The main focus of all meditation types is taking charge of the mind, maintaining a conscious focus, and being aware of the present. The popular types of Meditation are:
- Mindfulness Meditation
- Body Scan Meditation
- Focused Meditation
- Visualization Meditation
- Movement or Walking Meditation
- Loving-Kindness Meditation
- Spiritual Meditation
- Transcendental meditation
- Mantra Meditation
Apart from these, there are some other types, but nearly all of them fall in either of these meditation types. The road may be different, but the destination is the same – find more on definition of meditation. They all try to reach you, the peaceful land of everlasting calm and happiness, which we find elusive most of the time.
So, Which Type of Meditation is Good for Me?
Have you been feeling confused about the different types of meditation, and you do not know the one that is right for you? If yes, you have come to the right place. Well, learning to meditate can be immensely beneficial to your psychological, emotional, and physical well-being. Meditation can help you manage symptoms of stress, anxiety, and depression.
Meditation can also increase your mental awareness, improve your focus on the present moment, and promote your spiritual growth. These are only some of the benefits of meditation: Check here for more > Benefits of meditation.
This article will give you insights into the various meditation types to help you decide which one is right for you. With each Meditation Type we have listed who is ideal for such meditation practice and what are the major benefits. Many benefits are common, so read in full to find out the right kind of meditation, ideal for you. For starters, an introduction to the different types of meditations that we mentioned in the beginning.
1. Mindfulness Meditation
Buddhist monks created mindfulness meditation thousands of years ago. They used it as a source of spiritual enlightenment. Mindfulness meditation means paying attention, on purpose, to the present moment by focusing on your breath non-judgmentally.
In other words, mindfulness involves cultivating a non-judgmental awareness and acceptance. It helps you acknowledge that there is no right or wrong way of feeling or thinking at any particular moment.
When you practice mindfulness meditation, you are consciously allowing thoughts and feelings to come and go without judging them or doing anything about them. In other words, mindfulness meditation enables you to pay attention to the here and now, thus achieving a calmer state of mind, a sense of purpose, and clarity.
Who is ideal for this Meditation Type?
Mindfulness meditation is ideal for anyone who wants to practice mindfulness alone. It can also help anyone who tends to struggle with being carried away by thoughts and emotions.
Benefits
Among other benefits, mindfulness meditation can reduce symptoms of addiction, anxiety, depression, and stress. It can also boost your happiness, memory, focus, attention skills, sleep, self-awareness, self-compassion, self-acceptance, and life satisfaction. This type of meditation can also reduce blood pressure and symptoms of heart disease.
Try this Guided Mindfulness Meditation
2. Body Scan Meditation
Body scanning or progressive relaxation is a relaxation method, which reduces tension in your body, thus allowing you to relax. Body scan meditation is a form of meditation that will enable you to mentally scan your body, starting from your feet to your head.
It involves guiding your awareness through each part of your body and progressively allowing your muscles to relax one by one. You focus on how each part of your body feels without having expectations or judging the sensations as either good or bad.
The goal of body scan meditation is to help you become aware of tension within your body and mind and relieve it. It enables you to identify what you are feeling and pinpoint where you are feeling it.
Who is ideal for this type of Meditation?
Body scan meditation is ideal for people who have PTSD or mild trauma. You can also do a body scan if you want to tune in to your body and focus on your bodily sensations without judgment.
Benefits
Body scan meditation benefits include improved self-awareness, focus, better sleep, and shifting your attention from negative thoughts. Body Scan is a perfect meditation type that can also reduce pain, stress, and anxiety.
3. Focused Meditation
Focused meditation aims to boost your awareness by helping you concentrate on one specific item, such as your breath. Focused meditation allows you to shut down thoughts and feelings that you do not need to be focusing on right now.
If your mind wanders, you are supposed to refocus it on that particular object. In other words, focused meditation involves blocking all the unnecessary noise and clutter that is clogging or slowing down your brain. Often people use music to focus their mind and cut off external noise.
In these days we experience maximum noise from Mobile, TV, and lot of other social media engagements. When you shut down the noise, focusing on one thing tends to become comfortable.
Who is ideal for this Meditation Type?
Focused meditation is ideal for anyone who wants to relieve stress. It is also suitable for anyone who wants to disengage attention from a task-irrelevant distraction. It can help you redirect your attention to a specific object, such as your breath.
Benefits
Benefits of focused meditation include improved attention processing, clarity of thought, efficiency, and present-moment mindfulness. This Meditation type can also reduce symptoms of stress, depression, and anxiety.
4. Visualization meditation
Visualization is a meditation technique that helps you create an image or idea in your mind during meditation. Visualization meditation can improve your performance in whatever you do in your life and help you achieve your objectives.
Visualization meditation helps to align your thoughts to your intended purpose. In other words, it allows you to focus on your intended aim. Visualizing and paying keen attention to what you want can attract it into your life.
When aiming for a goal, you are likely to get distracted and lose focus. Visualizing regularly is essential because you get to focus your mind. Visualization teaches you to hold your focus regardless of what is happening in your mind or life.
Who is ideal for this Meditation Type?
Visualization meditation is ideal for anyone who wants to overcome anxiety, achieve emotional stability, and get an inner sense of empowerment. If you feel powerless, visualization can shift your sense of power from the outside to the inside, thus helping you feel like you have more control over what is going on in your life.
Benefits
Some of the benefits of this type of meditation include improving concentration, memory, sleep, self-confidence, and problem-solving skills. Other benefits of visualization meditation are combating negativity, enhancing emotional stability, reducing anxiety, and fight depression.
5. Movement or Walking Meditation
Movement meditation involves practicing meditation while moving rather than sitting still. You can practice movement meditation while walking, dancing, or during yoga and Tai Chi.
In movement meditation or walking meditation, mindfulness entails focusing your attention on how your body is moving. It involves focusing on how your muscles are moving, your breath and heartbeat rhythm, and your surroundings.
It also involves focusing on the sensations of your feet when you lift them and as they touch the ground. It is essential to be mindful of your surroundings during movement or walking meditation the same way you are mindful of your thoughts. It would be best if you slowed down your pace during mindful walking.
Who is ideal for this Meditation Type?
Movement meditation is ideal for anyone who can’t stay still long enough to meditate. Or find sitting in a closed space claustrophobic.
Benefits
Scientific studies show that mindful walking can have positive effects on your mental and physical well-being. For instance, movement meditation can reduce symptoms of stress, anxiety, depression, and fatigue. This Meditation type can also boost your mood and life satisfaction and help you let go of the past.
6. Loving-Kindness Meditation
Meditation can be much more than focusing on yourself. In other words, meditation can also be a way of expressing gratefulness, love, and kindness. That said, loving-kindness meditation or metta meditation allows you to open up both your mind and heart.
Practicing loving-kindness meditation enables you to cultivate compassion, love, and forgiveness towards the people you interact with every day. The idea behind this type of meditation is that we are all bound by love.
Therefore, loving-kindness meditation aims to help you express that love. Metta meditation begins by developing loving-kindness toward yourself so you can be able to push that love to others.
Who is ideal for this type of Meditation?
Loving-kindness meditation is ideal for anyone who wants to send well wishes to themselves for feeling distressed. You can also practice it if you want to send well wishes to anyone who might be feeling distressed.
Benefits
Evidence-based benefits of practicing loving-kindness meditation daily include reducing symptoms of stress, depression, and inflammation. It can also increase your ability to empathize with others and develop compassion towards yourself and others. This Meditation type can also help you have positive relationships and increase your self-acceptance, happiness, and life satisfaction.
7. Spiritual Meditation
Spiritual meditation enables you to discover who you are. It allows you to connect with a power that is supreme than you are. Spiritual meditation is one of the best techniques because it enables you to take a step back and honestly evaluate yourself.
Using this technique, you can get in touch with your soul, which can help you change your mindset and self-perception. Guided spiritual meditation can help you understand the core of your connectedness.
This particular Meditation Type enables you to acknowledge changes and new experiences while focusing on your individuality. To succeed in spiritual meditation, you need to become conscious of the dangers of holding grudges, as well as resentments. To find true inner peace, you need to learn to forgive people who have wronged you. It would be best if you also were willing to help others.
Who is ideal for this type of Meditation?
Spiritual meditation is ideal for anyone looking to engage in self-reflection and self-actualization. You will also love spiritual meditation if you want to search for infinite happiness, inner peace, and calmness.
Benefits
The benefits of spiritual meditation include reducing stress and anxiety. It can also improve mood, focus, concentration, sleep, self-awareness, memory, and happiness.
8. Transcendental Meditation
Transcendental meditation originated in India. This form of meditation was introduced by a famous spiritual leader known as Maharishi Mahesh Yogi. TM allows you to tap into your inner calmness as you meditate.
This meditation type activates your body’s healing mechanism. It enables you to cultivate a sense of calmness in your everyday life. Transcendental meditation aims to bring your mind to a state of complete silence, which allows you to experience the most peaceful level of consciousness or awareness.
Unlike other meditation techniques, TM does not involve concentration, focusing your mind, monitoring your thoughts, or trying to control your mind.
Who is ideal for this Meditation Type?
TM is ideal for anyone who wants to effortlessly allow their minds to settle down to a state of more profound inner calm.
Benefits
Practicing transcendental meditation has been shown to improve brain function, breathing and alleviate stress, fatigue, sleep problems, and asthma. TM can also decrease blood pressure, pain, and unintentional weight gain due to diminished stress levels.
9. Mantra Meditation
Mantras originate from India or the Sanskrit language. A mantra is a sacred sound, hymn, or expression, often in the form of a word or phrase believed to invoke the almighty. In other words, mantras have a deep spiritual significance.
Mantras are sacred, and they include words like “Om” or “Aum” or “Ham-Sah,” among others. Uttering these sounds repeatedly enables your mind and body to focus on the here and now. It allows you to calm your mind and focus on your intentions.
Mantras are self-affirming statements that give you the confidence and strength to face the world.
People practicing this meditation type say that if uttered correctly, mantras tend to be very useful.
Who is ideal for this type of Meditation?
They are ideal for anyone who wants to refocus on the here and now or cultivate an awareness during meditation. You can refocus on the sounds when your mind wanders. A mantra takes your mind away from your failures and flaws.
Benefits
Mantra meditation benefits include deepened spiritual strength, heightened intuition, peace of mind, a deep connection with the unconscious, and a sense of calmness. This type of meditation can also reduce anxiety and depression and increase happiness, compassion, love, and immunity. Reciting mantras regularly can set you up for success and positivity. Try this > Om Chanting Video for Mantra Meditation
Which Meditation Type is Ideal for you?
Let’s hope that the above information on the various types of meditation has given you answers to the question, “Which meditation is right for me?” Well, with all the above options, finding the right meditation type and technique for yourself may seem like a daunting task. However, it doesn’t have to be complicated.
The secret is to try out the different types of meditation to see the one that works well for you. To recap, we have talked about mindfulness meditation – the first step to understand what is spiritual awareness, focused meditation, mantra meditation, movement meditation, transcendental meditation, visualization meditation, body-scanning meditation, and loving-kindness meditation.
You might also be interested to make your room suitable for meditation. Please check out – The Ultimate Meditation Room for Your Home. It covers everything from basic materials needed to begin your practice, what essential oils and rituals are needed, to choosing the right plant for your room.
The above types of meditation have various benefits for you, including improving mental performance, sleep, self-awareness, happiness, self-acceptance, and emotional stability. Meditation can also reduce symptoms of depression, stress, anxiety, and negative thoughts, among others.
No matter what you may be going through, meditation can help you experience some sense of peace and calmness. A light reading on motivational stress relief quotes can also help uplift your mood. If you don’t like the idea of sitting for long hours while meditating, you can always practice meditation on the move.
Do you have examples of the different meditation types, Debashis? I would love to see or hear some examples. Thank you so much.
Yes, quite a few techniques are defined here, have a look:
Visualization meditation
Loving Kindness meditation – best choice
Mindfulness meditation
Hope this helps.
Debashis
Hey Debashis, was this “Try this Guided Mindfulness Meditation for 20 Minutes” supposed to link to an actual meditation? Right now there is no link.
Anyway, I want to start meditating daily if I can. Is 5 minutes too little for starters? I want to make sure I get it done daily and I don’t think I can do more than 5 minutes at this time.
Sorry Cora, I just traced back the video and you can find it now. The minimum suggestion would be 15 minutes to start with. With so much going on in our mind, it would take sometime initially to settle down and calm the mind. If you sleep for 8 hours daily consider this 15 minutes as a gift to your own self 🙂
I think you can do even 3 minutes, although the more the better. The most important thing is that you do it daily. And do more of it (10-20 minutes) as you go along. Try to be present in those minutes. Don’t blame yourself if you can’t focus sometimes. Just enjoy it as much as you can.
Thank you! I will try to not put too much pressure on myself when doing this and like you said, enjoy it. I have to remind myself why I am actually doing this: to feel better.
Make sure to also try other meditation types. You never know what you’ll actually click with. You might not enjoy mindfulness meditation as much as visualization meditation. Who knows? Be open minded and try different things.
That’s a good idea. How should I go about trying different meditation types? I mean, should I focus on one for 1 week or 1 month and then head on to another?
I would go for at least 14 days of a type and then go to another. Make sure you give every type a chance for at least 3-5 sessions. That should be enough to figure out if it’s suitable for you or not.
Ok, thanks. I will aim for 14 days, especially if I seem to really enjoy a certain type. For those that may not click with me, maybe I will do 3-5 sessions like you’ve said. So excited about this!
Hmm… Been meditating for a week or so and it’s going great but I never considered adding essential oils into the mix. That could make it even more special. Now I only do 10 minutes but those minutes are wonderful!
Good to know you are finding it wonderful. Suggest you increase the time to 15-20 minutes so the habit gets in your genes. Meditation is the perfect vacation resort for the mind which you can visit anytime and get refreshed.
I am constantly being carried away by emotions and different thoughts. Sometimes it’s very difficult to calm down and just get back to reality. It’s like I’m in this “what if?” world where everything bad keeps happening. I know that many of these things will not actually happen but I still can’t help myself from thinking about them. Some of them are recurring and never get solved and others keep popping up from time to time or are completely new ones. Could mindfulness meditation help me? Or should I go for something else, Debashis?
As i can see you are allowing your thoughts to control you. Thoughts are a product of our conditioned mind and the mind has an opinion for almost everything. Mindfulness helps not in silencing the mind but observing it from a stoic perspective. It takes time but mindfulness sure helps.