Advance your Meditation

With hundreds of different techniques, it’s unlikely you would ever get bored with meditation. I suggest proceeding with these deep meditation techniques.

Meditation is one of the most reliable ways to access spirit, connect with your higher self, and explore the true nature of reality. It has been used for thousands of years now. Despite its surging popularity and robust research exploring its effects on mind, body, and spirit – it’s potential for changing people’s lives just began being understood.

Meditation practice can take different forms

There are many meditation techniques since cultures and traditions differ. A few popular types of mediation include:

• Mantra meditation
• Guided meditation
• Visualization
• Energy-balancing meditation
• Sacred chant
• Attention and intention meditation
• Sutra practice
• Mindfulness meditation
• Compassion practice

Which are advanced techniques?

If you are interested in deep meditation practices, where should you begin? This article will describe advanced techniques of meditation as a guide for your personal exploration. First, let’s look at what is meant by advanced meditation techniques.

Advanced meditation techniques are not harder, only more involved. If you can follow the instructions listed below, you will be able to perform advanced meditation techniques.

It’s not necessary to have any particular qualifications. If you already meditate, that’s great – but it is not a requirement to try these techniques.

What makes them different is the intention within. If you are familiar with Primordial Sound Meditation and So Hum, the general intention of those meditation types is allowing your mind to settle into stillness. For other types it will vary with each so test what feels right and takes note on how you feel. Below are some common forms of advanced meditation for individuals:

Chakra-Balancing Meditation

Chakras are the energy centers of your body. Each chakra corresponds with a major bodily system as well as an inner need. Chakras are located along the spine, and each has its own color and mantra that correspond to its energetic frequency. The illustration below shows these details about all seven of them:

This type of meditation involves attention, intention, and visualization with each chakra mantra to bring balance. It enhances its function.

Steps:

• Sit or lie down in a comfortable space where you won’t be disturbed for the next 10 minutes. Close your eyes, take several deep breaths with slow exhalations.
• Now focus on the area at the base of your spine. Visualize a deep red ball of energy, about the size of a softball. As you visualize it and say, LAM silently to yourself, continue doing so for about one minute (the same will apply for all other chakras).
• Move your attention up to your reproductive organs. Then visualize a bright orange while silently repeating the mantra VAM.
• Next, focus your attention on your solar plexus (mid-section). Imagine a golden yellow ball of energy. Silently repeat the mantra RAM.
• Next, move your attention to the center of your chest. Visualize a bright green color in that space. Repeat the mantra YAM.
• Draw your awareness into your throat. In your mind’s eye, imagine a turquoise crystal clear lake . Silently repeat the mantra HAM.
• Focus on the area between your eyebrows. Imagine a beautiful deep blue indigo color. The mantra is SHAM.
• Guide your awareness to the crown of your head, visualizing a shimmering violet color while you repeat OM.
• After repeating each mantra for a minute, repeat all together one last time. LAM – VAM – RAM – YAM – HAM – SHAM – OM. When you’re done meditating, just allow yourself to sit quietly and notice any sensations in your mind or body before opening your eyes.

Tonglen Meditation

Tonglen is a Tibetan Buddhist meditation practice that centers around giving and receiving. It includes breathing techniques, like visualizing the taking in of one’s own or another person’s suffering and projecting out love, healing, and compassion.

Steps:

• Sit or lie down relaxed with your eyes closed.
• Center yourself by taking a few long deep breaths
• Now, while keeping your focus on the breath, take a deep inhalation and visualize either negativity or suffering of yourself or someone else. Imagine sucking up all that negativity with a spiritual vacuum cleaner like it were air.
• Pause for a bit and observe how the darkness gets transformed by the might of the spirit.
• For the next 5–10 minutes, exhale the white light of loving compassion back into your own space or that of someone else you had been focusing on. Repeat this process for as long as it feels comfortable.

If you’re worried about ‘polluting’ yourself with negativity, remember that the field of spirit is pure and unblemished. As long as you remain established in your true essence of pure consciousness, any negative energies will be transformed by its healing touch.

The Microcosmic Orbit

Taoist Qi Gong meditation helps circulate subtle energy known as QI or prana through the mind/body system. This form of meditation is said to energize the eternal organs, eliminate stress from your nervous system and promote a deep feeling of well-being. Taoist Qi Gong embodies principles that are mirrored in our body by capturing what’s above us into what we can do below with themselves.

Steps:

• Sit comfortably, but with a relatively upright spine and close your eyes.
• Place the tip of your tongue behind your top front teeth and take a deep breath. Focus on between your eyebrows while visualizing a golden light.
• Exhale slowly, guiding your awareness gently down through your throat area, your heart, solar plexus, and navel.
• Inhale, filling up with energy from the lower abdomen and draw the energy up the back of the body from the tailbone, through the kidney area, behind the solar plexus, back of the heart, behind the throat, back of the head, peaking at the crown of the head before exhaling the energy down the front of the body again.
• Continue for 7-10 minutes.

Once you are more familiar with this cycle of energy, visualize it like a waterwheel that takes the energy up your back and down your front. After completing the meditation, sit for a few moments before returning to activity.

It is You

This type of meditation is about shifting your identity from a being “in the universe” to “the universe being in us.” It’s subtle but powerful. You redefine your place in the cosmos through this kind of meditation.

Steps:

• Sit or lie down comfortably. Take a look around and be aware where you are, what you do and what’s around you. Then close your eyes and take a few deep breaths.
• Once you feel settled and relaxed, place your awareness in the area of your head or brain and silently repeat to yourself, “I am not in the mind, the mind is in me.” Visualize a bubble of expanding awareness that grows to envelop your head. Feel yourself as the bubble of awareness as it continues to grow.
• Now imagine the awareness envelope your physical body. Silently repeat to yourself, “I am not in the body, the body is in me.”
• Watch your awareness expand to fill the room you are in. Repeat: “I am not in this room, the room is in me.”
• As your awareness grows, see it absorb the entire building. Again affirm: “I am not in this building, the building is in me.”
• Growing exponentially, your awareness expands to your town or city. Repeat: “I am not in this city, the city is in me.”
• Your awareness absorbs your state or province. “I am not in this state, this state is in me.”
• “Your country is enveloped within your expanding awareness. I am not in this country, the country is in me.”
• Finally, watch as your awareness embodies the entire planet. “I am not in the world, the world is in me, everything is within.”
• Feel free to continue this process even further to the solar system, galaxy, and the entire universe.
• Following the meditation, take a few minutes to allow this expanded sense of awareness to settle in before opening your eyes.

It’s not hard to see that there are many benefits of meditation for your daily life. The best thing you can do is to try integrating these types of meditation techniques as a supplement to your regular practice. Return to them when you feel like taking your practice and awareness deeper into your mind, body, and soul.