Meditation yoga comes in many forms, but all these aim to highlight the mind and body awareness of the practitioner. The goal is to get to the point of awareness and mindfulness at the same time.
Yoga meditation helps you relax, and each yoga session brings you closer to self-awareness while reducing stress and help in regulating your blood pressure.
What is yoga meditation? What are mindfulness meditation techniques, including guided yoga meditation, Sahaja yoga meditation, hatha yoga, and more?
If you are also looking for the answers to these questions and more, let us help raise your awareness about the meditation practice in yoga, including its benefits and techniques.
Yoga Meditation – Brief Definition
Because of the many benefits of yoga as a mindfulness practice, many people interchange meditation and yoga. Some even think yoga and meditation are the same.
However, they are not, but the two concepts are connected.
Yoga originated in India as a spiritual practice that uses meditative postures, physical exercise, and breath control. Yoga practice uses different poses called asanas to help you achieve a divine connection with the bigger world.
In Sanskrit, the term yoga means union. Some practitioners define yoga as reaching self-awareness by doing poses with your whole body with a clear and calm mind.
On the other hand, meditation is part of the yoga practice, which is also called dhyana. It involves mental exercises that help you connect to a bigger universe and reach a higher state of mindfulness and awareness.
You’d experience the connection with the universe when you reach a peaceful state in doing meditation. This meditative state is called savasana.
If you have tried any yoga practice, either online, on your own, or with the help of an experienced teacher, you may already be aware of the Corpse Pose. This yoga pose is also called savasana, an essential part of yoga meditation.
As the name suggests, the pose requires you to lie down like a corpse. This will bring you to an ultimate relaxation mode.
In 2017, yoga held the top spot in people’s preferred physical and mental health practice in the US. It was closely followed by meditation.
So how are they different?
The differences between yoga meditation and the other types of meditation vary depending on the type of yoga being practiced. However, practitioners often perform yoga meditation after finishing a yoga sequence.
Meditation becomes the final step or the cooling phase of the yoga practice. It’s like exercising and boosting physical health initially, and ending the practice by bringing awareness through mindfulness as you breathe, focus, and relax.
Meditation helps in balancing your chakras and energy centers. It helps stabilize your breathing, emotions, brain mechanisms, physical sensations, blood pressure, and stress hormones.
Yoga Meditation – The Benefits
Mindfulness meditation and yoga require focus, a focal point, and extreme concentration. The goal is to connect to the universe by reaching a state of awareness as you relax through breathing, meditating, and overcoming all negative emotions.
Yoga meditation offers many benefits, including the following:
1. You become more resilient
Yoga meditation is a mindfulness meditation that is both a mental health and physical practice. The lack of movement brings awareness, relaxation, and physical strength.
Through continued practice, you become more resilient both inside and out. Physically, you feel like you are always ready to face any challenges, and mentally, spiritually, and emotionally, you feel like a stronger and better person handling problems and life scars.
2. Improves your mood
You tend to develop self-compassion through meditation and yoga practice. This is a result of having a higher sense of self-awareness.
By loving yourself more, you deal with negative emotions more effectively. It also becomes easier for you to reduce stress and deal with sadness.
3. Slows down the aging process
According to studies, different poses or yoga meditation techniques, such as Sahaja yoga meditation, savasana, and more, improve your telomere length. Telomeres are building blocks of DNA that become shorter as people get older.
This means that aging can be slowed down if the process of the telomeres gets shorter and can also be slowed down. This is where yoga meditation can help since it positively impacts the DNA nucleotides and, in the process, gives an anti-aging effect.
4. Lower blood pressure
The meditative experience, deep breath, and awareness help regulate your blood pressure and maintain a healthy overall well-being.
5. Quality sleep
Different meditation practices, such as Sahaja yoga meditation, moving meditation, Vinyasa yoga, restorative yoga, mindfulness meditation, and more, promote relaxation and help you fall asleep faster. Yoga meditation effectively deals with chronic pain, breath control, and stress levels, leading to quality rest and deeper sleep.
6. Promotes mental and physical relaxation
Yoga helps you control your anxiety and stress through breathing and exercising all your body parts. As you relax, you become calm and develop a higher sense of awareness of the world around you.
You also activate your parasympathetic nervous system when you’re not stressed. This results in more benefits to your life, health, and well-being.
7. Healthy brain
The breathing techniques in yoga meditation, whether you’re doing morning meditation, Sahaja yoga meditation, or any mindfulness or awareness meditation, boost the parts of the brain that make your willpower stronger. Yoga can also help you think clearer and improve your mental health.
8. Deals with depression and anxiety
A systematic review of the practitioners of Sahaja yoga meditation found that it can significantly decrease depression and anxiety. The Sahaja Yoga meditation wakes the energy center in the body or your chakras.
Sahaja yoga meditation is a yoga meditation adapted from the Kundalini technique. Sahaja yoga meditation is effective in boosting your GABA levels or gamma-aminobutyric acid, which is a neurotransmitter.
Low levels of GABA often lead to depression and anxiety.
9. Boosts your mental health
Many studies have shown that those who practice yoga meditation have better mental health and improved mood and mindfulness than the non-practitioners.
10. Can be easily done
Yoga meditation isn’t complicated. You can do it or squeeze it into your hectic day no matter where you are.
It’s a good idea to learn more about it if you are always in a hurry or busy, which prevents you from doing other physical or mental exercises. You can do this kind of meditation, even for a few minutes, no matter where you are.
Yoga Meditation – How to Get It Done?
Unlike the usual yoga practice that makes you calm while exercising, you don’t have to move your body in yoga meditation. You can practice meditation either lying down or sitting.
No matter how you do it, the goal is to let your feelings and thoughts pass without judging them. Feel calm while breathing deeply with your eyes closed and palms facing upward.
You can practice meditation on your own, but only after you have gained experience on how.
In the beginning, it’s better to attend yoga meditation classes. This way, a meditation teacher can guide you on how to perform yoga meditation properly.
You still need to attend a formal class despite having an experience in any popular form of yoga. They are different, and some newbies tend to fall asleep while meditating.
Yoga meditation can take five minutes or more. It can make your body shake or tingle, especially if you do it after doing physical postures in yoga or other physical exercises.
Looking into the Techniques of Yoga Meditation
Yoga and meditation come in many forms, but they all come with physical and mental health benefits. They can affect your life and emotions positively.
Here’s a look at the most common yoga styles:
Vinyasa yoga
This yoga style is performed using intense and fluid movements that transition from one pose to another.
Hot or Bikram yoga
This yoga style is done in an artificially heated room while doing yoga poses.
Restorative yoga
It allows practitioners to use pillows, blankets, and supportive blocks while performing gentle asanas.
Hatha yoga
This is what basic yoga is commonly called.
It’s best to practice yoga with the guidance of a yoga teacher in the beginning. They will teach you about breathing, awareness, and poses at each session.
As you go along with the yoga practice, your body will feel stronger, and you will develop more balance. You have gained mindful self-awareness once you reach the point when you can balance on one leg at certain yoga movements.
Once you reach this point, you have reached the foundation of yoga meditation.
You can practice your preferred yoga styles and use yoga meditation at the end of each session as a cooling exercise.
Yoga Meditation – The Poses
Here are the different poses you can do in yoga meditation after each yoga session:
Reclining Bound Angle Pose
Lie down with your back on the mat with your knees bent and feet flat on the floor. Gently lift your legs until the soles of your feet are together.
You can then allow your knees to gently fall to the side. You can also keep your knees up by placing support like pillows to ensure they won’t fall.
Hold the pose for five minutes with your palms up and hands down.
Savasana or Corpse Pose
You will lie on the mat with your legs and arms extended. Keep them distanced from your body and your palms up.
You will hold this pose for up to 15 minutes while practicing breath control by breathing deeply.
Final Words
Yoga meditation is a meditation practice usually done at the end of a yoga session. The meditation can last for five to 15 minutes.
Different meditation styles bring awareness and mindfulness. Yoga meditation offers many benefits to your mental health, physical strength, immune system, emotions, body, breathing, and overall health.
It is done along with yoga meditation breathing. You need to learn how to control breathing to help you stay calm and focused during the exercise.
Sweatbox Yoga is the best place to start yoga meditation if you happen to be in Singapore. This yoga studio has the equipment and trained yoga teachers who can guide you from the start until you can confidently do yoga meditation on your own.
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About the Author​
Lynette is fully dedicated to the support and empowerment of the growing community of committed yoga students and teachers. As one of the Lead Instructors for Yoga Teacher Training, she is here to share tips on how to grow your profile as a yoga teacher or build a yoga business either physically or digitally.