Your ultimate guide to online meditation

Meditation is one of the most ancient forms of mental, physical and spiritual health practices. The practice spread to the West thousands of years after it was adopted in the East and is now widely recommended as a stress management tool. The word ‘meditation’ comes from the Latin root word meditatum, meaning ‘to ponder’. This then became the word meditacioun, meaning ‘thought, reflection, study’. Within yogic texts such as the Yoga Sutras of Patanjali, meditation is known as Dhyana, referring to contemplation and a meditative state, leading to self-knowledge and samadhi or ‘bliss’. Meditation can be different for everyone, and today it is thought that over 275 million people practice meditation regularly.

There’s an abundance of research on meditation showing that it can help reduce anxiety, stress and depression. It can help us cultivate more compassion, reduce pain and improve memory, and so much more. As you’ll learn in our guide, there are many different styles of meditation and ways to meditate. There are also a lot of misconceptions when it comes to meditation too! Read on to learn all you need to know about meditation.

According to author and meditation teacher Jeff Foster, meditation can be a powerful way to help us feel a sense of non-duality. Non-duality, he says; “is something you can actually understand with your mind; but you know it with your heart... It’s like when you look out at the ocean, you see hundreds, thousands of waves, of all shapes and sizes, which seem to be very separate from each other. We are like the waves. Every person, every animal, every tree, every drop of rain, every planet. We appear to be separate beings, but actually, we are all expressions of the One Life, the ocean of consciousness. No wave is actually separate from the ocean at all.”