In an ideal world, most things we do in our lives would be a meditative practice: cleaning the windows, walking, eating, talking. So the term meditation can be loosely used to mean any activity in which we are fully absorbed, without losing our sense of self. There are many forms of meditation out there, and today we focus on the types of silent meditation.
There are many types and benefits of silent meditation techniques. The types we present here are:
- central channel meditation
- embodied meditation
- concentration meditation
- mindfulness meditation
- heart-based meditation
- Zen meditation.
As for the benefits, it depends on which you choose, but pretty much all of them offer a clear state of mind, ability to focus, being present, emotional regulation, staying centered and grounded, cognitive improvement, better immune system.
Aside from silent meditation, other types of meditation may include mantras. Affirmations, different sounds, chanting, dancing etc. We wrote more about the mental health benefits of dance and dance therapy here. In that article, you can see how to do it by yourself.
What’s Good About Silent Meditation Techniques
The great thing about silent meditations is their simplicity and therefore their effectiveness. With more complicated meditative activities, you are likely to miss the more subtle sensations. “It’s best for beginners to practice in supportive, non distracting environments and postures. As you develop, you may wish to add difficulty/distraction for life transfer, challenge and growth” (Embodiment Unlimited).
Types of Silent Meditation
We present you with the following types of silent meditation:
- embodied meditation
- central channel meditation
- concentration meditation
- mindfulness meditation
- heart-based meditation
- Zen meditation
There sure is a lot more, but we chose the ones that cover different aspects of meditation practices. When it comes to their benefits, it’s what Asians would say: “same same, but different”.
Concentration Meditation
This is an umbrella term for many kinds of silent meditation. Here you choose an object of your attention and focus solely on it. You can focus on the physical sensations of the breath at one point, such as the navel or the tip of the nose. Or you can focus on the whole body rising and falling with each breath you take. You can also choose to focus on the sensations of pleasure in the body. Thoughts can also be the object of your focus. You can let them come and label them: judgment, memory, an angry thought, an exciting thought, etc. Another option is an outside object, such as a candle, a mandala or anything in nature (a tree, or a flower).
Benefits
If you use thoughts as the object of your meditation, you are learning to detach from them and to not take them seriously. As for the benefits of concentrating on other objects of meditation, there is:
- Improved memory, focus and attention
- Better immune system
- Greater resilience
- Better sleep
- Clarity of thought
- Relaxing and destressing the nervous system.
Embodied Meditation
This is a form of concentration meditation, and is a type of body scan. You can choose to do a systematic scan of the body, starting from the feet or head, or you can choose to randomly take turns in focusing on different parts of the body.
One option is to keep repeating the word “body, body, body” but then it’s not silent any more.
If you’ve already been practicing this meditation, you can try to go deeper into the body by feeling the ligaments and bones. How does your ankle feel? Reach inside your ankle and see what happens as you are in there. Also, go for the body parts less usually noted, such as your anus.
Benefits:
This one is really great if you aim not to achieve any higher spiritual realizations, but to stay in this physical reality. Grounded spirituality is definitely my choice, so I practice this one. This can be a very fun and explorative type of meditation which enables you to connect with your body in a way you never imagined possible.
Central Channel Meditation
Focus on or visualize an energy channel going from the tailbone to the top of the head. It’s located along the spine, in front of the spine. Follow the channel from the back body. It flows through your chakras. On an inhale, visualize or feel the energy rising up and on the exhale, feel it flow down. Keep doing this. You can imagine a white light or the stem going along the spine and opening into a lotus flower above your head.
Benefits:
This silent meditation is a great centering practice. Being aware of the central channel makes you feel centered as you go about your day. Also, it really gives you that “wow!” feeling, once you start feeling the channel. I get very enthusiastic about it. Plus you are working with your Kundalini.
Mindfulness Meditation
This one is about being present in the moment. You are aware of what’s going on in the present moment without any judgment. It’s similar to Zen meditation, except for the fact that it has an object of focus, such as your body or breath. You pay close attention to the present moment, and whatever is happening there – your thoughts, emotions and sensations. You feel the breath in the foreground while you are relaxed with everything else that happens in the background – feelings, sensations, etc.
Benefits:
There are heaps of studies done on the benefits of mindfulness meditation. In short, these are:
- Better emotional regulation
- Less stress and anxiety
- Better relationships
- Better physical health
- Improvement of the cognitive functions, such as memory.
Visualizations
There are many types of visualization meditation you can practice. For example, you can imagine a deity you love and respect and feel their qualities and characteristics. Visualize them in great detail. Then you proceed to take on these qualities, become a person who has them. They say “you are what you love”. So, if there’s a certain deity or a saint you are particularly attracted to, there probably is a reason for it.
Other options are imagining inhaling dark, gray smoke and exhaling bright, white light. You can accompany this one with imagining you are inhaling the suffering of the world, your own, or that of your loved ones and exhaling peace and/or joy.
If there’s a particular emotion you are struggling with, you can customize this meditation to suit your needs. Pair an emotion you don’t like with the one you’d like to replace it with. In Buddhism the term for this is antidote. So, the antidote of fear would be love. For me, I combine irritation with gratitude. I find that whenever I am irritated with things as they are, it means I am not being grateful. So, I inhale my irritation and exhale gratitude. This practice takes time, so, as with everything else we recommend trying, start with what’s easiest for you right now.
Benefits:
Visualizations are so powerful that even top sportsmen use them to increase their performance. It’s been scientifically proven that the same brain regions lit up when you are doing an activity and imagining that you are doing it.
Heart-Based Meditations
The most popular ones are compassion and loving kindness (metta). Today we present the Heart-Centered awareness meditation, adapted from Margaret Miller’s Heart Centered Awareness workshops (there’s a free two-week trial if you’re interested). Margarett is a Spiritual Mentor, and Empowerment Coach.
How to do it:
- Start by taking a few deep breaths in through the nose and out through the mouth, sighing it out.
- Then bring your attention down to your heart space. You can place one or both hands on the middle of the chest, to feel and connect with your heart better.
- As you are focused on your heart and your hand(s) touching your heart space, start counting your breaths. Breathe in and out for the count of five. Keep doing this for a few minutes.
- Next bring an image of someone or something you love, appreciate, are grateful for or makes you feel joy or any other pleasant emotion. Stay with this feeling and sensations.
- To intensify the experience, put on a gentle honest smile on your face.
- As you tap into that feeling, allow it to expand a bit and more and more. Imagine that feeling filling your entire body and moving out around your body, circling, filling it up, maybe two or 3 meters out from your body.
- If you find yourself opposing back into your head, just do it again bring awareness down into your heart generating that positive feeling.
- Know that you are in charge of the gratitude or any other pleasant feeling that you feel. You are the one generating this from your own heart. You have some control over that. We can generate this emotion at the drop of the hat. Allowing yourself to feel that.
- Notice if you feel calmer now. If not, take deep breaths and slow them down and increase the pleasant feeling you feel.
- If any thoughts pop to mind, it means you’ve left the heart space. Gently bring your attention there.
- Keep doing this for as long as you want.
Benefits:
HeartMath Institute has published about 400 peer-reviewed studies about this kind of meditation: “The magnetic field produced by the heart is more than 100 times greater in strength than the field generated by the brain and can be detected up to 3 feet away from the body, in all directions, using SQUID-based magnetometers.” (HeartMath)
Margaret: “Practicing heart centered awareness helps us to bring our heart’s rhythm into a healthy state. The graph of it looks like a smooth sine wave. That state is often referred to as heart coherence by the researchers at HeartMath Institute. Bringing the heart into that coherent state has many helpful physiological effects and allows us to access our internal pharmacy. We begin producing the helpful regenerative hormones and to stop producing the stress hormones. Practicing heart centered awareness can also have many obvious mental, emotional, and even spiritual effects. It can bring us into a relaxed, peaceful, calm state of gratitude and connection.”
Other benefits are about your relationships. With heart-centered awareness, you are the one present in a state of peace and calm for those around you. Also, you learn to listen to others better. When listening from the heart, there are no side thoughts arising, you are present for the other person.
Zen Meditation
This is one of the simplest and perhaps the hardest forms of meditation. You are simply aware of everything that comes and goes. And all you do is let it whatever comes to come and go, to come and go. It’s also known as pure awareness meditation. We asked Okwang Sunim to tell us more about it. He is a teacher of Korean Zen meditation who spent over 25 years living in the Zen monasteries of Sri Lanka, Thailand, Korea and Japan. He is currently living in Serbia where he organizes silent meditation retreats:
“This meditation is called Zen meditation, sometimes also called Zen sitting. Sitting is, actually, only a part of it, since it is done in four positions: sitting, standing, walking, lying down. It is done even while doing chores, bathing, all daily activities. The point is to KNOW what you are doing.
That quality of knowing or being fully aware can most easily be maintained while sitting, while paying an exclusive attention to breathing. It is possible to simply stay with the natural breath, or manipulate breathing so that it becomes most comfortable. Long in-breath, long out-breath, short in-breath, short out-breath, heavier breathing, lighter breathing, and all combinations of them… During walking, standing, lying down we may stay aware of the posture, or simply maintain the awareness of breathing… Once the awareness of such simple and always present activity such as breathing is mastered to a degree (which means the mind doesn’t wander so much to other issues, “we don’t get lost” in worries, plans, abstract ideas, memories, etc.)”
Observing the Changes of the Mind
Looking at the change that is happening within our mind and mind states, like whether there is energy or sluggishness or laziness or maybe lack of enthusiasm, or maybe too much enthusiasm that motivates our practice. We simply notice that this is present, we notice that it’s changing, we notice that it is not somehow fixed, but we notice that it’s moving, changing, shifting the moods, shifting the emotions, shifting the quality of attention. Sometimes we are sharply aware of what is happening, what we are experiencing with our bodies and minds and sometimes this is lacking. Once we recognize that it’s lacking, we are already making a step towards being more mindful or more aware.
Koan Zen
It is possible to move to the next level which is called “KOAN Zen”. Koan Zen means that we focus on the question “Who experiences all this?” To get the feeling of what we must actually do, the practice, it’s not easy to explain. But, essentially you verbalize the question “Who experiences this?” and then stay in an open awareness of the question, without trying to give an answer. Keeping the question in mind is the practice. Keeping the question in mind helps getting rid of all other unnecessary thoughts.
One teacher compares it to the stick used to stir the fire so it keeps burning. As you stir the fire with a stick, the stick gets burned bit by bit, until after some time it totally disappears. That means: the verbalized question disappears, and only a bright, clear, knowing awareness remains. What is one aware of at that time? The mind is aware of itself. The awareness itself remains, undivided, bright, quiet but sensitive and vibrantly alive.
Benefits of Zen Meditation:
Okwang Sunim: “They used to say the Buddha, as the founder of the Buddhist religion, which Zen is a part of, is a kind of doctor. And one could call him an Indian antique psychotherapist. Someone who was trying to cure primarily greed, hatred and illusion, having done that himself before, having reached a place where he attained Nirvana, where he defined it as complete absence of any grasping or any desiring things in that kind of stressful, sick way where we hold on to something although we see it doesn’t help us. Letting go of old anger, hatred, and of old illusions and ignorance, stupidity in some way. That actually gets removed as we deepen our awareness and our practice.
Insights into the Nature of Existence
As we do this, certain insights into the nature of existence are possible to happen, Sometimes in a fairly dramatic way. And sometimes, and more commonly, it happens as a slow and gradual transformation where we simply lose our fears, our hatred, excessive desires, or confusions of all kinds and life becomes more settled and more clear.
Also, our relationship or the way we relate to other people becomes more grounded and more compassion based. So, instead of trying to get something from people, we actually try to connect with them in a compassionate way to see if they suffer and to help them not suffer or help remove the causes of suffering.
After some time, usually one experiences a fairly clear state of mind, ability to focus, ability to be present and that can be very encouraging. But one shouldn’t expect this to happen the very first minute we sit to meditate or even the very first day. It sometimes takes time and sometimes it doesn’t take much time if people are already in different ways prepared to do this practice. Not necessarily formally prepared.”
Conclusion: Take Your Pick
If you feel one type of silent meditation doesn’t work that well for you, choose another one! There are so many different kinds of silent meditation practices that you can definitely find one that fits your character. Also, be patient. And it’s a good idea to, once you make your pick, stick with it (I find it hard to do this). Of course, still meditations are not for everyone. Some people prefer to move. In that case, try yoga or stick around till one of our next blogs on movement meditations. And another option is to try a retreat – we wrote a special post about types of silent meditation retreats just for you.
Other ways to practice meditation is by combining it with cannabis. Perhaps this might be your cup of tea? In that case, check it out here. Meditation can also help cure addictions – see for yourself here.
Tatjana Glogovac, Senior Contributor At L’Aquila Active
Learn more about Tatjana by reading her bio below.
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