5 Ways to Take Your Meditation Practice from Intermediate to Advanced
If you’ve been meditating for at least six months, congratulations! You’re an intermediate meditator, which means that you’re already reaping the physical and emotional benefits of meditation, and you’re probably making it a regular practice. However, if you’re interested in taking your practice from intermediate to advanced, here are five ways to get started.
1) Different Types of Meditation
There are tons of different types of meditation; sitting and focusing on your breath, guided, mantra-based, walking meditations—the list goes on. Try as many different kinds as you can until you find one that works for you. Make sure you keep track of how long you’re meditating so that it becomes a habit. Many people like to start with 10 minutes per day and work their way up over time. The amount of time will vary for everyone and skill level. It is important that you do not compare your ability to others. We are all on our own unique journey.
2) Introduction Vipassana
There are many kinds of meditation, but one you might not have heard of is Vipassana. It’s a centuries-old practice that gets right to its purpose: attaining wisdom through introspection and self-awareness. If you want to take your practice deeper, here’s how you can use Vipassana meditation as a starting point. To begin with, you may find yourself wondering what exactly Vipassana means. The word comes from an ancient Pali text (the oldest Buddhist text in existence) called The Path of Purification. In it, Vipassana refers to insight into impermanence and interconnectedness—which is exactly what practitioners aim for when they meditate.
3) Introduction to Chakra opening
The first thing you’ll want to do is meditate on your root chakra. Meditate on how it relates to your body and mind, why it’s important, and what might be getting in its way. This will help center your energy and focus for later in your meditation. Then move up through each chakra – you can use a guide for which colors correspond with which chakras, or meditate around them yourself. When you feel comfortable with one chakra, move onto another until all seven are open. Once they are all open, imagine that they are glowing brightly and spinning fast – when they’re spinning fast enough that they appear as a blur of color, close your eyes and continue to meditate while visualizing them spinning faster than ever before. When you feel ready, open your eyes again.
4) Introduction Kundalini Awakening
Kundalini Awakening is a natural process that will happen by itself over time if you’re practicing Kundalini Yoga and/or using any of a number of different tools, such as meditation. The body’s own intelligence is always working behind-the-scenes in an effort to help us become who we are meant to be; when it senses an imbalance, it’ll initiate its self-healing mechanisms and begin correcting anything out of sync. This is what happens during a kundalini awakening. It begins with an opening at your base chakra, which allows for energy to flow up through your spine and into your brain—and then back down again.
5) Introduction Sound Therapy
The classic meditation advice: Focus on your breath, and don’t allow any other thoughts or sounds to enter your mind. But it turns out there’s something that can help you stay focused: natural sound. Sound therapy has been used in a wide variety of spiritual practices for millennia, and some modern studies have linked exposure to nature sounds with positive outcomes such as lower blood pressure and decreased anxiety. In fact, listening to soothing music may even be better than listening to nothing at all—and could actually improve your meditative practice. Start by downloading an app like White Noise or Rainymood; then choose a track based on what kind of mood you want to set—relaxing, energizing, soothing.
These and other tools and resources will be covered in more detailed in another section on this site! We true hope that you are finding our site helpful on you journey!