What Is Meditation

Let’s start at the beginning. Meditation is a 2,500+ year old practice for training the mind. Historically a practice reserved for reclusive monks, kung-fu masters, austere yogis, and ochre-robed swamis, it’s now the preferred performance-enhancing practice of R&B moguls, Super Bowl Champions, Olympic athletes, and A-list celebrities.

Meditation has gone mainstream.

One reason for that is that meditation techniques are generally considered one of the most effective ways to train and focus your attention. How does that work?

When you sit down to meditate, you allow yourself to become very still, relaxed, and alert. And then you focus your attention on one thing. Technically, it can be anything. But traditionally it’s something like your breath or a mantra—a word or phrase—which you repeat over and over again for the duration of your meditation.

When you do this, your mind will wander. That’s natural. The practice of meditation is all about bringing your attention back to the one thing you’re focused on. If you sit in meditation for an hour, your attention might drift away into thoughts and daydreams more than 500 times.

That’s fine. Your only job when you practice meditation is to bring your attention back when it strays from your object of focus. And it’s important to stay relaxed, still, and alert while you practice.

As you do this over and over again, you’ll slowly enter into a highly relaxed and focused state of mind. This is often accompanied by a feeling of deep well-being. And now, science has shown us that the meditative state has extremely positive physiological and neurological effects.

{Source: http://aboutmeditation.com/beginners-guide-to-meditation-tips-benefits-techniques/}