Learning to meditate is one of the most important skills you can master and the sooner you learn to meditate the sooner you will gain more control over your life. Meditation in essence is about finding your inner peace but there is more to meditation than just finding your inner peace. You can use meditation to help you in every aspect of your life. There are four core meditation techniques that every new meditator should learn.

These four meditation techniques cover different aspects of your life. For example one of the techniques I will cover include Deep-Breathing Meditation which you use to help you to relax and to prepare your mind for meditation and Affirmation Meditation allows you to reprogram your mind from being negative to positive.

Whilst this is a simplistic view of these two meditation techniques, it highlights the issue that there are varying meditation techniques you can use to improve your life. Lets look at the four basic meditation techniques all new meditators should learn to help you in your meditation voyage.

Technique 1 - Deep-Breathing Meditation Techniques

Deep-Breath Meditation is the first technique that all new meditators will be shown. This meditation technique involves learning how to breathe and to control your breath during meditation. This technique is sometimes called the Stillness meditation technique.

Learning to use the Deep-Breath Meditation technique will teach you how to control your heart rate, your breathing and also your ability to maintain control over your mind. All of us suffer from brain-chatter where we talk to ourselves. Apart from just controlling our breathing, we start off using this technique to get control of our mind and body. Once you have mastered this technique it allows you then to use other Meditation Techniques to improve yourself. Other meditation techniques you can use are the affirmative meditation technique and walking meditation technique.

The other key advantage of mastering the deep-breathing meditation technique is that once you understand how to breath effectively using deep breaths to get control of your stress and emotions, you can use the techniques outside of meditation to quickly get control in a stressful situation. The more you practice the deep-breath meditation technique the better you will get at it.

Technique 2 - White-Light Meditation Techniques

The White-Light meditation technique is an extension of the Deep-Breath Meditation Technique in that you will use Deep-Breath Meditation to get control of your mind and body and then step into a second stage where you will use objects in your minds eye to maintain control of your brain chatter.

Buddhist Monks have been know to teach their young monks this technique by getting them to focus on counting however you can use any object to help you gain and maintain focus. Essentially what this technique does is to get the meditator to start by focusing on the number one as they breathe in. Then in your minds eye you then focus on the next number, which is the number 2 and maintain that focus as you breathe out and then breathe in again. You then change the number to number 3 as you breathe out and in again. You continue counting through the number system until you loose control and focus. For example, if for one moment you think about the dinner you are going to have, then you must start from the number one again.

You keep following this process during each meditation session. Once you have mastered this technique you will find it is easier to get focus during a meditation session as you will not allow your mind to wander.

Technique 3 - Affirmation Meditation Techniques

Affirmation Meditation is a technique that allows the meditator to slowly train there own subconscious to follow a different attitude. For example, how many times a day to you say negative things like That will never work or I will never get that job.

When you are in a state of calm and focus gained by using the Deep-Breath Meditation Technique and White-Light Meditation technique your subconscious can be more easily manipulated to change those inbuilt negative attitudes. Whilst you can certainly change your attitude and response to situations using your conscious mind, quite often you will find that little things will penetrate though.

The objective of the Affirmation Meditation Technique is to slowly reprogram your subconscious so that you can overcome those negative attitudes with more appropriate responses. Like all meditation techniques this can sometimes take a long period to conquer but is certainly worthwhile.

Technique 4 - Walking Meditation Technique

Walking Meditation involves learning to walk whilst meditating. I can hear it now, how are you going to close your eyes whilst walking. Well whether you realise it or not many monastic communities have regularly used walking meditation interspersed with traditional seated meditation to help break up the long periods of meditation.

The walking meditation works by getting you to first control your breathing using the Deep-Breath Meditation Technique and then to use the White-Light Meditation Technique to help learn to control your mind. Just like I mentioned earlier with the counting technique, if you mind starts to wander whilst walking due to mind chatter, you simply stop the counting process and simply start again.

One of the other aspects you need to consider with this technique is to focus on your body and the connection your body has with its path. For each step during the walking mediation technique, you need to feel the path and each step that you are taking. For example you need to be focusing on the feeling in your feet, your ankles, your legs, your arms and so forth.

The Walking Meditation technique is one of those ones you can practice anywhere and you will probably find that it will take you some period of time to conquer this technique without your mind wandering. Make sure that you do not punish yourself if your mind does wander or start to chatter. Simply acknowledge the wandering and bring the mind gently back into the meditated awareness and continue on your way.

Most people when they first think about meditation simply see it as a way to relax however your mind is an incredibly powerful tool and you can utilise meditation to change many aspects of your behaviour, the way you speak and present yourself and the vast professional meditation practitioners will help you to develop these techniques to improve yourself. These four techniques are the first you will learn as you begin to unleash the power meditation can provide as food for your body, mind and soul.

Look the bottom line is that there are many techniques that you can use to meditate however when you are first starting out these four techniques is a great way to get started. To finish off let me reiterate the four meditation techniques you can try as a new meditator -

Technique 1 - Deep-Breathing Meditation Techniques
Technique 2 - White-Light Meditation Techniques
Technique 3 - Affirmation Meditation Techniques
Technique 4 - Walking Meditation Techniques