Meditation Practice Resources
FOUNDATIONAL MEDITATION PRACTICE RESOURCES
- Setting your intention for meditation. This is a good resource for setting your intentions surrounding meditation, which will keep you motivated and allow you to continually benefit from your practice. https://chopra.com/articles/how-to-set-your-intention-for-meditation
2. Test your natural breathing before you begin meditating. This is a good resource which walks you through the steps of testing your natural breath tendencies that may cause you stress or discomfort in your daily life. Knowing where and how the breath rises and falls can aid you in having a more effective meditation and reduce daily tension:
https://www.yogajournal.com/practice-section/how-healthy-is-your-breathing/
3. Learn exactly how you can benefit from meditation through most recent scientific research. Once you’ve set your intention and learned about your natural breath, you can also choose to have a clearer understanding of how meditation works within the body. I have linked two articles below which talk about the brain, the body, the vagus nerve, and the parasynthetic nervous system:
other helpful tools
- Sam Harris: Waking Up app (free). Sam Harris offers an absolutely incredible meditation and theory course for beginner meditators that you can pair with Body Space to get that good ole’ meditation practice up and working. There are some benefits which are paid, but you can take an introductory course and learn theory of meditation for free through the app. According to the website, “Waking Up is structured around its two core principles: You can PRACTICE meditation, and you can learn the THEORY behind the practice.” Visit https://app.wakingup.com/ for more information.
2. Breathwrk (free). Breathwrk is an app that I use throughout the day whenever I have a couple minutes and need to re-ground myself. Sometimes, I am working on a stressful project for school or work, I might have just had a difficult conversation or I’m pining about the future. I just open my app, click a button, and breathe for a minute or two alongside calming visuals and music. Afterwards, I’m feeling refreshed and ready to approach my day once again. This app has some in-app purchases, but for the most part, it is free. The Breathwrk app also connects to the health app on my self phone, and I can track my progress there. Visit https://www.breathwrk.com/ for more information on accessing the app.
3. Breathe Chrome Extension for online working. This is a great (free) chrome extension that I use, especially during the COVID-19 pandemic where I more frequently work online from my personal computer and space. This can get to be a bit much, and after awhile I feel like I’ve been completely detached from the world outside my computer. I greatly benefit from an extension that pops up on my current tab every hour or so, guiding me through just a few minutes of simple breathing. If I’m in the middle of something important I can easily turn it off prior or refresh the page. Visit https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/breathe/ibpopdkehcdnfkjmaiimnmekhihekfja?utm_source=chrome-ntp-icon for more information on using Breathe Chrome Extension.
