Meditations - The Stillness Style Meditation

[alexander lake]

The Stillness Style Meditation technique is one of the simplest
techniques to actually master. It is also a fantastic meditation style
that can be used with or without meditation music. The Stillness Style
Meditation is one of the first meditation techniques taught when you
learn the Buddhist way of life.
Stillness meditation is the technique used to help you get control of
your thoughts when you are starting out to learn how to meditate. What
most people find the first time they try to meditate is that they
cannot stop thinking? This is one of the greatest challenges you face
in meditation, trying to clear your mind and keep it clear.
However, one point to note, the more you meditate, the easier it
becomes to control the thoughts in your mind. I can tell you that from
experience.
The first step in the Stillness meditation style is to find a
comfortable place to meditate, ensuring that it is relatively quiet,
safe and comfortable. Before you start the meditation simply do a few
stretching exercises.
Sit down on the floor or on a chair, which ever is more comfortable.
Now close your eyes and as you inhale a breath, tense all the muscles
in your body including your feet, legs, arms, face, neck, hands and
fingers and then release them with an exhaling breath.
During this exercise do not in any way control your breath or withhold
it, simply let it flow naturally as you inhale and then exhale. As you
are following these exercises and breathing out, simply clear your
mind of all your thought. Imagine the clearing of the thoughts in your
mind as water going down the drain.
Each time you tense up and then release focus on stillness. Do not
make any rapid movements; simply release the tension of your muscles
under your skin with no movement of your body at all.
During each exhalation, make sure you take a moment to pause and feel
the energy as it rushes out of your body and you feel that sense of
calm. If as you are doing this, you have a tendency to let thoughts
from the day, past or of the future into your mind, simply let them
float away and bring your mind back to the moment.
When you are first starting out, only do this exercise for 10 minutes
per day. Generally, work on the basis of one cycle each minute but
most people will do two per minute till they become more experienced.
The core reason for doing this exercise is to help you break the cycle
of stress or the buzz that most people have when they are first trying
to learn to meditation. The more you practice this exercise the sooner
you will be able to achieve a sense of calm and move onto other more
complex and fulfilling meditation techniques.
This technique is usually the first one people start off with during a
meditation session and then they move to a deep breathing meditation
session as their core meditation technique. However it is totally up
to you as to whether you want to use this as the starting meditation
technique for all your meditation sessions.