Lesson 10: Choosing the correct Meditation

Greetings!

Everyone has a different way of meditating or clearing their mind. Not every type works for everyone. So, how do you know which one is perfect for you?
As previously mentioned, meditation can help reduce stress and anxiety and may allow you to think more clearly and focus better. It isn't entirely mandatory but it is recommended. However, when finding the correct meditation type, it's important to find one that helps you and your needs.

In total, there are 6 common meditation types: Mindfulness, Focused, Movement, Mantra, Transcendental, and Spiritual. Whichever one you feel more drawn to, or what helps you the most is probably the one that is perfect for you. And that would be the one that you should practice the most. Here are all the meditations explained in more detail.

Mindfulness Meditation: We have talked about this one in our previous lessons before. But, as a review, mindfulness meditation is being more focused on your thoughts or emotions. This meditation is mainly all about the present time, what is currently happening. That is why you focus on how you are feeling right now or what is going through your head at this moment.
This meditation is good for doing alone if you prefer to not have a teacher or instructor to help guide you through it.

Spiritual Meditation: This meditation helps you find your real self and can assist you with becoming more aware of yourself and who you have become within time. It can also help you let go of the past and help you focus more on what is happening at this moment, similar to Mindfulness meditation. But with this one can be used to reflect on the silence.
It has been known to add oils to your meditations to heighten the experience such as sandalwood or sage.
This meditation is good for those who are successful with the silence or explore spiritual growth.

Focused Meditation: This type of meditation is used with any of our 5 senses to strengthen our concentration. The exercises for this can be quite simple. You can start out by listening to a great song, focusing on the lyrics or the beat, or even rhythm, or you can stare at a flame from a candle, perhaps even focus on how something tastes when you bite into it. Even though it does seem simple to do all this, if you lose your focus quite easily, it can be a bit of a challenge. But, if you do tend to lose your focus at some point, try to bring it back and refocus and then try again.

If you are more advanced, you can try focusing on one of those exercises (or one of your own) while focusing on your breathing and how you are breathing. It may help you to calm down a little while focusing on the task at hand.
This meditation is good for anyone who may need a little practice or a little help concentrating.

Movement Meditation: This meditation involves the work of any type of movement such as jogging, planting flowers in a garden, going for a nice walk. 
This practice is great for anyone who tends to let their mind wander a lot without having to worry about focusing on one specific detail. Let it wander and be as free as you please.

Mantra Meditation: With this practice, all you mainly do is focus on one word to clear your mind. You can continue to say it in your head or out loud multiple times, for as long as you would like. Some words, for example, might be "OM" or perhaps "peace" or anything that you would like to focus on.
This meditation is great for anyone who would rather focus on a single, but repetitive, word or sound to clear their mind and being come peaceful.

Transcendental Meditation: Very similar to mantra meditation practices, transcendental focuses on the silence as you repeat a word repetitively in your head instead of speaking of it out loud.
This practice is great for anyone who prefers to meditate in silence and not speak during the process.

Of course, there are other different types of meditations, however, each of them could fit into each of the explained meditations below, look at them as subcategories if you want. For example, yoga meditation is, of course, doing yoga to help clear your mind making you more calm and peaceful. This is a type of moving meditation because you are moving your arms and legs to do various poses while holding them for a certain amount of time. There is also Chakra meditation. This one helps and allows you to bring balance to your chakras, which can also help open them up if you have any that are closed. This one could fall as a Spiritual Meditation because you have become more self-aware and by letting go of the past and focusing on more positive energy, it will allow your chakras to open up or heal from the wounds of the past. There is also guided meditation but that one can fall into any type of meditation that allows you to have guidance such as an instructor, someone to help you through it. You can find guided meditations online to listen to and then preform as you are told to clear your mind and relax. 

Here is a tip: If you would like to find out which meditation is the right one for you, read over the descriptions again and find out which one shares your interests. Do you like sitting in silence and not saying anything? You can choose any of the meditations except for Mantra. If you prefer to be moving around instead of sitting, you can choose Movement instead. Whichever one you would enjoy doing the most, and which would help with your needs and practices, those are the ones you should go with. If you need to, practice each one, at least once or twice, and if you liked doing the ones you've tried, then continue to do them for as long and as many times as you feel is needed.

Subject to edit by the instructor