A Meditation Must-Have Kit For Beginners
You’ve heard people rave about the power of meditation for years, with the practice becoming integral to the mainstream wellness movement that has slowly consumed our lives over the past few years. I’m here to tell you it’s all for good reason. People have been meditating for over 3,000 years as a way to go beyond the mind and experience inner peace, bliss, and happiness.
Through meditation, you use different techniques to encourage a heightened state of consciousness and focused attention. It is known to help modern day stresses such as insomnia, stress, anxiety, and depression while improving our emotional well-being, increasing self-awareness and improving our attention span. This practice is an all natural and relatively low-maintenance way to promote your mental wellbeing, so why not give it a go?
If it’s your first time meditating, it may feel a bit foreign to sit in silence with your innermost feelings running through your mind. That’s okay and this feeling is completely normal! With regular practice, you’ll begin to reap the benefits of meditation with ease. The mind generally holds several ideas and thoughts at once, but try to focus on one thing at a time.
Are you ready to start meditating? Here’s what you’ll need.
1. A Dedicated Space
All you really need is a peaceful space that you feel comfortable in, with a few other things to make you feel grounded and calm. You may choose to sit on a pillow, bench, chair, or a yoga mat. The most important thing is that you feel comfortable and safe. This space will ultimately set the mood for your meditation session.
2. Calm Lighting
Although I wouldn’t deem it as a necessity, I strongly encourage the use of dim lighting during your practice. A candle, a desk lamp, or a himalayan pink salt lamp (my personal favorite) are great methods to achieving dim, calm light. Dim lighting can help you focus on brightening your inner light within.
3. Crystals and Stones
Crystals and stones are used to help start and maintain your meditation practice, move into deeper states of meditation or connect with a specific intention. Any crystal or stone can be used for meditation. Meditating with different crystals may help you yield different results as they each carry different energies. I love meditating with palm stones because they are smooth and fit comfortably in my hand. Some of my other favorites include rose quartz for channeling self-love, citrine for boosting concentration and mental clarity, and obsidian for protection against negative energy and anxieties.
4. Oils
Much like lighting, scent is a way to set the mood of your meditation space and put yourself in the right mindset. Scents are powerful because your mind associates specific memories or feelings with certain scents. If you consistently use the same oil every time you meditate, your body will soon associate that scent with the calm state that your mind, body, and soul enter when you are meditating. I love using our Aum oil for this purpose, because lavender is the ultimate for calming and soothing my mind and soul.
Aum, more commonly known as "Om," is the original mantra and represents the beginning; the creation of the universe and everything within it. It has been described as symbolizing the conscious or waking state. Aum represents the fact that everything constantly changes, from movement into stillness, from sound into silence, the endless cycle of life. But what even is a mantra?
5. Mantras
A mantra is a syllable, word, or phrase that can be repeated aloud or in your mind during meditation. A mantra can serve as protection against unwanted thoughts or distractions, as a way to reinforce a thought or idea, or simply to strengthen your mind-heart connection. Here are some of my favorite healing mantras that align with the 7 chakras (healing centers in the body) repeat as needed:
Root: I am a divine being of light, and I am peaceful, protected and secure
Sacral: I am a sacred being and embrace pleasure and abundance
Solar Plexus: I am positively empowered and successful in all my ventures
Heart: Love is the answer to everything in life, and I give and receive love effortlessly and unconditionally
Throat: My thoughts are positive and I always express myself truthfully and clearly
Third Eye: I can see the light within every soul and am open to clairvoyance and divine intuition
Crown: I am complete and one with the divine energy
