Spiritual Meditation: Techniques & Benefits

Spiritual wellness is an important part of holistic well-being. Spiritual wellness is not the same thing as religious wellness — every human has a spiritual side no matter what faith they practice, if any. But in our increasingly atomized and digitally focused society, it can be tough to feel in tune with nature or to learn helpful spiritual meditation techniques.

Whether you’re a beginner or already a fan of meditation, you’re in luck. Today, let’s go over several key spiritual meditation techniques and the benefits in detail.

Meditation vs. Spiritual Meditation: What Is the Difference?

Before we go further, let’s answer a basic question: what’s the difference between “regular” meditation practice and spiritual meditation? What is spiritual meditation in the first place?

In a nutshell, spiritual meditation is a meditative experience that focuses on cultivating spiritual wellness or a spiritual awakening. Every human has a spiritual side, best described as an eternal and inner sense of self, purpose, and place in the universe.

In contrast, regular meditation, also known as mindfulness meditation, can sometimes focus more on mental calm and wellness in the present moment. While spiritual meditation will also help calm the mind, the point is more focused on emotional and spiritual healing and balance.

How Can I Experience the Benefits of Meditation?

Find the Right Place

For any spiritual meditation technique to be effective, it needs to occur at the right location. Fortunately, you can meditate and receive spiritual benefits anywhere, provided you are comfortable at that place. Some of the best places to engage in spiritual meditation include:

• Your bedroom
• A park
• A deck or patio
• Your living room

For the best results, choose a calming place and get into a comfortable position. You should try to limit distractions from daily life, especially those of the electronic variety. Turn off the TV and your cell phone if needed, and find a quiet place where you can center yourself and pay attention to your mental health and meditative state.

Choose the Right Time

Similarly, you will benefit if you pick the right time to engage in spiritual meditation practice. For many people, this is right after waking up or shortly before bed, but you can meditate whenever it feels most comfortable and beneficial for you.

Meditating shortly before bed is often ideal since spiritual meditation calms the mind and can help you sleep more easily. It may provide benefits for stress reduction, self-awareness, and emotional processing of everyday life.

Get Comfortable

The best spiritual meditation techniques require personal comfort. You need to be able to turn off your sense of body awareness to some extent and focus on your inner self. That means physical distractions or discomforts need to be removed or alleviated as much as possible.

If you plan to meditate on the floor, do so with a cushion so you can sit comfortably. Alternatively, sit with a cushion against the wall so your back will be comfortable throughout the experience. Try to wear loose, comfy clothes, and don’t try to meditate while you are still hungry or thirsty.

Consider Music or Ambient Sounds

Found your spot? Got comfy? 

Now it’s time to set the scene for your spiritual meditation. Many people find it helpful to play gentle music or an audio track with ambient sounds, like rainfall, crickets, or other natural soundscapes.

Music and ambient sound can calm the mind and body and help you focus your thoughts on your inner soul. As an added bonus, many meditative soundtracks are just long enough for a solid meditation session, usually anywhere between five minutes and 20 minutes long. 

Fortunately, there are lots of soundtracks designed for this purpose explicitly. You can look on YouTube or purchase tracks from artists, depending on your preferences.

If you choose to play music online, just make sure you have an ad blocker working or that the music won’t be interrupted by an advertisement. Nothing can take you out of your spiritual meditation experience faster!

Focus on Breath

Sit on your cushion or elsewhere and cross your legs (or otherwise get comfortable). Play your audio track if you have selected one, and close your eyes.

The purpose of spiritual meditation is to reconnect with your spiritual center, which will help you feel more relaxed and centered than before. It’s easy to get distracted by our day-to-day routines, and modern society constantly bombards the mind with new information inputs.

To that end, close your eyes and focus on taking deep breaths. You don’t have to breathe to a set cadence or rhythm. Just listen to your breath, sense how it feels coming in and out of your body, and let your mind enter higher consciousness.

Reflect on Yourself

As you meditate, acknowledge all your thoughts and allow them to turn your mind’s eye inward gradually. For some, it helps to imagine a light or other metaphorical object at the body’s core. Feel its warmth or presence and let it draw you inward and deeper to a state of centeredness.

It’s okay to be “selfish” during spiritual meditation! The point is to connect with your inner soul and to remove your awareness from the hustle and bustle of your mind to some extent. Just try not to let your mind fixate on anxieties or worries that permeate your thoughts throughout the day.

This is your time to immerse yourself in spiritual enlightenment. If it is your first time practicing this type of meditation, you can choose to follow a guided meditation online.

Choose a Prayer

As your meditation session concludes (either in time with your music or based on some other time or you set), you can choose to say a prayer to wrap up the spiritual experience. The prayer doesn’t have to be based on religion, although it can be if that feels right to you.

The prayer just has to be a word or phrase that your mind will learn to associate with spiritual restfulness and wellness. It can be an expression of gratitude to the universe, an expression of gratitude to yourself, a reference to a spiritual tradition or concept, or anything else.

The prayer is there to acknowledge that you connected with yourself spiritually and to mark the occasion in your mind as distinct from your other activities. It might sound silly, but it really will help your spiritual meditation sessions feel more impactful and important, especially as you practice. 

Practice – Don’t Give Up

The best technique for spiritual meditation is to meditate frequently. As with any skill, you’ll become better at spiritual meditation as you practice it. Lots of new meditators don’t know what to expect and don’t find spiritual meditation to be very beneficial, at least at first.

That’s because the brain has to be trained to let go of busy thoughts and concerns focused on the external world. As your mind learns the benefits and ways of spiritual meditation, you’ll find it easier to slip into a blissful, peaceful state. Then, more of your meditation sessions will be relaxing and restorative.

Give yourself at least a week of regular spiritual meditation sessions before deciding whether it’s right for you, one way or the other.

What Are the Benefits of Spiritual Meditation?

Spiritual meditation can bring many physical and mental benefits to your life. For example, when you practice and eventually master spiritual meditation, you might notice mental benefits like:

• Better control over your emotions and less reactivity
• A stronger or more balanced sense of self or being. This might help you discover your dreams or come up with a new direction for your life.
• A sense of inner calm and peace that remains so even if exterior circumstances become stressful
• Boosted creativity
• More self-esteem and self-confidence
• Visualization of goals

Spiritual meditation can improve your physical wellness in a variety of ways, including:

• Less physical stress or anxiety. You might find that spiritual meditation lowers how much cortisol flows through your body, which is a critical stress hormone.
• Improved pain management or less discomfort. This could be due to the release of endorphins: feel-good hormones that your body might release when it becomes used to spiritual meditation.
• Improved sleep. As spiritual meditation calms the mind and body, you might find that your sleep is more restorative or that it’s easier to go to sleep after a hectic day.

Given all these benefits, there’s no reason not to try some of the spiritual meditation techniques mentioned above. Even if you start slow, a little bit of spiritual meditation could do wonders for your well-being in more ways than one.

Summary

Spiritual meditation is a great way to get started on the path to better mental and emotional health. At 1AND1, we’re dedicated to helping people discover more aspects of holistic wellness, including helping them learn good strategies to deal with life’s challenges.

That’s why we have a variety of other detailed guides to help you learn to meditate, take care of your diet, and much more. Check out 1AND1’s wellness and health guides today.

Sources:

A reason to believe | American Psychological Association

Meditation: Process and effects | PMC

Meditation Programs for Psychological Stress and Well-being: A Systematic Review and Meta-analysis | NCBI