Are you new to yoga? Your entire yoga practice is a meditation. As you perform your yoga poses, you focus strictly on what’s happening with your body and what you’re trying to do. You move out of everyday consciousness into real concentration which is the basis of meditation.

There are specific yoga meditations you can do. Here is an excellent one: a whole body scan to balance your energy.

1. Sit Down or Lie Down, and Become Aware of Your Body

You can do this meditation either lying down on a flat surface, like the floor, or when you’re sitting upright in a chair.

If you’re lying down, relax completely, and become aware of your body. Take several long slow deep breaths. Close your eyes if you wish.

2. Follow Your Energy Throughout Your Body

Starting with your left foot, become aware of it. Be aware of your toes, be aware of your ankle, then be aware of the sole of your foot.

Next, be aware of your left leg’s calf muscles. Be aware of your left knee.

Gradually move your awareness to the top of your left leg, and then focus your awareness on your right foot. Gradually focus on every part of your right leg, then focus on the rest of your body.

Move your awareness slowly right throughout your body, going as quickly or as slowly as you like.

3. Let Thoughts and Feelings Go

Thoughts and emotions will interrupt your focus as you move your awareness through your body. Just be aware of any thoughts and emotions, and then let them go. Return to your body scan.

4. How to Manage Strong Feelings: Welcome Them

Strong feelings will arise in you. You could treat these emotions in one of two ways. You can either let them go, or you can welcome them, and feel them deeply.

Feelings and emotions are stored in your body. Every trauma you have ever experienced has laid down its traces in your body.

This is why occasionally you’ll find yourself weeping, or laughing as you do yoga. You’re not going crazy, you’ve just encountered one of these traces.

One way to remove these emotional traces is to welcome your emotions and to focus on them completely for a few moments. Some emotions are very strong, and if you feel an emotion is becoming too much for you, go back to your body scan.

However if you can welcome an emotion, and allow it, you’ll find that the emotion rises to a crest and then slowly dissipates. You need to feel emotions to remove the emotional traces in your body, so never be scared of any emotions which are aroused by your yoga. They’re perfectly natural.

When you’ve completed your whole body scan, lie still for a moment, and assess what’s changed since you began the meditation. This is a powerful, balancing yoga meditation. If you’re stressed, it will relax you, and if you’re tired, it will energize you.

[tags]yoga, yoga mediation, meditation, yoga poses[/tags]

Centering is yoga meditation in action. Within you is a space that is always calm and at peace. This space is often referred to as your “calm center”. Being centered means remaining in your calm center amidst the busyness of everyday life. Being centered means not allowing your inner light to be overshadowed by stressful circumstances or negative thoughts and emotions.

When you are centered, you are in a state of clarity, focus, peace, and balance. When you are not centered, you are unclear, unfocussed, stressed, and off balance.

A good centering technique will require only minimal attention, allowing you to keep some of your attention on the activity at hand. Here are some very easy, effective centering techniques.

Simple Breath Awareness

While involved in whatever you are doing, bring some attention to your breathing for just a few moments… it needn’t be your full attention… just enough to bring you back to your calm center. Breathe naturally, or perhaps just a little more slowly and deeply.

Reclaiming Your Energy

When you are feeling stressed and scattered, take several slow, deep breaths. With each in-breath, imagine you are pulling all of your scattered energy and attention back to your inner self… your calm center.

Letting Go

This centering technique combines breath awareness with the phrase or mantra, “Let go.” It is especially helpful when you are tense and/or fixating on a stressful situation or a negative thought or emotion.
As you inhale, (silently or aloud) say, “Let”
As you exhale, say “go”… while letting go of all that is stressing you.

Inner Sun

Imagine a bright sun filling your heart chakra… the calm, subtle energy field that permeates your chest area. Imagine that sun gently emanating peace and joy throughout your entire being.

Enrich your life with yoga today

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[tags]yoga,yoga meditation,stress relief,yoga poses[/tags]

Meditation is a part of yoga, and there are many different types of meditation you can do.

Let’s look at two.

Yoga meditation for healing

In this simple healing meditation, you send the powerful healing Life Force directly to the area in need of help. This Life Force is the energy behind all healing.

Wherever this energy is flowing and in balance, there is health and well being. Wherever this energy is blocked or out of balance, illness manifests.
Many people believe in visualization as a key healing tool. Energy healing meditation helps you to concentrate your positive energy on an afflicted area and alleviate any adverse symptoms and feelings that are being manifested through the physical pain.

Sit reasonably straight and close your eyes.

Breathe slowly, as silently as possible. (Holding your breath after inhaling or exhaling is not recommended.)

As you inhale, feel yourself breathing the healing Life Force in through your solar plexus. Picture this Life Force as a very refined, light energy.

As you exhale, gently direct this light energy to the afflicted area. If there is not a specific ailing area, disperse this light energy throughout your body as you exhale.

Continue until you feel the area has received enough Life Force.

COLOR HEALING MEDITATION

We are not just our physical selves. We are multi-dimensional beings, composed of an Inner Spirit, a mental body, an emotional body, a vital body, and a physical body. The energy of these bodies becomes progressively subtler from physical to spiritual. Illness begins with disharmony in one of these energy bodies. If not harmonized, the disease moves outward, affecting the denser bodies, ultimately manifesting as physical illness.

Total healing requires restoring harmony to all of our bodies. This meditation is designed to cleanse and harmonize your various bodies with the healing energies of color.

Color healing meditation will provide you with cleansing, balancing, & healing at all levels: Spiritual, Mental, Emotional, Vital, & Physical.

It also will develop concentration & visualization abilities.

Sit comfortably with your eyes closed.

Visualize a large ball of radiant Golden light a few inches over your head. Visualize that ball of light slowly descending through your crown, filling your entire being with golden light.

Imagine yourself absorbing that light as it nourishes, cleanses and heals your whole being – your Spirit and all of your bodies – dissolving all blocked and toxic energies.

Repeat this exercise, visualizing a ball of Red light. Continue through the entire spectrum like this, visualizing a ball of Orange light; Yellow light; Green light; Blue light; Indigo light; and Violet light. Go through the spectrum at whatever pace feels appropriate.

Take some time to visualize yourself in a state of perfect, radiant health.

[tags]yoga,meditation,healing,color[/tags]