Articles

Meditation

A very important part of magick and energy working is meditation. Meditation is the act of slowing one's brain activity, accessing a deeper sleep-like consciousness to be more  receptive to controlled thought.

The purpose of this activity is to focus the mind and body. You may clear negative energy and thoughts, direct yourself to find answers to questions, or explore your self-conscious. In this state you may commune with the God/dess or totem animals or do visualizations for magickal workings. During meditation you may heal the body and spirit. Evidence of this mind-body connection has been well-documented as well as the benefits of reducing stress by relaxing and calming yourself.

There have been many suggestions for meditation techniques and everyone probably has their own or their favorite. Here are some suggestions for developing your own. I learned this as a child when I was unable to sleep. I found that the relaxation technique is very conducive to meditation and the more you do the excercise the less time it takes to reach the altered state.

Lay down on a comfortable surface, such as your bed. Relax your body starting at your toes. Feel them relax and the energy drawing up your body. Move slowly up your legs, relaxing, until you feel like dead weight, almost like you can't move. Move toward the center of your chest, or your head, which ever is more comfortable and natural to you.

An alternative to this technique is to picture this energy as waves, or the tide. When you inhale you draw the energy up tightly. When you exhale let it flow back some, but not as fast or as far as when you inhaled. You can also do this sitting in a chair. Instead of moving from your toes, imagine your whole body pulsing with your breath, each inhale draws the energy higher, each exhale, lets just a little back out. With each breath focuss
 more and more.

You can also meditate in a self-hypnosis kind of way. Count backwords very slowly, imagine each number as a different level of consciousness, the more you count down, the deeper you go until you can count no more. Visualize colors or your chakras. Slowly work your way through them, again imagining each color as a deeper state of consciousness.

Remember when you do any of these exercises to carefully bring yourself back to "normal" consciousness. This may be as simple as counting back up, or walking up a flight of stairs, anything that signifies a return to you. After each meditation is is also important that you carefully ground and center yourself to avoid a flighty, disconnected feeling.

There are a lot of benefits to meditation and it is a technique that every witch should practice, It can aid you greatly in magickal, spiritual and mundane undertakings.