Her you find a general definition of meditation, and an easy meditation techique is explained.

Meditation is a group of mental training techniques. You can use meditation to improve mental health and capacities, and also to help improve the physical health. Some of these techniques are very simple, so you can learn them from a book or an article; others require guidance by a qualified meditation teacher.

Most techniques called meditation include these components:

1. You sit or lie in a relaxed position.

2. You breathe regularly. You breathe in deep enough to get enough oxygen. When you breathe out, you relax your muscles so that your lungs are well emptied, but without straining.

3. You stop thinking about everyday problems and matters.

4. You concentrate your thoughts upon some sound, some word you repeat, some image, some abstract concept or some feeling. Your whole attention should be pointed at the object you have chosen to concentrate upon.

5. If some foreign thoughts creep in, you just stop this foreign thought, and go back to the object of meditation.

The different meditation techniques differ according to the degree of concentration, and how foreign thoughts are handled. By some techniques, the objective is to concentrate so intensely that no foreign thoughts occur at all.

In other techniques, the concentration is more relaxed so that foreign thoughts easily pop up. When these foreign thoughts are discovered, one stops these and goes back to the pure meditation in a relaxed manner. Thoughts coming up, will often be about things you have forgotten or suppressed, and allow you to rediscover hidden memory material. This rediscovery will have a psychotherapeutic effect.

Meditation has the following effects:

1. Meditation will give you rest and recreation.

2. You learn to relax.

3. You learn to concentrate better on problem solving.

4. Meditation often has a good effect upon the blood pressure.

5. Meditation has beneficial effects upon inner body processes, like circulation, respiration and digestion.

6. Regular meditation will have a psychotherapeutically effect.

7. Regular meditation will facilitate the immune system.

8. Meditation is usually pleacent.

Hypnosis can be used for relaxation, motivation and behaviour modification, but the effects you get is very dependent upon the exact way hypnosis is performed. When there is a need for some specific effect, an approriate hypnosis techique can be the right choise.

Meditation give a broader range of mentally relaxing, physically relaxing and physically adjusting effects, and by regular meditation ofer time these effects are deeper than the effects of hypnosis.

You can use hypnosis to get some spesific psychoterepeutic effects, for example to remember better events experienced in childhood and to modify the effect these happenings have had on the mental state. Meditation give a broader and deeper  range of psychoterapeutic effects, but these occur gradually over a longer time.

When you meditate you are also in full control yourself; by hypnosis you let some other person or some mechanical device control you. Also hypnosis will not have a training effect upon the ability to concentrate.

Some techiques called hypnosis are however very close to meditation, and can be used as a form of meditation.

Here is a simple form of meditation:

1. Sit in a good chair in a comfortable position.

2. Relax all your muscles as well as you can.

3. Stop thinking about anything, or at least try not to think about anything.

4. Breath out, relaxing all the muscles in your breathing apparatus.

5. Repeat the following in 10 - 20 minutes:

6. If foreign thoughts come in, just stop these thoughts in a relaxed manner, and keep on concentrating upon the breathing and the word you repeat.

As you proceed through this meditation, you should feel steadily more relaxed in your mind and body, feel that you breathe steadily more effectively, and that the blood circulation throughout your body gets more efficient. You may also feel an increasing mental pleasure throughout the meditation.

As any kind of training, meditation may be exaggerated so that you get tired and worn out. Therefore you should not meditate so long or so concentrated that you feel tired or mentally emptied.

Meditation may sometimes give problems for people suffering from mental diseases, epilepsy, serious heart problems or neurological diseases. On the other hand, meditation may be of help in the treatment of these and other conditions.

People suffering from such conditions should check out what effects the different kinds of meditation have on their own kind of health problems, before beginning to practise meditation, and be cautious if they choose to begin to meditate. It may be wise to learn meditation from an experienced teacher, psychologist or health worker that use meditation as a treatment module for the actual disease.

Some people report that long practice of meditation awaken clairovoyant abilities, that is abilities to see, hear or feel things on distance, back in time or foreward in time. Some people also report that they get abilities to read other peoples thoughts, send thoughts to other people or influence other peoples desicions through telepathy.

Most people cannot however expect such results.

What you however can expect is a strongert intuition, that is abilities to feel instantly the truth of a situation, based on everything you sense through your ordinaty senses.

You can also expect to gradually get better social skills.

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These statements have not been evaluated by the Food and Drug Administration. These products are not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any disease. This information is nutritional in nature and should not be construed as medical advice. This notice is required by the Federal Food, Drug and Cosmetic Act.