Om is a religious symbol that is popular worldwide. While practicing yoga or meditating, we all chant Om several times. Also known as Aum, it is a sacred word that purifies your soul and mind and helps you find peace. From yoga practitioners to monks, everyone chants the word, Om.
Om chanting and meditation can help anyone of any age, any sex to achieve a peace of mind, improve concentrations and lot more benefits that we are going to discuss now.
Benefits of Om chanting:
- Chanting this holy word helps a person achieve the ultimate goal of self-realisation.
- You tend to improve your concentration after chanting Om.
- It improves the production of feel-good endorphins thus making you feel refreshed and relaxed.
- When you chant Om, the adrenaline levels decrease. This helps reduce the stress levels by providing more oxygen in the body.
- If you are chanting Om and meditating, you not only reduce stress but also the blood pressure.
- Meditating slows down the heartbeat and respiration but keeps dilating the blood vessels to provide more oxygen in the body.
- While chanting Om or Aum, the first alphabet A creates vibrations. These vibrations affect the spinal cord and increases its efficiency.
- Second alphabet U creates vibrations in the throat and hits the thyroid glands. This word aims at drawing attention away from all the negative energy that affect your peace of mind.
- While meditating in the first stage, you have to stop thinking about everything or anything that is worrying you. Just chant Om and slowly you will concentrate on just the Sanskrit word.
- Last but not the least, chanting the Sanskrit word Om helps you explore the spiritual side of you and also helps meditate.
After reading benefits you might have decided to start meditation. But it's useless if you do it wrong. There is a proper way to do it.
Follow five simple steps to meditate:
- Make Time to meditate
Try to adjust your busy schedule for 5-10 minutes everyday. It's not that difficult to make some time for the peace of mind. You can do meditation in morning or in the evening whichever best suits you, but the best time to meditate is in the morning, because morning time is noise free time and lets you concentrate more on meditation.
- Sit on a Ground Level
Choose a place closer to the ground. You can sit on the floor or in the garden, under the tree, any place which seems better for you.
- Relax everything
Relax everything, your body, your arms, your legs, everything. Just make sure you are comfortable. To sit properly look in the image below.
- Let your attention rest on the flow of your breath
Listen to it, follow it, but make no judgments on it (such as "It sounds a little raspy... maybe I'm getting a cold?"). The goal is to allow the "chattering" in your mind to gradually fade away. Find an "anchor" to settle your mind.
Try reciting a mantra (repetition of a sacred word). A single word like "om" uttered at a steady rhythm is best. You can recite it verbally or just with the voice in your mind. Beginners may find it easier to count their breaths. Try counting your breath from 1 through 10, then simply start again at 1.
- Silence your mind
Once you've trained your mind to focus on just one thing at a time, the next step is focus on nothing at all, essentially "clearing" your mind. This requires tremendous discipline but it is the pinnacle of meditation.
After focusing on a single point as described in the previous step, you can either cast it away, or observe it impartially and let it come and then go, without labeling it as "good" or "bad". Take the same approach to any thoughts which return to your mind until silence perseveres.
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