How to meditate

I meditate. I'm not the world's best but I try. I'm still learning. I tried a little bit of everything: binaural beats to stimulate specific brainwave patterns, relaxing natural sounds like a waterfall, crickets, the surf, or rain, and talking guided meditations. All are here as free MP3 files ready for you to download.

Meditating is easy and hard. The basic instructions (sit, breath, relax) are straightforward enough. The key? Practice, practice, practice. An alternative approach is to use something like Wild Divine as a tool.

These MP3 meditation files as adjuncts to whatever you're doing now. If you're a beginner, they're great learning aids. If you already sit, think of them as supplemental tools to add depth to your meditations. Try them, share them, come back to them later. Load them onto your iPod or MP3 player. Burn a CD.

There are four types of files here:

1. natural sounds for simple relaxation

2. guided meditations that talk you through

3. binaural beats that evoke specific brainwaves

4. meditation timers of varying intervals

The important thing is to meditate on a regular basis. Sit and meditate each and every day. Make meditation part of your daily routine. Pick a time. It isn't a competition. No one is keeping score. If you play, you win. Just sit and breath. Make it a habit. Here's information about how to meditate.

We all live in our heads too much. We need to stop. Relax. Breath. Repeat. It takes a little practice at first but like anything else in life, the rewards come later and are well worth it.

What's presented here are simple and direct meditation aids. No spiritual teaching being transmitted. No religion being preached. There's nothing subliminal about them or hidden in them. Just the sound patterns as they're described, the sounds as I recorded them. Simple and direct. I made them because I'm a nerd and a software geek. Learning about meditation lead to brainwave patterns and binaural beats can be used to stimulate alpha or theta brainwaves.

My first goal was to relax and focus inwards, shutting out the outside world. A little peace and quiet. I needed to make some space for myself. Brown Inside is a binaural beat based on brown noise. (Personally I like the sound of brown noise better than white noise or pink noise. YMMV) Because the right channel is the inverse of the left channel, the sound appears to come from inside your head. FYI: brown noise, sometimes called random walk noise or drunkard's walk noise, has an energy density at a given frequency inversely proportional to the square of the frequency (1/f^2). 10 minutes. Headphones mandatory.
    Brown 10 Inside (9.1 MB)   (a 30 second sample)

If you download and use these, please send me your feedback. I developed them based on my own personal experiences. I love hearing from people like you. jetcityorange at gmail dot com

I find that meditating isn't just sitting around with your eyes closed doing nothing. I started to meditate as a stress reliever and as part of a plan to lower my blood pressure. Once I learned the Relaxation Respone and experienced meditation, life events lead me to Buddhism. Meditation is integral to Buddhism but it can be practiced religion-free for relaxation, stress relief, to regulate sleep, emotional balance, and overal grooviness.

I truly believe that if more of us meditated the world would be better place. Don't take my word for it, try it yourself.

For more information, please read some of the title on this meditation book list. Buy them or visit your local library.

Thanks and good luck to us all on our paths.