If you are already a proficient mediator, you can use it to increase the depth of your meditation sessions. It makes meditation ten times easier, giving you the power to explore your subconscious deeper than ever before. To learn more about this breakthrough and how you can use it to supercharge your meditation sessions click here. ------------------------------------------------------------------ James Smith runs Lifeimproving.com - a site dedicated to helping people increase their IQ, brain power and happiness. He is the author of the book Unlock Your Brain’s Limitless Power.

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