Yoga Meditation Postures -The most yoga postures for meditation
Yoga is an ancient discipline that believes in the integration of all aspects of the body: physical, mental, and emotional. This therapy was founded 5000 years ago in India and has been followed worldwide since then. Yoga has been used for physical fitness as well as meditation to help heal the body fully.
In terms of meditation, there are two types, active and passive. In passive meditation, you need to make a conscious effort in performing meditative activities daily. Therefore, this would require you to make time in your everyday life to concentrate and focus your energies on meditation. Performing passive meditation regularly will eventually lead to an active meditative state in everyday life. Thus, while performing day-to-day activities, you would learn to relax yet be aware of surroundings, and would therefore naturally be in a meditative state. You can go to a yoga guru for meditation or simply do this in quiet surroundings.
It is essential that you wear comfortable clothing with meditating so that there is nothing to constrict you. There are several meditation poses for you to practise. You could do one or all of them depending on your comfort. A sitting posture is better for meditation than lying down. As meditation is known to calm your mind, if you are lying down, you could easily fall asleep. This would defeat the whole purpose of awareness from meditation.
The first meditation pose you could try is the half lotus pose or the Ardha Padmasana, a class yoga pose. For this pose, sit on the floor and keep your back straight. Cross only one of your legs over the other such that it touches the opposite thigh. To keep yourself alert, take slow deep breaths. Clear your mind of all thoughts and close your eyes. This will help you concentrate on meditative activity alone. For beginners, this pose is relatively easy to do. You should keep this pose for at least 15 minutes to achieve maximum benefits. As long as you are comfortable, you can hold this pose for a couple of hours as well.
A simple variation of this pose is the full lotus pose or the Padmasana. This pose is similar to the half lotus pose, except you need to cross both legs over each other. If you are not flexible, this pose might be slightly uncomfortable. You could try chanting ‘Om’ while being seated this way. The soothing vibrations from this sound will envelop your body with positive energy.
Daily meditation is said to strengthen your connection with your spiritual centre and is thus most effective.
