Meditations to Use for Stress Relief

Mindfulness Meditation

Mindfulness meditation involves increased awareness of the present moment. With practice, it can be utilized anywhere and can bring lasting stress relief benefits. This simple meditation technique can be learned quickly and is considered by many to be one of the easiest meditations for stress relief.

There are many mindfulness meditation techniques that can be effective for stress relief and relaxation.

Really, any activity that you perform where you stay fully present, completely and non-judgmentally rooted ‘in the now’ can count as a mindfulness meditation technique and, when practiced regularly, can bring the benefits of meditation to your life.

Chocolate Meditation

The chocolate meditation is one of the most delicious meditations and can be completed in a few minutes. This concentrative meditation allows you to engage many of your senses at once and lose yourself in all of them. 

Loving Kindness Meditation

Loving-kindness meditation is simple to perform and carries many benefits for stress management and general life satisfaction.

As with most meditations, this feel-good meditation technique can be practiced in several ways, and one quite effective version involves focusing on the self, close friends and other loved ones in a specific format.

Music Meditation

Music can affect not only the emotions but our physiology as well. Read about the effects of music.

Using music as a focal point can help you to relax into meditation, can provide a present focus, and can create an enjoyable meditation experience.

Bath Meditation

Bath meditations involve the regular aspects of meditation, but with the soothing surroundings of a bath.

If you need to get clean anyway, why not try a bath meditation?

Body Scan Meditation

When stress strikes, it is common to carry stress in the form of tension in the body. We often feel this tension so commonly that we fail to realize when we are experiencing it and carry tension indefinitely.

Physical tension can lead to increased emotional tension, creating a "feedback loop" of stress. The body scan meditation can help you to get in touch with your physical tension and can help you to release it at the same time.

Walking Meditation

Walking meditation provides the strengths of meditation combined with the benefits of exercise, and has the bonus of being simple to learn and practice, thereby making walking meditation a very useful technique for those new to meditation.

Mantra Meditation

Mantra meditation is one of the simpler meditations to learn and has been proven effective as a stress relief technique.

Some people may feel odd repeating a word aloud, or even under their breath, but for those who enjoy having a focus during practice, mantra meditation can be quite useful. Many mantra meditation techniques have you repeat the mantra silently. It has the added benefit of allowing you to focus on a word whose meaning resonates strongly with you, like, "hope."

Brief Meditation

Research suggests that even brief, 10-minute meditations can have beneficial effects. Shorter sessions can be a great way to relieve stress quickly when you don't have time for a full twenty-minute session.

Second, when paired with regular practice, they can get you back into the place of peace and relaxation similar to what you experience in your regular meditation sessions fairly quickly. This makes them effective and convenient.

Aromatherapy Meditation

Aromatherapy has a number of stress relief benefits. It can also add an extra dimension of pleasantness and relaxation when incorporated into your meditation practice.