Relaxation Moments

Relaxation for The Mind and Body

Color Breathing Visualization For Stress Relief

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Color breathing visualization is a practice that can be undertaken to relieve stress and to improve the mood. Breathing along with the visualization of certain colors can be very relaxing and can help us to gain a calm demeanor.

When we breathe with intention, we can mitigate stresses and we can bring awareness to our experiences in everyday life. Color breathing adds another dimension to meditation and mindfulness visualizations by incorporating colors that are associated with healing elements.

Anytime we bring awareness to the breath we can become more present in the moment and can more readily process what we are experiencing.

How to Do a Color Breathing Visualization

Undertaking a color breathing visualization is easy and can be done in various ways. Some people may prefer to sit while others would like to lie down. If possible, set aside a few minutes or more when you can be undisturbed. However, if you only have a moment, it’s also okay to close your eyes for even a few moments and envision the color you wish to implement.

Take a few deep breaths into the belly and into the chest while envisioning your body enveloped in the color of your choice. Continue this practice until you feel a shift in your mood or stress levels or experience a sense of calmness.

Colors and Their Meanings

Red

The color red is traditionally associated with the root chakra. This color is associated with grounded energy that is stable and consistent. Red can also represent the heart and can represent love and healing the heart. Red is associated with the element of fire and can be visualized to enhance a sense of security.

Orange

The color orange is associated with the sacral chakra and is often harnessed as a color of sexual energy. This is also a color of creativity. This is a great color to visualize when you are implementing a project or searching for ideas.

Yellow

The color yellow is associated with the solar plexus and is considered as the color of self-empowerment. It is also a color associated with the land and the Earth and it can help us to enhance self-confidence. This is a great color to visualize when you need an energy boost or a confidence boost. Visualizing yellow can help us feel more competent and ready to take on tasks.

Green

Green is a color associated with money, with the heart, and with the wood element. Green is a color that connects us with our leadership and allows us to commit to the world with love and care. When we can resonate with our community, we can work together to relieve stress and feel loved and cared for.

Blue

Blue is the color of water and the color associated with the throat chakra. This is a great color to visualize when we want to speak up about something, we are afraid to say, or when we cannot formulate our thoughts into a cohesive speech. The color of water and the sky helps us associate to our atmosphere on Earth and connect us to the grander vastness of our existence.

Purple

The color purple is associated with royalty. It is associated with spirituality and a higher power. Purple is a color that can help us remember that we are powerful and that we are always experiencing exactly what we need to grow and learn, even if it is a difficult lesson.

White

A white light visualization brings protective energies and can allow us to rest in the peacefulness of knowing that we are cared for, even if only by ourselves. White light energy can assist in alleviating symptoms of depression and can protect the body from receiving darker energies.

Guided Meditation For Stress Relief

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When we are stressed, worried, anxious, or upset, it can be a great option to implement guided mediation into our life. Time spent in meditation restores peace and calm and can bring a sense of restoration to the mind. Meditation is a great practice because it can be done anywhere.

Guided meditations are led by a recording or video and can be done when rest is available, sitting with eyes closed or laying down and resting. Guided meditations can be downloaded or streamed online and will lead a person through a series of auditory and visual practices to create a peaceful and calm state.

The practice of meditation has been an important part of various religions and belief systems for many years.

  • Mindset and meditation can benefit anyone without adherence to particular beliefs.

  • Anyone can meditate. Practice is key, as the more it is done, the better you get at and the greater the benefit.
  • Meditation is a technique that helps all different types of people relax and relieve stress.
  • Meditation allows the thoughts to slow and streamline and stops the stressful mind from moving too fast.
  • Ideally, meditation bring about a feeling of wellness.

Meditation brings wellbeing and peace and it can help people manage emotions.

Many people have experienced emotional benefits from meditation including:

  • Imported self-awareness
  • Present moment awareness
  • Improve imagination
  • Stress building skills

Meditation is a process of focusing and calming the mind so we can experience a break in mental activity and get rest from our judgements, ideas, beliefs, and expectations.

When we rest the mind through meditation, we create space for new ideas and opportunities to access our minds.

Meditation allows us to access a relaxed mental state. Using guided meditation, we can listen and visualize our experiences, making mental images in the mind of places that bring a sense of calm.

Guided meditation is also called guided imagery or visualization. This style of meditation includes the senses experiencing sight, smells, sounds, and textures.

Guided meditations are often led by a guide or coach or teacher. Many visualizations also use music or nature sounds to bring about a sense of calm. Guided meditations lead the listener through a story or series of opportunities for visualization.

While participating in guided meditation it is important to focus the attention on the experience and allow your mind to be free of other distractions or ideas that are stressful.

Instead it is important to experience an open mind and quiet mentality. Another important part of meditation is to breathe consciously. Deep breathing expands the lungs and allows the intake of more oxygen which creates a sense of calm in the body.

Participating in guided meditation in a calm setting can reduce distractions.

Some people like to use headphones or play background music. After some time, it may be easy to meditate anywhere, but in the beginning it is great to set aside some time to yourself to meditate.

A guided meditation that is 5-10 minutes is a great length to start with.

Some people prefer to do guided meditations at night while others do them in the morning. It’s even possible to do them during the day. Anytime is a great time to meditate. Morning meditations allow people to visualize their day and night meditation allows reflection on the day and gratitude for what happened. Many guided meditations are available with a simple online search.

Meditation can be a lifelong practice.

Sometimes a guided meditation is the best option if a person prefers to be led through a series of visualizations in an attempt to form a new idea and allow creativity.

Meditation allows relaxation and can lead us through a series of exercises that bring peace and calm and a new outlook on life.

Step Out Of A Chaotic World And Into The Calm Of Visualization

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We live in a chaotic and hectic world. Many people live lives that are stressful and fast paced, and we may feel we can hardly catch a break to catch our breath. When we are under stress, we are feeling pressured and cannot function to our full capacity.

When the body is under stress, we may experience sensations in our body like heart palpitations or rapid breathing.

These are signs that our nervous system is in fight or flight mode and we are being flooded with adrenaline and other stress hormones. Sometimes it can be difficult to rationalize what we are feeling in our bodies.

It is possible to change our reaction to current situations, even if we cannot change the situation itself.

Visualization is one way to bring a new thought and idea to the mind and create a mental image of something that is more beneficial and helpful in the moment so we can move forward.

How Stress Affects Us

Stress is a feeling of overwhelm that can adversely affect our mind and body. Stress is a response to modern living that can be difficult to process. When we cannot change a situation, we have to look to how we can change ourselves to better adapt to the situation.

Utilizing tools and practices such as guided meditations helps to engage the mind to assist us in creating a new vision for our lives that is more positive and optimistic and fulfilling.

Why Visualize

When we visualize positive imagery, we can begin to associate our mental states with the faulty of our thoughts. When we think more positive thoughts, we have access to a happier and more abundant life.

When we can take a pause and recognize our mental status, we can bring gratitude into the picture. Thinking grateful thoughts can bring a broader sense of peace by allowing us to tap into what has gone well for us and how we can bring a renewed sense of positivity to the moment.

When we are stressed and feel like we are spinning out of control, visualization is a practice we can undertake to focus the mind on a chosen vision. Maybe the vision is one of achieving a personal goal or one that is dreamed by the family.

Try visualizing a time when you were in a situation and were worried you might not make it through, but in the end, it turned out better than you could have imagined. Try visualizing a time in the past when one of your dreams come true, and when you felt joy, abundance, and happiness. Remember these feelings and know that you can recreate them anytime to feel the grandeur in gratitude of life.

Once you can connect to a past successful vision of abundance, you can bring a sense of peace and calm to your life. You can connect with the knowing that certain situations have worked out for you and have gone your way in the past. This brings confidence that life will continue to provide, amidst the ups and downs.

Creating a Calming Mental Picture

Visualizing a calming mental picture can be the key to calming the chaos of the mind. Connect to an image that brings you peace and clarity and commit to holding it in your mind as long as possible until you can feel a shift in the energy. Sometimes even a few seconds of engagement in visualization will bring results!

Breathe with intention and feel the presence of your calming imagers coming true for you and be confident that you can change your outlook and perspective.

Visions of nature, water, fire, or other elements are a great place to start with imagery if you don’t yet have a clear picture of your desired outcome.

Beginners Guide To The Power of Visualization

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Some people are not aware of the power of visualization and all that it can do for our lives. But actually, we are all engaging in visualization throughout the day. However, many of us are stuck in visualizations of what we do not want, rather than what we do want. People often use visualization to imaging negative outcomes or to worry about the future. Sometimes we even worry so much that we seem to make the very thing happen that we don’t want to happen!

Visualization is not just a new age technique for manifesting. Instead, various athletes, musicians, and other successful people use visualization and mental imagery to make their dreams come true in their lives. Research has proven that people who do visualizations to create a positive experience before they engage in the activity.

An exercise psychologist from Cleveland Clinic Foundation in Ohio found that people who did a workout in their minds were able to increase their muscle strength capacity by 13.5% as opposed to those people who actually did the activity with an increase of 30% muscle strength (From mental power to muscle power— gaining strength by using the mind, Yue, Guang). This means that just by visualizing in our minds we prime our body to create successful outcomes.

Research done by Newmark in 2012 also demonstrated the efficacy of visualization and guided imagery in sports performance utilized after the Russian 1984 Olympics (Cases in Visualization for Athletic Performance, Newmark, Thomas).

Basic Steps to Visualization

To begin visualization, you want to know what you want to manifest in your life. Knowing what you want to achieve will help you to create a visualization that will make your dreams come true. But first, you have to know what your dreams are, what you desire and how to make it happen, or at least, which step to take to get you to the next level.

Begin by describing the vision in detail. Maybe you want to record your vision into a microphone in order to clearly hear yourself express what you want with your own voice. You may feel more comfortable writing down your dreams in a journal and exploring how you can write your life into a new existence. Both of these practices help us to create a clear picture of what we want to create.

The next step is to begin visualizing what you want to manifest. You can visualize the circumstances or you can visualize the process or even skip all the way to the outcome. The most important part is to link the vision with the feelings you will feel when you complete the task and get to your dream place.

Taking daily action is essential. We cannot make great changes overnight if we do not take action each day. We need to set ourselves up for success each day by returning to our vision and making sure we keep in contact with our dreams. We want to continue to access our manifestations and change them as we gain new information.

We need to stay strong in order to persevere and stay on top of our goals. When we are not directing our lives, we can end up working for others or wishing we had access to different opportunities that are more fulfilling. When we are faced with challenges, we can continue to visualize our successes and find a pathway out of any situation.

Visualization provides a proven method for exploring mindfulness and engaging in meditation in a goal-oriented fashion. We can participate actively in the making of our lives through visualization.

Meditation For Relaxation

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What is Meditation?

Meditation is being practiced by many people for relaxation.  It is a method of quieting and controlling the mind. Meditation helps control our thoughts and helps create a distance from stressful situations in our daily life. It’s about transforming the mind and the way you think, to become aware of yourself and your surroundings while separating your consciousness from the struggles and activities of your life.

Meditation has a calming effect on your body and your thoughts. It helps you to stop thinking and shows you how to just “be”, in an aware state of mindfulness. You slow your mind chatter by just being in the moment, noticing thoughts and putting them to the side until you just are conscious but your mind is still.

Meditation is a great way to quiet your mind and think of what to do in important life choices. By listening on a deeper level you will get a truer sense of what your real desire is. Research has demonstrated that meditating for a short time increases alpha waves, which makes us feel more relaxed, while simultaneously decreasing our feelings of anxiety and depression.

There are many different ways to practice meditation, with each having a different goal and effect on the relaxing the body and relaxing the mind. Many people have different reasons for learning to meditate, so first, think about your reason. This will help you know which direction you want your first meditations to go and give you an objective for each.  This is to say, a general goal such as relaxation, or how you can cope with a problem at work, or even, to think about what you want to do with your life.

When To Meditate

You can meditate whenever you want to. Each time of the day has its own reason. After you wake up in the morning is when your mind is at its calmest because you have not entered into the day and all its activities. Also, you have just slept, so it is most likely you will not go to sleep while meditating.

In the evening, as the activity of the day is winding down, so you, too, are winding down and it is easier for some to relax and do some meditation. Sunset seems an ideal time and it is thought that a metaphysical doorway opens then. If you have a quiet place in your home, then make a meditation center for yourself there. Outdoors is always an alternative, but is weather dependent.

Types of Relaxation Meditation Techniques

There are different types of meditation. Many people are practicing meditation these days to quiet their mind, to be able to reflect and experience a state of calmness and relaxation that is otherwise difficult to achieve in this hectic modern world. Some people choose a type of meditation depending on convenience while others choose the ones that bring them closer to achieving their specific goals for doing that particular practice.

Below are some examples of the types of relaxation meditation techniques that people utilize to improve their well-being.

Mindfulness Meditation.  Mindfulness meditation is based on being mindful, that is, having an increased awareness of and acceptance of living in the present moment. It means paying attention to what you are doing in the present, rather than living on autopilot

Guided Meditation.  Sometimes called visualization, this method of meditation encourages you to form mental images of places or situations you find relaxing. You try to use as many senses as possible, such as smells, sights, sounds and textures, to calm the mind, and focus it. It is a good way to get into a more meditative state. Its goal is relaxation and peace. It can be done with mindfulness meditation.

Focused Meditation.  Focused Meditation is also known to by some people as Attention Meditation Technique. Although this meditation technique requires one to focus on one thing and exclude any other thoughts from their mind, it doesn’t force the person meditating to try too hard.

Zen Meditation.  This is a type of seated meditation.  You sit quietly with the legs crossed and the eyes closed. and focus on your surroundings instead of your thoughts. You simply get into your mind to clear it out, focusing on your breathing, and not saying a word. It is a silent meditation where you gradually get deeper and deeper into your subconscious to clear it out and try to become at peace with yourself. This is one of the most difficult types of meditation because you are relying solely on your ability to be quiet and focus on nothing

Chakra Meditation.  Chakra Meditation involves inward reflection and self-evaluation to align of the chakra in the body, which are different forms of energy that together compile the whole of your existence and your perception of yourself. The belief system behind this form of meditation states that there are seven different chakra that comprise the different elements your being, chief among which is the chakra of the heart.

Movement Meditation.  This type of meditation technique allows an individual to perform several gentle and repetitive flowing movements. Instead of focusing on a certain thought or object, movement meditation brings your focus to each movement you make. This is when you become mindful of the motion of your muscles and your contact with external surfaces. The more you practice this type of meditation the more that you become aware of the movement of energy within your body and the way it responds to a stimulus such as music.

Mantra Meditation.  A mantra may consist of a word or phrase that is being chanted out loud or silently repeated as the focus of meditation. It is a Sanskrit word in which “man” means mind and “tra” means instrument. In other words, your chosen mantra will become an instrument of your mind.

The more you repeat your mantra, the more relaxed you get and the more you can clear your mind. For some people, sitting in complete silence causes their mind to wander. If you repeat your mantra, it can also help you to get to deeper levels of awareness, which is also used in other types of meditation.

Yoga Nidra.  Despite its name, Yoga Nidra is not a form of yoga, as most people understand it. Rather than being about a specific set of stretches and actions, Yoga Nidra is about maintaining the highest amount of mental and physical relaxation possible. It is a type of meditation that focuses on turning the majority of the senses inward in order to create a high level of self-awareness, rather than directing all conscious and sensory awareness on the outside world.

The main difference between Yoga Nidra and other forms of meditation is that it relies on a set of external auditory commands, such as instruction by a yogi or a set of recordings, to guide you into the state of relaxation.

How to Set Up Your Meditation Room

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Meditation Room

There is no one right way to set up your meditation room, or area in a quiet room where you live, but there are a few general guidelines so you can a comfortable environment free from distractions.

The Basics

Choose a quiet place in your home that does not have a lot of traffic going in and out of it. Even a small corner of a room will work provided it is quiet and at a reasonable temperature, and not full of clutter and bad smells. A garage, for example, might not be the best place to practice.

In your meditation area, you should have either a comfortable chair or a cushion for sitting on the floor. If you have hardwood floors put down a yoga mat or a larger meditation cushion so you will be more comfortable.

An alarm clock or stop watch will be handy if you have only a limited amount of time to meditate during each session. Start with 5 minutes, and over time, work your way up to 20 to 30 minutes.

A shawl, light jacket or light blanket will be useful in case you feel cold while meditating. A hat, bandana, scarf or shawl can help if you start to get headaches when you meditate.

A bottle of water is always useful in order to stay hydrated throughout the day. It also cuts down on distractions such as thirst while you are trying to meditate.

Other useful items

Once you’ve covered the basics, you should be set to meditate. However, depending on the type of meditation and your own personal preferences and training methods, you might find a music player or computer handy in order to play meditational music, mantras, or guided meditations.

There are also several items that can help you focus better at the start of and during your meditation. A burning candle for flame meditation would be one, so a candle and matches would be useful. Keep out of reach of children and pets. Be sure to put out the candle when you are finished with your meditation session.

If you are using one corner of the room, meditate facing the corner. In the corner, you can put images that help you concentrate. It can be a peaceful picture you like, or mandalas and yantras, images of the cosmos.

You don’t need to have a table or shrine with lots of stuff on it. Hindus and Buddhists usually put up a small shrine to remind them of what they are doing, improving themselves from within.

As long as your meditation area is a place to look forward to being, it will be perfect just as it is.

A Quick and Easy Meditation for Daily Practice

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Meditation

Many people believe that meditation is a hard practice to develop. The truth is that it’s easy to do provided you follow a few simple rules and make the effort to try do it regularly for 5 to 20 minutes a day.

Meditation offers many health benefits, and relieves a range of physical and mental issues, such as

  • stress
  • lack of focus and concentration
  • mood disorders such as depression and anxiety
  • high blood pressure
  • respiratory issues

The main goal of meditation is to calm the mind so it is better able to focus. This is done by watching the breath, and by watching your own mind, the thoughts as they rise and fall.

Start with the breath

Long, deep breaths improve circulation, and send oxygen-rich blood to every part of the body, nourishing it and helping to heal. It allows you to relax and focus.

Start by sitting comfortably in a chair or cross-legged on the floor. Your spine should be straight. If you are sitting in a chair, make sure your feet are flat on the floor.

Begin the meditation by breathing deeply five times, feeling your lungs expand, filling your belly and abdomen with each inhale. When you exhale, use all your muscles to release the air and push it out of your lungs in a controlled manner.

Visualization

After 5 rounds of breathing, picture the next breath you draw in as warm, healing white light. Picture your exhale as black smoke, your negativity, toxins and anything else you want to get rid of because it’s holding you back from living your best life. Take one last inhale and hold it. Feel the positive energy flow through you.

Concentration

Now imagine a fast ocean in front of you. Enjoy how still and peaceful it is. You will probably notice at this point just how busy your mind is, chattering away at you about work, your grocery list, the fight you had with your mom when you were 10 over piercing your ears, or what you are going to have for dinner.

As these thoughts arise, try not to engage with them or follow them. Just observe them. Picture them as ripples or waves on the surface of the ocean. If you don’t ride the wave, the thought will simply disappear as suddenly as it came.

Observing your thoughts in this manner is one of the best ways to stop your ‘monkey mind’, as Buddhist meditators call it, from swinging everywhere and can help you increase your focus and inner peace.