Revised & updated on 4-20-26.
Meditation, supported by The Holistic Lifestyle®, is a powerful tool for creating a fulfilling life.
Its inward focus helps increase the balance between your inner and outer worlds allowing you to access your higher Self, or intuition.
Unfortunately, most people spend their entire lives ignoring their inner world except when they sleep.
As a result, they rarely experience the joy and fulfillment associated with a daily meditation practice.
If this is you and you are ready for a change, these 22 tips and insights will help you turn things around.
1. How Meditation Restores Balance
Our lives play out in a relative field that moving back and forth from a positive polarity to a negative one
One moment you may be enjoying the joys of a cool breeze on a hot morning. But then you learn you will be late to work thanks to an unexpected traffic jam and your mood turns negative.
Daily ups and downs like these can pull you out of the present moment, sap your energy and promote a life that is dominantly negative.
The key to living a fulfilling life in spite of the ups and downs is to increase your self-awareness by bringing balance between the positive and negative polarities.
Meditation helps create that balance by directing your attention inward. Now you can access the subtle part of you that is the source of your inspiration, intuition and creativity.
The Holistic Lifestyle® supports your meditation practice with simple strategies to help increase your balance even more.
2. Why is meditation important?
There are many reasons to adopt a meditation practice.
It reduces stress and offers a variety of related and scientifically proven health benefits such as improved heart health and reduced blood pressure and blood sugar.
It also helps balance your thoughts and emotions and increase your holistic awareness.
3. How Long Should You Meditate?
A general answer is: "As long as you are comfortable."
If you can meditate for 15 minutes, do so. If you can meditate for an hour, do that instead.
Our primary in-home meditation program, called The Recognitions Program, uses one-hour meditation sessions.
Alternatively, our Synchronicity Tranquility™Program, features 30 minute meditations, but you can start with as little as 10 minutes and gradually increase your time.
To decide what is best for you, determine your peak level of tolerance and start there.
- Begin by meditating for 15 to 30 minutes a day.
- Observe your experience and notice how you feel. It may help to record your impressions in a journal.
- If the session feels too long, back off, or even skip a day.
- Meanwhile, choose a contemplative walk in the park instead.
Or take advantage of the free facilitation available from one of Synchronicity's long term meditators.
4. How often should I meditate?
You should meditate every day, and if more than once a day works for you, do that instead.
Being regular in your practice generates momentum and makes your experience feel natural and effortless.
But don't forget to pay attention to your peak level of tolerance.
The best advice is to move forward at a steady pace.
Then pay attention to the amount of daily meditation that allows you to comfortably maintain your balance and your expanding self-awareness.
5. Do I need to meditate for years before experiencing the benefits?
Some benefits of meditation may be immediately noticeable such as:
- A reduction in stress, which you can observe by closing your eyes and focusing within.
- A softer, more peaceful and positive daily experience.
- A natural increase in your innate happiness and joy associated with regular practice.
You can intensify meditation's impact by simultaneously flowing positive feelings, such as gratitude and love.
6. Do I need to live as a monk in order to experience bliss and peace?
The answer is No.
You can enjoy a very profound meditative journey as part of your current, chosen lifestyle.
Just be regular in your practice.
Master spiritual teacher, Master Charles Cannon, developed High-Tech Meditation® so people in the modern world can experience meditation's benefits while living active lives.
7. Is meditation suitable for children?
Meditation suits everyone.
For children, it is especially helpful for fostering normal brain development that will be beneficial to them as they mature.
Our Beginners Guide to Meditation describes research showing the effectiveness of meditation and its impact on the brain and its development.
8. What sitting position is best for meditation?
For best results, sit with your back straight without back support.
You may sit on a chair or cross-legged on a cushion if that is comfortable for you.
If not, experiment a little.
Try different positions, then choose the one that is most comfortable and that produces the calmest experience.
9. Why do people say some meditation positions are better than others?
There is some truth to these claims.
However, for most people, the difference in your experience is not significant enough to matter.
Ideally, it is best to remain alert, attentive and wakeful, so your life energy can flow through you unencumbered.
Slouching can restrict energy flow, and sitting with back support can induce sleep.
On the other hand, sitting with a straight back, supports the upward flow of your life energy during the entire meditation.
Fortunately, life energy is intelligent.
When it wants to flow upwards it naturally shifts your position.
10. Can I lie down while meditating?
Lying down from the beginning of your meditation session may cause you to fall asleep.
If you are a beginner, it is best to avoid lying down at all.
For advanced meditators, lying down can be effective when meditating for long periods of time.
If you meditate for an hour or more, sit for at least an hour. Then lie down and enjoy a period of integration.
The intention, when meditating, is to remain as wakeful as you can throughout the entire session.
11. Sometimes I fall asleep when I meditate. Is this a problem?
As your meditative journey progresses, you will experience new levels of consciousness.
These levels are associated with increasing holistic power and you may experience what is termed "absence."
However, this experience is not sleep. Consciousness is simply managing your process until you have integrated your new level of power and become more wakeful again.
It's all a matter of managing the peak experience of meditation in a way that is tolerable for you
12. What is absorption?
The experience of absence during meditation is termed absorption.
The level of consciousness you access determines the type of absorption you experience. These experiences have different names in the different wisdom traditions.
As you continue to meditate, you integrate these new levels of consciousness. This is a natural process.
When you have been absent, celebrate and be grateful. And when you are able to remain wakeful, celebrate and be grateful.
All experience is valid. Eventually, you will be able to access very subtle levels of consciousness and maintain wakefulness even while in deep absorption.
13. Can I meditate after eating?
It is best to meditate on an empty stomach.
If you meditate while your body is digesting food, you may experience falling asleep because some of your energy is consumed in the digestion process.
However, if you have no other time to meditate, it is better to do so after eating than not at all.
Just remember to sit upright without back support to cultivate wakefulness.
14. Is guidance or a coach necessary?
A meditation coach can be useful to help you successfully cultivate a meditation practice.
In the beginning, meditation can be confusing.
Many people stop simply because they do not understand the experience they are having.
A meditation coach can:
- Assist you to understand your experience.
- Help you see when you are stuck and suggest ways to address issues you may experience.
- Point you in the right direction as needed.
- Empower you.
15. Do affirmations or mantras help?
Yes, they are most helpful and there is a vast philosophical system behind them.
Affirmations and mantras are techniques of balance that can be powerful when you choose truthful, life-affirmative statements.
However, just repeating them is not enough and will have minimal effect.
You must also simultaneously feel the experience of the affirmation.
For example, as you affirm love or gratitude, access your heart and engage your feelings of these emotions at the same time.
Doing so helps create the balance essential to holistic awareness expansion.
16. Sometimes when I meditate, I notice that I don't sleep as long. Why?
This experience indicates your wakefulness has expanded to the point that you are actually aware you are sleeping.
However, the mind confuses this state with being awake.
This is very similar to the deep states of meditation and absorption discussed above and is actually the same process, but in a different context.
Notice that you feel completely refreshed in the morning.
If this happens, flow with it.
17. What are the chakras?
The chakras are the energy centers (or vortices) within your body.
Many wisdom traditions suggest human beings have seven major energy centers beginning at the base of the spine and ending at the crown of the head.
As Kundalini moves up your spine, it activates each center in turn releasing the energy it contains, integrating it into your being.
Once all seven energy centers are open and activated, you will experience the wholeness and fulfillment of a fully integrated human being.
18. Do I need to be celibate to move forward on my spiritual path?
No, you do not need to be celibate.
At a certain point in the evolutionary process, containment of the sexual energy naturally unfolds. It is important to understand that sexual energy for both men and women is part of Kundalini energy.
When it is released in sexual experience, some of it is lost.
Containment preserves it for spiritual evolution.
For people on the spiritual journey who want to maintain maximum Kundalini actualization, it helps to practice containment in some way, even if in a relationship.
19. How can I open the chakras?
The opening of your chakras happens naturally and without effort on your part.
Most importantly, don't try to open them and force the Kundalini energy to actualize.
Instead, maintain your daily meditation and holistic lifestyle practice and allow everything to naturally unfold.
Trying to force the experience is counter-productive and blocks progress of the meditative journey.
Meditation is about wakefulness and being present in the moment. It is not about making something happen.
Trying to do so takes you out of the moment and diminishes your balance.
Some people spend a lifetime trying to make the heart or third eye open while not realizing if they just let go and trust, consciousness will appropriately orchestrate the experience.
20. Are there any shortcuts I can take?
The meditative process is a progressive journey to wholeness and fulfillment. It does not happen overnight.
Don't listen to people who promise instant enlightenment or shortcuts to holistic experience.
You can however increase the precision of your practice.
As an example, High-Tech Meditation® increases balance and promotes efficiency in the meditative process.
- It balances the left and right hemispheres of the brain
- Decelerates the frequency of brainwaves and entrains a meditative brainwave profile.
- Promotes more expanded states of consciousness without the need to go to a cave or become a monk.
- Allows those of us living in the modern world to enjoy a meditation experience once only possible for the most dedicated meditators.
21. My mind keeps thinking when I try to meditate. What am I doing wrong?
Thinking is not doing anything wrong. Yet, this is an important question because it sometimes causes people to stop meditating.
Meditation is about wakefulness, being in the present moment, being a witness of what is happening.
When your mind is thinking, simply notice it.
Contemplate this.
When you say to yourself, "My mind is thinking," who is actually speaking?
It is the part of you that originates from another level, a level that is always watching.
In the beginning, this is subtle and may be difficult to notice.
As you progress, however, this witnessing level of your multi-dimensional being becomes stronger and more pronounced.
The mind will never go away. It will always be the mind.
With practice, though, you can increase the dominance of your witnessing consciousness.
22. Try using a focusing technique to create balance and mental stillness.
With Synchronicity’s Recognitions and Tranquility Programs (as with all Synchronicity's meditation soundtracks) you can listen to the music and return your attention to it if your mind starts to wander.
Your ability to focus will also be enhanced by the sonic technology embedded in all Synchronicity meditation soundtracks.
Other techniques include:
- Observing your breath
- Saying affirmations
- Repeating mantras
It doesn't matter which you use, as they are all equally effective.
When your mind becomes balanced and dominantly still you can be more fully present.
You can drop the technique and just be wakeful in the moment.
As soon as the mind becomes active again, resume the technique, repeating this practice as needed.
In time the need for focusing techniques diminishes.
However, the idea that your mind will become totally silent and still is a myth.
What you give is what you get.
The more you meditate the more you will experience its transformative power and enjoy the positive life changes it brings.
If you are a beginner, a lapsed meditator ready to try again, or a long time meditator who wants to enhance their practice give Synchronicity's High-Tech Meditation a try:
- Download our free soundtrack.
- Enjoy a 10 day free trial of daily High-Tech Meditation with the Synchronicity Tranquility™ Program
- Enroll in The Recognitions Program with High-Tech Meditation and The Holistic Lifestyle® support.
Then enjoy the profound differences meditation can make in your life.