These 4 Types Of Exercise For Meditation Offer Incredible Benefits

Meditation is already very powerful from spiritual and overall well-being perspectives. What can possibly make them more powerful? Exercise for meditation can actually increase its power and your potential for growth. 

First, we will explore how exercise for meditation can help you reap more benefits from your meditation practice. Then we will explore the three categories of meditation exercises. 

Try this breath awareness guided exercise for meditation:

What Is Meditation Exercise?

Before that, let’s understand what these exercises are for meditation. When we think about exercise, all that comes to mind is an activity of some sort. An activity to improve yourself in that particular area. For example, a math exercise will help you become better at solving math. You are strengthening your ability to solve math problems by doing math exercises.

Meditation exercises help us meditate better and achieve more from meditation. For example, there are different types of mindfulness meditation exercises to help you become more mindful. 

There are many visualization meditations that help us in many different ways. We are going deeper into understanding how meditation exercises can help us. As we go further in this blog post, we will also look into what meditation exercises do for us.

How Exercise For Meditation Help Us Get The Most Out Of Meditation?

Meditation is more than enough on its own, but sometimes it can be difficult to stay consistent. Meditation exercises make them easier and more interesting. 

If you have anxiety and do mindfulness exercises. You are likely to see an instant effect on how you feel. On the other hand, if you are not able to feel better after meditating, you wouldn’t want to meditate again or often. 

In case you are a beginner, exercises for meditation can help you get the best out of it. If you meditate regularly, then it can give you something you can look forward to each day.

Let’s look at how else meditation exercises can help you.

• Instant relief from anxiety: Many mindful exercises can help. You will be able to feel relief from anxiety instantly. Many breathing meditation exercises can also help with this.
• Allow you to avoid job burnout: Burnout is real. Simple meditation exercises can help a lot to recover from burnout and avoid burnout. Suppose you are already feeling burned out but still wish to work. Try mindfulness exercises between your work breaks.
• It can incredibly help with mood swings: Mood swings can happen to all of us. Do a quick meditation exercise whenever you feel irritable. Simple two-minute meditation exercises can change a lot. 
• Help you feel instantly better when you are sick: You don’t need to force yourself to feel better. When we get sick, it feels like we can’t do much. Instead of looking for how to get better within 24 hours, try meditating and feeling a little better at a time. 
• Make it easier to shift into a positive mind space faster: Our mind is a real place. If you are not in positive head space. Even getting out of bed and brushing your teeth sometimes. Having a few go-to meditation exercises can help a lot during those times.
• It can become easier to stay calm throughout the day: Being able to stay calm is a real power. We don’t want to be reacting throughout the day. Meditation exercises like counting your breath backward. Taking a number of deep breaths. 
• Help with hypertension: The number one cause of hypertension is stress. mindfulness exercises can incredibly reduce the amount of stress we experience daily.

Related: Best Direction For Meditation: Effects, Benefits, And Alternatives

4 Types Of Exercise For Meditation We Recommend 

These meditation exercises can be done anytime, anywhere, because they are that easy. You can choose to prefer one exercise over the other depending on your goal for the mindfulness meditation exercise.

You can also add your variations to make mindfulness meditation exercises more comfortable for yourself. These exercises are meant to help increase focus and immediately bring a sense of calm. That’s the only important thing you need to keep in mind.

Mindful Awareness Exercise 

You could be eating food, but there is a possibility that you are still somewhere else. You could be taking a bath, but it’s possible that you are in an argument with someone. 

This is what not being mindful looks like during our day. We leave our bodies on autopilot whenever we can. We don’t feel the need to pay as much attention to things that are not challenging enough. 

It will only take 5 minutes of mindful awareness exercise for mindfulness meditation to become a habit for you. 

Let’s look at the ways you can practice awareness exercises easily throughout the day.

Mindfully Eating Your Food: An average person mostly eat three times a day. We all can at least have one meal when we practice awareness. 

Food is in front of you; look at how beautifully it’s prepared. Look at the steam and smell the aroma. Experience the texture and taste of the food as you are chewing. Be there and be present to experience the food and the love it’s been prepared with. 

Practicing this awareness exercise will help you make better food choices. It can also help you maintain or lose weight if that’s your goal. It will always be easier to stop eating when you are full.

During Shower Or Bath: This is the most common will be misused time. We spend hours taking showers or baths without being mindful. Shortly long baths and showers feel very relaxing and comforting. The problem is more important than not. We let our minds wander instead of experiencing relaxation. 

It is also understandable you cannot always be mindful when you wake up and get ready for the office, and you are already running late. Still being able to feel the temperature of the water touching your skin for 2 minutes can do wonders. 

During showers, fragrances of soap and body washes are also things we can focus our attention on. It can feel very refreshing and energizing if you are present. 

Starting your day with a mindful awareness exercise will repair you stay mindful throughout the day.

Breathing Exercises For Meditation

Breathing mindfulness exercises of the best for getting rid of nervousness and anxiety in an instant. 

Earlier, we talked about how quickly mindfulness meditation exercises can help you shift into a positive headspace. Breathing mindfulness exercises can do that for us easily. 

We all can recall at least one exam where we felt our hands shaking and sweating. Even today, a lot of the time, we experience that same thing but for different reasons. It could be a very important meeting you are preparing for. 

It’s not just for anxiety or nervousness. There can be people around you who agitate you. Doing a 1-minute breathing exercise can reduce anxiety and increase cognitive functions. 

Let’s look at what these breathing mindfulness exercises are:

Diaphragm Breathing Exercise: One of the best ways to increase the amount of oxygen while being mindful. 

Steps For Diaphram Breathing:

1. This is best done when sitting down. 
2. Sit down on a chair or anything comfortable.
3. Place one hand over your chest and another hand on your abdomen. 
4. Take a deep breath and inhale as deeply as possible till you feel your abdomen expanding as well as your chest. 
5. Exhale slowly through your mouth until you feel that you have exhaled the entire carbon dioxide out of your body. Continue to take a few deep breaths.

This will lower your heart rate and increase oxygen in your blood. This can also help reduce stress and muscle tension within a few minutes. 

Diaphragm breathing exercise is also great for GI patients for reducing stress caused by the condition of GI. 

Alternate Nostril Breathing: You will be inhaling and exhaling through one nostril alternatively. This is another easy and interesting breathing exercise for meditation. 

This is a type of Pranayam. A breathing exercise used in Yoga. There are numerous benefits to doing this. 

If you experience hiccups, that can also be treated with this breathing exercise. 

Steps For Alternate Nostril Breathing Exercise: 

1. It’s important to sit comfortably while keeping your spine straight and aligned. 
2. Now the tricky part, take your right hand close to the nose and, using your thumb, close your right nostril.
3. Now inhale with your left nostril, and take a deep breath. 
4. Hold your breath and close the left nostril with any finger while lifting your thumb from the right nostril. 
5. Now gently exhale through your right nostril. 
6. Continue to alternate taking deep breaths, inhaling and exhaling through both nostrils one after the other. 

It’s sufficient to do the alternate breathing for 3-5 minutes. 

There are many scientific benefits of breathing meditation practices. It can help lower blood pressure and reduce fear and anxiety. It can also improve breathing.

It’s not a necessity to sit down on the floor. You can actually do this breathing exercise anywhere. It doesn’t matter how your legs are positioned. The only thing that matter is the position of your spine. The position of your spine matters because it makes breathing with one nostril easier compared to lying down.

Visualization Exercise

A visualization is always a good tool and a great meditation exercise. It is especially good for taking you from a negative space to a positive space. There are no limits to how and when you can visualize. You could be sitting in your parked car in your driving seat and visualize. 

The only rule is that visualization should make you feel good and happy. Suppose the thought and your mind are growing your visualization in the negative direction. In that case, you can try some different kinds of mindfulness exercises. Or a different kind of visualization exercise. 

Let’s take a look at the two types of visualization exercises you can do anywhere.

Black Board Visualization: This is especially best for those who are not good with vivid visualizations. 

You don’t need to do a lot; gently close your eyes and imagine a blackboard right in front of you. You can visualize numbers from 10 to 1 appearing on the blackboard. Once a number appears on a blackboard, you slowly erase it with a duster. 

You are not in the best mood, or you just want to calm down. This can be a go-to visualization exercise.

A Scenic visualization: Another very calming meditation exercise. It is very easy to do for those who have a vivid imagination. It can also be very rewarding in terms of improving your mood. 

There are no particular rules to what you can visualize in this exercise. The only rule is to follow where your heart feels safe and positive. You can stop whenever you feel that there is a somewhat negative feeling entering your mind. 

Think about your favorite movies that make you happy and positive. You can visualize a few scenes from there. 

You can also focus on a tiny light growing, and it will grow till all you can see is white light. Then from there, imagine a gateway through which you are entering a beautiful garden. Where the sun is shining, and you can feel the warmth. 

If you are great with imagination, you will be able to feel the floor underneath your feet. Notice all the other tiny detail of the visualization. Pay attention to all those detail and experience yourself being in the brief moment there.

This can be especially beneficial to avoid burnout if you do it during your breaks.

5 Sense Awareness Exercise For meditation

Using your Five Senses for awareness and being in the present is all this mindfulness meditation exercise is about. If you have been feeling extremely anxious and want to relax immediately. In that case, focusing your sensors on the present moment is the best option. 

How To Do Five Sense Awareness Exercise: 

1. Sense Of Sight: Focus your eyes on something colorful in your room for a few seconds. 
2. Hearing: Now gently close your eyes and try to listen to and distinguish between all the sounds around you. Focus as much as you can on distinguishing between the sound for a few seconds. 
3. Sense Of Smell: There is always something to sniff around us. It’s important that it’s something pleasing to you. You can sniff the perfume from your wrist, or you can sniff your hair if possible. If there is nothing around that you can think about, then you can sniff a diary or stationery. They always smell pleasant and nostalgic for some reason. 
4. Touch: Touch something that has texture, and you can really focus on it. If nothing is around, then you can mindfully feel the fabric you are wearing. Wooden surfaces are also a good option. Just make sure it’s not rough and splintery. 
5. Taste Something: It can just be water that you taste. If you can get something to drink or eat your favorite snack and then that’s beautiful. In case you can’t get a hand on your favorite drink or snack, then water is good enough.

Final Thoughts

There are plenty of mindfulness meditation exercises you can try. All of them have different techniques for different situations. Each one of them offers a variety of different benefits for everyone. 

We definitely recommend trying these four types of meditation exercises. Apart from these, many more guided mindfulness exercises are available on the Enhanced Meditation app. You can download and sign up for free and try the guided meditations at your convenience.