Calm the mind through breathing meditation

Lately I have been suggesting lot many people to do Meditation and thus this post to suggest it to the world at large. As the human mind is socially conditioned to ask the benefits before doing any activity, here are the benefits of Meditation:
1. First and foremost is much deeper level of relaxation which no form of exercise, massage or entertainment can provide. The amount of calmness it can bring to your stress levels is huge. I have personally experienced this relaxation and calmness even with a few minutes of shallow levels of meditation.
2. The above benefit of relaxation and calmness over period of time brings about greater detachment and poise to our day to day worries. We will surely become more effective in taking decisions with calmer mind than one which is turbulent and reactive to small problems encountered daily.
3. Once the above starts happening, one would surely see much improvement in our health too especially for ones who have stress related disorders or disorders which have gotten aggravated due to stress like blood pressure, diabetes, cold

Process of Meditation
1. Wear most comfortable clothes. Idea is to not have any reason for mind to bring about any kind of thoughts. Discomfort usually draws immediate attention. I like meditating in my night clothes.
2. Find a comfortable place to be seated or even lying down. I like to be seated on a pillow on a carpet with back rested with pillow or wall. Whatever position where bodily discomfort cannot draw attention.
3. Close your eyes. Quite preferred again so that attention is not drawn away from meditation.
4. Breathe normal and try bringing your focus to breath going in and out. Start to feel the good energy of oxygen coming in and bad energy of carbon di-oxide going out. Feel your lungs expanding when you breath in, stomach coming out due to diaphragm being pushed down. The reverse happening and pushing the bad breath out of the system. While feeling your breathing also notice how musical is this rhythm of life. If possible try inhaling deeper and exhaling also deeper; though avoid putting noticeable effort in it. As much as the natural breathing's tempo allows. With your eyes closed many a times back of your eyelids would seem to change from dense black to fiery red, especially if you are doing this early in morning in sunlight. I love that affect, feels quite surreal. In the meanwhile if any thoughts percolates into your mind, just try to look at the thought without reacting to it. I sometimes think of the thought as an object and even a person and focus away from it, back to breathing. Do not get frustrated with inability to focus away from the thoughts. Keep trying gently to monitor the breathing. For beginners, doing this itself for about 5 minutes and gradually increasing the time by say a minute or two everyday to about 20mins would be quite sufficient. Well, first thing one will notice is that five minutes by the clock can be really very long. Slowly one would also realize that twenty minutes can pass so fast!
5. Also do not just snap out of meditation. I have found that coming out of meditation should also be very gentle process else I actually get a bad headache!! First I slowly reduce the concentration on breathing, then I try to feel my body not by hands but inner consciousness, then try to listen to the activities, noise in the background. Many times I light a dhoop/agarbatti before I start meditation and just feeling the smell of that and where it is coming from etc slowly brings my consciousness back to the real world.

Breathing meditation is considered the most basic of the meditations but with this itself I found so much peace and benefits that I have not considered any other type or further steps in meditation. Maybe I will explore further. Do share with me if any one does a different type and feels it to be much more beneficial. I think I am ready to go to the next stage.

Well at the end I will also like to mention about 'instant meditation' I do many times when I am in tricky situations. Many a times I am in a meeting or at work or stuck at airport or traffic and things are not going the way I like them to be, I do this trick which I have named 'conscious detachment'. I am still listening in to activities or discussion happening but my focus goes a bit higher on my breathing and blanking out the negative thoughts by chanting in mind mantra 'This too shall pass'. Believe me, it works :) Probably the only trick is NOT reacting to a situation many times problem resolves by itself, but to stop one from reacting and making things worse can bring tremendous peace.