User:Vale6674/meditation sandbox


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Forms of meditation
Forms of meditation or techniques can be used alone or combined in practices. In this section, some common categories of techniques will be described. Techniques or forms can be classified by how the attention is directed (focused versus open monitoring), by where the attention is directed (to the breath, a concept, or a mantra, for example), by whether the body is moving or fairly still, or by their effect on brain activity or structure. Practices, in turn, can be classified by their techniques, or by their source (a religion, for example).

Focused vs open monitoring meditation
In the West, meditation techniques have sometimes been thought of in two broad categories: focused (or concentrative) meditation and open monitoring (or mindfulness) meditation."One style, Focused Attention (FA) meditation, entails the voluntary focusing of attention on a chosen object, breathing, image, or words. The other style, Open Monitoring (OM) meditation, involves non-reactive monitoring of the content of experience from moment to moment.""Direction of mental attention... A practitioner can focus intensively on one particular object (so-called concentrative meditation), on all mental events that enter the field of awareness (so-called mindfulness meditation), or both specific focal points and the field of awareness."

Focused attention methods
These include paying attention to the breath, to an idea or feeling (such as mettā (loving-kindness)), or to a mantra (such as in transcendental meditation), and single point meditation.

Open monitoring methods
These include mindfulness, shikantaza and other awareness states.

Practices using both methods
Some practices use both techniques, including vipassana (which uses anapanasati as a preparation), samatha/calm-abiding,  and Headspace.

No thought
In these methods, "the practitioner is fully alert, aware, and in control of their faculties but does not experience any unwanted thought activity." This is in contrast to the common meditative approaches of being detached from, and non-judgmental of, thoughts, but not of aiming for thoughts to cease. In the meditation practice of the Sahaja yoga spiritual movement, the focus is on thoughts ceasing. Clear light yoga also aims at a state of no mental content, as does the no thought (wu nian) state taught by Huineng, and the teaching of Yaoshan Weiyan.

Automatic self-transcending
One proposal is that transcendental meditation and possibly other techniques be grouped as an 'automatic self-transcending' set of techniques.

Other typologies
Other typologies include dividing meditation into concentrative, generative, receptive and reflective practices.

Differences in effects of different methods
Evidence from neuroimaging studies suggests that the categories of meditation, defined by how they direct attention, appear to generate different brainwave patterns. Evidence also suggests that using different focus objects during meditation may generate different brainwave patterns.