'Mindfulness' means a person's awareness of what is happenning. Literally the 'mind' is 'full' of what is happening in contrast to our daily lives where the mind is full of unnecessary inner mind chatter. This is same as Vipassana meditation.
The mind of a normal person is like an uncontrolled monkey jumping from one thought to another. To process all these thoughts a lot of body energy is used. Thus if your mind cease to process thoughts you will be saving a lot of body energy which can be used to cure a lot of ailments in your body. That is why a person who continues to meditate regularly even gets a nice body complexion.
Anapana or concentration on the breath is the best form of meditation.
If you sit down and close your eyes you will notice that your mind is jumping from one thought to another. Even though you want to concentrate on your breath you will find other thoughts also coming in between.
In learning to meditate you must first learn to calm your mind. You do this by following every thought that comes into you mind. You must be like a Manager of a Hotel who stands at the entrance and observes the customers coming in. Without getting attached to the thoughts try to observe them. You will find that a thought comes in and that it goes nowhere and another thought follows it - try following that too - with same results. This way you will find that your thoughts gradually subside. Do not try to force out your thoughts.
Of course do not expect results in one or two days. Practise it for at least 40 minutes every day for at least 2 months you find that you have 'killed' your train of thoughts. I have practised for nearly 2 years and still vagrant thoughts come in.
Thereafter start concentrating on your breath. Notice the breath coming in and going out. You should not concentrate only on the tip of your nose. Notice the breath coming in and thereafter your lungs getting filled and then gradually exhaling the breath.
After you finish that for the day start to think of a person or several persons whom you hate most. Having those people in mind start to think in a compassionate manner "may he be healthy, may he be happy, may he go up in life, may he live long". Keep on doing this for about 10 minutes a day for a few months you will find that you do not get angry even when you have to get angry.
You should be able to get some guidance from the following sites,
1.
http://www.dhamma.org/vipassan.htm/
2.
http://www.meditationexpert.com/ and click on the free articles on yoga meditation - it includes articles on all types of meditations including Christian and Muslim meditation.
Try the following sites to get knowledge of the health benefites.
http://www.meditationexpert.com/health-r…
http://www.meditationexpert.com/health-r…
http://www.meditationexpert.com/health-r…
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