Ten Tips on Using Meditation to Reduce Tension

1. Stop and scan your body
So often we don't realise that stress and tension are building up in our bodies. We might arrive at work not realising we have already got a frown on our forehead or a clenched jaw. Stop, briefly, to scan through your body. Pay attention to the top of your head right down to your feet and let tensions dissolve away. Do this regularly through your day or week.

2. Focus on a pleasing object
Meditation is a technique of training the mind to stay focused on a single object. When you do that you give your mind a rest from issues, anxieties and problems. Focus on a simple object such as a single colour, a simple flower or your breathing. Give your mind a rest regularly.

3. Breathe when you get held up
When you're in a supermarket or bank queue, at red traffic lights or waiting for a lift (elevator), ditch your agitation. Instead of complaining at the traffic light and getting more stressed, simply focus on your breath going in and out. Let your body and mind relax (but keep your eyes open!)

4. Have a relaxing screen saver to focus on
Choose a screen saver that makes a good meditation object, a lotus flower, rainbow or waterfall, for example. Use it to remind you to meditate.

5. Meditate in your lunch break
Instead of sitting around in the staff room or reading the newspaper, take 15 minutes to wind down your mind. br>

6. Meditate each day
Don't let stress accumulate from one day to the next. At the end of each day or the start of the next one, put some time aside to meditate and clear away the debris that you've got left over from the negativity or stress you've been coping with. You'd probably shower or wash your body each day - clean your mind each day too.

7. Join a meditation group
Meditating with a group of people can be much easier than meditating on your own. Find a group (and there are free ones around) to meditate with instead. You are far less likely to give up in a group and the phone won't ring to distract you!

8. Develop more awareness
One of the benefits of meditation can be to increase your awareness of what you say to yourself inside your head. Once you become aware of the negative things you say, the way you worry or the self doubts you invent, you can learn through meditation not to believe them or follow them all the time. You develop more choice.

9. Develop it over a long time
Learning to meditate takes time. Don't give up when it gets boring or difficult. I hear people, after only trying it once, say that they can't do it. You can't play a Beethoven sonata on the piano after only 1 lesson either. Stick with it.

10. Put a place aside for yourself
Make a special place in your home to which you retreat to meditate. Make this your power spot and train your family not to disturb you when you're there!

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What is meditation?

Meditation usually refers to a state in which the body is consciously relaxed and the mind is allowed to become calm and focused. Several major religions include ritual meditation; however, meditation itself need not be a religious or spiritual activity. Most of the more popular systems of meditation are of Eastern origin, though there exists also various forms of Christian, Jewish and Muslim meditation.
Meditation as a form of alternative medicine brings about mental calmness and physical relaxation by suspending the stream of thoughts that normally occupy the mind. Generally performed once or twice a day for approximately 20 minutes at a time, meditation is used to reduce stress, alter hormone levels, and elevate one's mood.
A discipline in which the mind is focused on a single point of reference. Employed since ancient times in various forms by all religions, the practice gained greater notice in the post war US as interest in Zen Buddhism rose. Meditation is now used by many nonreligious adherents as a method of stress reduction; known to lower levels of cortisol, a hormone released in response to stress. Enhances recuperation and improves the body’s resistance to disease.
Meditation is an easy and simple way to balance a person's physical, emotional, and mental states. It is easily learned and has been used as an aid in treating stress, anxiety, pain management, and as part of an overall treatment for other conditions including hypertension and heart disease. Research shows that meditation decreases the heart rate, respiratory rate, oxygen consumption, and even decreases blood pressure.