Meditation regulates our heart rate, sends oxygen to our cells, and relieves stress, tension and pain. It’s an automatic mood stabiliser and purifier and helps expedite healing as well as overcoming numerous challenges. Plus, there are techniques we already innately know.
Coupled with learned techniques, meditation can be one of the most powerful practices we develop. But it may not always come easy. It’s like trying something new for the first time, or building a muscle. We have to start out simple and get used to it, learn what comes to us naturally, what we like and dislike, which meditations work for us, and which ones could work better if we made modifications that support who we are and the bodies we’re living in. But once you learn (or realise you already know) how to meditate, you’ll never forget, and it will be there to benefit you over and over whenever you need it.
Here are nine different forms of meditation, ranked from easy to advanced, that will forever improve your life. Use the modifications included if needed, or use them as a way to inspire modifications specific to you.
1. Movement meditation
Difficult: Easy
Time required: 5+ minutes
We’re always in motion as humans, so this type of meditation helps us slow down and requires very little effort.
Whenever you need a break from a task, thought or activity, simply go and do something else (ideally something you find cathartic) for a few minutes. For example, turn on the kitchen tap, pick up a plate and wash it. But while you’re doing so, resist the urge to set conditions on the activity – such as having all the dishes washed, dried and put away in the next 15 minutes.
Instead, stay present, even if that means replacing your current thoughts with ones about what’s happening right in front of you. ‘I'm washing a plate. It’s blue. Soap and water are sliding down its side’.
If you want to take this to the next level, take a walk in a quiet place while staying present to all that's around you – the sounds, smells, colours, and feelings – or better yet, walk barefoot on the grass for a revitalising boost of energy from the planet.
This type of meditation can work with any low-impact activity. The idea is to use the activity as a moment to slow down, disrupt your current stream of thought and reset.
I use this type of meditation to get present multiple times a day and when in the company of others, or in places where it might be difficult to do other types of meditation.
2. Corpse pose (Shavasana)
Difficulty: Easy
Time required: 5+ minutes
This is a restorative little meditation that reduces cortisol stress hormones in your body and only takes about five minutes to complete.
Lie on the ground with your feet apart, and your arms down and away from your sides with your palms up. Close your eyes and breathe naturally through your diaphragm. Relax your shoulders and the arch of your back into the floor. Allow your feet to fall to the side and lie as still as possible for five minutes.
Essentially, that’s it. But if you find your mind busy with thoughts, focus on the breath moving in and out of your stomach. Trace the outline of your body with an imaginary line. Notice how one foot falls slightly closer to the floor than the other one – anything to stay present. When your five minutes are done, reawaken your body slowly, limb by limb, before getting up.
I used this meditation before I knew it was one. Like movement meditation, it’s perfect for taking a few minutes break in between tasks at home or when you need a quick adjustment from thoughts and feelings pushing in a less-than-great direction. Of course, you can meditate for longer than five minutes, but it may lead to dozing off – especially if you modify it like I often do by lying on my bed, which I call ‘going horizontal’, so be sure you have time for that.
3. Binaural beats
Difficulty: Easy
Time required: Varies
Binaural beats are an entrainment method that helps rewire the brain by slipping into a trance-like state, which is achieved through the repetition and consistency of the beats. There are varying beats per second, plus different frequencies, and the deeper your exploration, the more effective it’ll become.
The five core brainwave categories used in binaural beats are
- Delta for deep sleep, healing and access to the unconscious mind
- Theta for realm sleep, meditations in general, creativity and relaxation
- Alpha for positive thinking and accelerated learning
- Beta for focused attention, problem solving and analytical skills
- Gamma for memory recall, transcendental states and heightened information processing
Simply search for a beat on YouTube, get in a comfortable position and press play. Take deep breaths and focus on the rhythm of your breath or the beat whenever unwanted thoughts crop up.
To get the most out of your meditation, choose a specific focus beforehand and play a beat that best addresses that focus. For example, letting a beat that’s associated with the delta brainwave play instrumentally while you sleep can help you heal a deep-rooted trauma. Or playing an instrumental meditation in a classroom that correlates to the beta brainwave while children work on mathematics can
help them understand the concepts easier.
For an advanced experience, mix a binaural beat with a guided meditation that addresses a specific focus. When, for example, addressing specific chakras, this mix can be extremely effective in accelerating the process of activating and healing those chakras.
4. Mindfulness meditation (Sati)
Difficulty: Intermediate
Time required: 10+ minutes
Mindfulness as a meditation requires a posture. Sit with your eyes closed, legs crossed and back straight, while pulling in deep, long breaths through your diaphragm. When thoughts pop up, simply observe them, without reaction or further exploration, and return your focus to your breath.
I like to single out thoughts by saying, ‘There’s a thought’. It helps create a separation between that thought and myself, and they quickly dissipate. For thoughts that persist, I shift my attention to them for a moment by picturing them as a jumbled up sentence, then I visually place them in a bubble. Treating them as an object helps resist the urge to engage. Shortly thereafter, I watch them float away.
5. Guided meditation
Difficulty: Intermediate
Time required: Varies
Guided meditations can include music or only words – someone’s soothing voice that usually addresses a particular topic such as releasing negative emotion or subconscious blocks. The intention behind guided meditations is to disrupt the subconscious mind and rewire it. A guide will walk you through the process using imagery.
There are an infinite number of guided meditations to choose from on the internet, and they often include visualisations. But it’s easy to create one on your own – just be sure to start simple. Speak words, affirmations or mantras you need to hear at present into a recorder app, and play it back while you hold one of the previously mentioned poses, or while you sleep.
To strengthen the effect, think of sounds, elements of nature or places that bring you comfort and peace. Weave those things into the narration, or if awake, simply picture them as you listen.
Because you’ll be listening to your meditation when you are most relaxed and open, make sure to phrase everything in the absolute positive and be clear and direct in your language.
I create and listen to my meditations often to ease vibrational dissonance around a topic. There’s nothing like hearing words specifically chosen for you and the areas you need addressed.
6. Zazen meditation
Difficulty: Intermediate
Time required: 10+ minutes
This meditation goes deeper than mindfulness meditation by further clearing the mind from all thoughts, images and ideas. The aim is to experience the mind, body and breath as a whole, instead of in parts.
There are traditional postures for this meditation, but I’ve adopted a modified approach which begins by taking the posture of the mindfulness meditation.
Take deep breaths through your diaphragm and picture a container next to you. When you exhale, visualise a stream flowing from your body into the container that represents your thoughts, ideas, imagination and biases. Allow it to flow for as long as needed. Then, imagine placing a lid on the container.
It may take a few tries, but when I do this meditation, I eventually see myself as a translucent outline in a white open space. I like to think this space represents the expansive oneness of the mind, body and breath, which indicates that I’ve moved beyond the typical mental chatter into calmer, clearer depths.
7. Third-eye meditation
Difficulty: Advanced
Time required: 15+ minutes
This is an advanced meditation that may require practice and patience. You may attempt it several times and see nothing, or feel or hear the answers instead. Sometimes you may experience all the above and more, but if it ever becomes too intense, you can halt the meditation by saying, ‘Not at this time’, or ‘No, thank you’, and opening your eyes. When you’re ready to commence, set an intention to take it slowly if you need to.
Start the process of deeply breathing, except this time, focus on and pull breath through your third eye. Just picture that space on your forehead between your eyes as your airway. Once you see yourself as the outline mentioned in the Zazen meditation, say, ‘Show me what I need to see for…’, and add the specific experience or timeframe. Shortly thereafter, images should begin to emerge.
If it becomes hard to discern if your thoughts or imagination are interfering, return focus to your breath and start again – or you can use the complete container technique detailed in the Zazen meditation above.
8. Kundalini meditation
Difficulty: Advanced
Time required: 30+ minutes
Kundalini means ‘coiled’ in Sanskrit. This meditation activates all the energy centres, especially the root chakra where life energy resides, allowing you to release unwanted energy, harness divine energy, experience altered states of consciousness and fully awaken your awareness.
I reached what’s called kundalini awakening during a period of time when I started my daily meditations with chakra clearing and opening. It wasn’t my intent but was quite welcomed and euphoric.
Get into a quiet, comfortable position, legs uncrossed, palms facing upwards. You want your body to be completely open to energy moving through it, so you can also stand for this meditation. Start the process of deep breathing, except this time, focus on and pull breath up through your root chakra, which is at the base of your spine. Pull it through each chakra and out through your crown chakra.
I usually picture each chakra as a thin disc anchored to the sides of a tube-like vertical passageway. Each disc spins faster the more I breathe into it, and the faster it spins, the clearer and bigger it becomes.
When starting the meditation, spend about 10 seconds on each chakra, even if that requires a full inhale and exhale. Work your way up through the chakras, and once you feel you have a relaxed and open flow, speed the breath up to pull it through all the chakras on one round of breathing. If it feels more comfortable, reverse the breath and focus, starting with the crown chakra and moving downward through the root chakra
This is the way I prefer the breath to flow, but to avoid energy collecting at my root chakra, I picture that energy moving through my root chakra, down my legs, through my feet and into the ground. When I do move energy in reverse, I picture it moving through my crown chakra and out into the sky.
Mantras are often suggested for this meditation, but I find that visualising my chakras clearing and opening is more than enough to disrupt the flow of any thoughts that may interfere – which is the reason mantras are used.
9. Visualisation meditation
Difficulty: Advanced
Time required: 20+ minutes
This type of meditation overlaps with guided meditations, but it can require more of your creativity and active participation. Be prepared to imagine and visualise even more through this meditation than in other meditations, which works phenomenally well for healing and to assist with manifestation.
For this meditation, you’re going to select one of your dreams, desires or intentions and, with as much detail as possible, imagine yourself living or achieving it.
Get into a comfortable position and take deep breaths through your diaphragm. Once you’ve stopped the flow of outside thoughts and feel nice and relaxed, set the scene of the dream, desire or intention you chose to focus on. Imagine what it would be like if that were your reality at this moment. Ask yourself these questions as they relate to that scene: How do I feel? Where am I? What am I
experiencing? Who else is there?
Then, reverse engineer it. But feel free to do this part of the meditation at a later time or on another day if necessary.
Picture yourself taking the necessary steps to get from where you are now to that desired outcome. If you’re unsure of what those steps are, ask the question, ‘What are the steps I need to take?’ and trust that the universe will meet you with those answers. Answers can present themselves in a myriad of ways, such as during meditation, as thoughts while going about your daily routine, in a dream, while talking to a friend, reading an article, or driving around town – the possibilities are endless.
To take your experience with visualisation meditations even further, observe what pops up while imagining yourself living out your dreams. Is it an old narrative of not having enough support, money or time, for example, or an image of you as a young child, free of responsibilities, outside pressures and completely joyful and content?
In my experience, visualisation meditations expedite the congruence of our external and internal worlds. What pops up can signal resistance and vibrational dissonance standing in the way, or signal vibrational harmony lighting the way. If the former, use a meditation from this list to help transform it. Then, take the action required to embody your newfound perspective.
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