What is the Best Way to Meditate Effectively?

What is the best way to meditate effectively?

Straight away I'll save you time and say it's NSR. It only costs $25 to buy the instruction manual and audio file. I've got no financial link to NSR, I just like it a lot.

There, that's it. You're done here. But if you want to find out more about all this, plus a few other techniques you can try, read on.

Transcendental Meditation (TM)

This is one of the most well-known forms of meditation. It was started in the 1950s by Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, who taught it to the Beatles in the 1960s. It involves effortlessly repeating a mantra silently. This enables your mind and body to get deep rest.

These days it various celebrities practice TM, including:

• David Lynch (film director)
• Ellen (TV presenter)
• Jennifer Ashton (ABC News correspondent)
• Tom Brady (footballer)
• Russell Brand (comedian)
• Sir Paul McCartney (from The Beatles)

The only problem is, it costs quite a lot of money to learn. This is where NSR comes in.

NSR: TM's more affordable cousin

NSR stands for Natural Stress Relief. It is far more powerful than its normal-sounding name would suggest. In fact, it's essentially a much cheaper version of Transcendental Meditation. It was created in 2003 by a former Transcendental Meditation teacher.

It involves the same process of effortlessly repeating a sound in your mind. But you're not given a "special" mantra as with Transcendental Meditation. Instead, everyone is given the same sound to repeat.

I have been doing NSR since 2017, and find it extremely beneficial.

To find out more about NSR meditation, visit the website.

Conscious Mental Rest

This is another meditation technique created by a former Transcendental Meditation teacher. But in this one, there is no sound or mantra to repeat.

Unfortunately, the creator of Conscious Mental Rest has died and his website no longer exists. But after a bit of a search I did find these instructions:

1. Sit comfortably, take a few deep breaths and relax.

2. Find your "Attention Comfort Zone"(ACZ). It is the area where your eyes rest naturally when you close them. Just close your eyes, let go off any control over eye and facial muscles and observe where they rest. ACZ will usually be in the general area right in front of your eyes.

3. Once ACZ is determined, do nothing, AKA just look at that area with "soft, restful, natural gaze"(with eyes closed). Let thoughts, emotions, sensations happen.

4. When you realise that you are *engaged* in a thought (such engagement, would make your eyes drift away from ACZ), just turn your awareness back to the ACZ and rest it there.

5. If a sensation in body, generated via an emotion or a physiological reason that is just too strong to be ignored, turn your awareness to it gently, and rest on it till it weakens or disappears. Then return to being aware of your ACZ.

"Do Nothing" Meditation

This is the simplest form of meditation you can do. It is not really a technique as such. So you could regard it as an anti-meditation meditation technique.

But it turns out that doing nothing is actually beneficial. When you're not intentionally thinking or doing anything, the brain's Default Mode Network kicks in.

So, how do you do this "Do Nothing"?

All you do is sit down and do nothing. Let your mind do whatever it wants to do. Don't try to do anything, but also don't try to do nothing. Don't make any effort at all. Don't even try to make no effort.

Click here to see Shinzen Young's explanation of the "Do Nothing" technique.

The Headless Way

I'm not sure whether you would class this as a meditation technique as such. It's more of a way to investigate who you really are. It's a visual method of realising yourself as the empty conscious space in which all experiences occur.

It starts with noticing that you cannot see your own face. Here, Richard Lang gives an excellent explanation of it:

You can do the various experiments for free by going to the Headless Way website.

Other forms of meditation

I was going to end this article by listing all the other meditation techniques I know. But I've decided not to do that. I don't want to give you too many unnecessary things to try.

Not all meditation techniques are equal. Sure, any meditation technique is better than no meditation technique. But some techniques are a lot better than others. Why waste time on less effective techniques?

What is the best way to meditate effectively?

If you want one meditation technique that will make the most difference to your life, it's NSR. Go to http://www.natural-stress-relief.com and download the instruction manual and audio file for $25. Then you will learn the easiest and most effective meditation technique I've found.

If you can't afford the $25, just do the Conscious Mental Rest technique as described above.