Our minds are in a permanent state of action, always racing around erratically, constantly begging you to stimulate it, to think something, to do something, despite all our attempts to truly center ourselves, to meditate and to be content with zero activity.

Discover 7 popular types of meditation practices and learn how to cultivate awareness and perspective. From mindfulness to loving-kindness, explore different techniques for observing thoughts and feelings without judgment.

Zazen, a form of seated meditation is at the very heart of Zen practice. To be enlightened by the ten thousand things is to recognize the unity of the self and all things. The Buddha sat in meditation to realize his enlightenment, for 2,500 years this meditation tradition has continued, passed down to us from generation to generation. The essential aspects of zazen are fairly easy to communicate.

Meditation can certainly be challenging, and even more so if we are uncertain as to why we are doing it. It can seem very odd to sit there just listening to the incessant chatter in our head, and we easily get bored if we do nothing for too long, even if it’s only 10 minutes.

Zazen meditation can be used at any time when you feel the need to 'unplug' yourself from the world and focus on self-care and inner harmony, taking you to a place of pure relaxation and tranquility and allowing you to experience a time of absolute calm and peace. It is also extremely beneficial to overall mental health, and can be used to completely relax your mind before you sleep.

Zazen is considered the heart of Japanese Zen Buddhist practice. The aim of zazen is just sitting, that is, suspending all judgmental thinking and letting words, ideas, images and thoughts pass by without getting involved in them. This Zen technique is a mindfulness meditation that emphasizes the harmonization of the mind, body and breath.

Zen means doing anything in perfect harmony, even making perfect mistakes, being defeated perfectly and succeeding perfectly. It means that one is mindful of their full action, you detach from the emotion of the moment and become aware or mindful of your actions. Zen is also about letting go, but letting go in perfection, if you know you are going to fail then fail perfectly.

Moon meditation or Trataka, also known as Tratak (pr. trah’-tahk), Trataka means fixed gazing. The object you gaze upon can be just about anything, and Trataka played a major role in Yoga before postures and breathing exercises began to dominate the system in the early 1800’s.

Grounding is a very helpful quality to incorporate into a formal meditation routine. If you feel that you are especially spacey during meditation or that your internal dialogue is overwhelming while doing a mindfulness meditation for instance, try this first as a warm up, and if you want to you can also treat it as a meditation technique in itself.

Sound has an ancient kinship with meditation and healing. Sound healing has ancient roots in cultures all over the world, From the Australian aboriginal tribes who used the didgeridoo to the Tibetan or Himalayan singing bowl. In this mediation I use the AH Mantra that both has a Neuro-Linguistic, Psycho-Linguistic Effect. These two effects release hormones that have a healing, feel-good effect.

Falling asleep during meditation is very common and if it happens to you once a while you don't need to be too concerned. When we are learning to meditate, we are looking for a balance between focus and relaxation and in the process it is inevitable that from time to time we’ll drift a little too far in either direction. So if staying awakes is a problem here as some 8 that may help.

Mindfulness has become so popular now days because of all the stress and neuroses that we are forced to deal with in our social, work and family environment and this is compounded with the high speed tempo of the information age, so it has become almost commonplace to take the time and chill out, relax or fill the day with mindfulness activates.