Meditation is when a person uses techniques (including mindfulness) to calm their mind. 

Starting in a seated position and in a quiet location, you slowly try to quiet your inner thoughts. Christian meditation may involve focusing on a piece of scripture. 

Meditation has enormous benefits for your mental health and overall well-being, including:

• Better coping abilities in stressful situations
• Greater self-awareness
• Stronger ability to focus on the present using mindfulness
• Fewer negative emotions
• Improved imagination and creativity
• Greater patience and tolerance
  

To get started, try using this podcast on morning gratitude in your daily meditation practice, which blends a Christian perspective into your gratitude-based meditation.

Who are the most well-known meditation practitioners?

Over the years, meditation practitioners have written much about meditation mindfulness practices. 

This ranges from Eastern mysticism and Buddhist thinkers, such as Thich Nhat Han and his book “The Miracle of Mindfulness,” to Western practitioners, such as Jon Kabat-Zinn and his mindfulness-based stress reduction (MBSR) program. 

MBSR works by combining yoga with mindfulness meditation, and it can produce noticeable health benefits to your psychological well-being.

A Buddhist zen master trained Kabat-Zinn, and he incorporated Buddhist zen teachings into his methods.

Another meditation guru is Sharon Salzberg. In her book, “Lovingkindness: The Revolutionary Art of Happiness,” she says, “Meditation is the ultimate mobile device; you can use it anywhere, anytime, unobtrusively.” 

Meditation can be a powerful force for relieving stress from your life. The key to this is mindfulness.

Mindfulness exercises may include focusing on your breath while doing a full body scan. 

During your body scan, shift your awareness around different parts of your body. When you find a part of your body that is tense, focus your breath on that area until it relaxes.

You may want to use object meditation to start. To do this, focus all your senses on an object (such as a piece of fruit). You focus your attention on all aspects of that object, such as its shape, size, color, texture, smell, taste, or even sound.

You can also practice mindfulness when doing a walking meditation, where you observe how you feel as your feet touch the ground — noticing all the different sensations in your body.

You can also try focusing on a specific passage from scripture. You start by reading a Bible passage and using a reflective attitude to approach the word of God.

Some specific types of meditation you can also try include:

• Breath-awareness meditation: Focus on the sensation of breath in your nostrils and in your abdomen.
• Loving-kindness meditation (akin to Christian meditation): Envisage a person who loves you sending you wishes for safety and happiness. You can also envision sending loving kindness to your loved ones in the same way.
• Mantra-based meditation: Use something repetitive to clear your mind. This can be a word, such as “Om,” a sound, or a phrase. Christians may want to use a short phrase from scripture.
• Visualization meditation: Picture positive images, ideas, or symbols to help calm the mind, such as waves crashing on a shore.
• Guided meditation: Listen to a pleasant, soothing recorded meditation, like a podcast.
• Transcendental meditation: Produce a state of relaxed awareness while meditating. You can achieve this by silently repeating a mantra or a phrase.
  

There is no one type of meditation that is superior to the others. Meditation is a personal choice, and you need to find the type that matches your lifestyle and health needs.

Let’s take a look at 27 quotes that are about meditation or that you can use in meditation:

1. “Do not dwell in the past, do not dream of the future, concentrate the mind on the present moment.” — Buddha
2. “It is under the greatest adversity that there exists the greatest potential for doing good, both for oneself and others.” — Dalai Lama
3. “Give the ones you love wings to fly, roots to come back, and reasons to stay.” — Dalai Lama
4. “Meditation is not a way of making the mind go quiet. It’s a way of entering into the quiet that’s already there — buried under the 50,000 thoughts, the average person thinks every day.” — Deepak Chopra
5. “Suffering is due to our disconnection with the inner soul. Meditation is establishing that connection.” — Amit Ray
6. “When we are unable to find tranquility within ourselves, it is useless to seek it elsewhere.” — Francois de La Rochefoucauld
7. “Paradise is not a place, it’s a state of consciousness.” — Sri Chinmoy
8. “Meditation is not evasion; it is a serene encounter with reality.” — Thich Nhat Hanh
9. “Feelings come and go like clouds in a windy sky. Conscious breathing is my anchor.” — Thich Nhat Hanh
10. “But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. Against such things, there's no law.” —Galatians 5:22-24
11. “The happiness of your life depends upon the quality of your thoughts.” — Marcus Aurelius
12. “Meditation is to dive all the way within, beyond thought, to the source of thought and pure consciousness. It enlarges the container, every time you transcend. When you come out, you come out refreshed, filled with energy and enthusiasm for life.” — David Lynch
13. “The gift of learning to meditate is the greatest gift you can give yourself in this life. For it is only through meditation that you can undertake the journey to discover your true nature, and so find the stability and confidence you will need to live, and die, well; Meditation is the road to enlightenment.” — Sogyal Rinpoche
14. “Concentration is a cornerstone of mindfulness practice. Your mindfulness will only be as robust as the capacity of your mind to be calm and stable. Without calmness, the mirror of mindfulness will have an agitated and choppy surface and will not be able to reflect things with any accuracy.” — Jon Kabat-Zinn
15. “Mindfulness practice means that we commit fully in each moment to be present; inviting ourselves to interface with this moment in full awareness, with the intention to embody as best we can an orientation of calmness, mindfulness, and equanimity right here and right now.” — Jon Kabat-Zinn
16. “Empty your mind, be formless, shapeless — like water. Now you put water into a cup, it becomes the cup, you put water into a bottle, it becomes the bottle, you put it in a teapot, it becomes the teapot. Now water can flow or it can crash. Be water, my friend.” —  Bruce Lee
17. “It is no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society.” — Jiddu Krishnamurti
18. “You must understand the whole of life, not just one little part of it. That is why you must read, that is why you must look at the skies, that is why you must sing, and dance, and write poems, and suffer, and understand, for all that is life.” — Jiddu Krishnamurti
19. “Meditation is turning off society and listening to yourself. It only “works” when done for its own sake. Hiking is walking meditation. Journaling is writing meditation. Praying is gratitude meditation. Showering is accidental meditation. Sitting quietly is direct meditation.” — Naval Ravikant
20. “Be at least as interested in what goes on inside you as what happens outside. If you get the inside right, the outside will fall into place.” — Eckhart Tolle
21. “Realize deeply that the present moment is all you ever have.” — Eckhart Tolle
22. “Meditation is a process of lightening up, of trusting the basic goodness of what we have and who we are, and of realizing that any wisdom that exists, exists in what we already have. We can lead our life so as to become more awake to who we are and what we’re doing rather than trying to improve or change or get rid of who we are or what we’re doing. The key is to wake up, to become more alert, more inquisitive and curious about ourselves.” — Pema Chodron
23. “Your goal is not to battle with the mind, but to witness the mind.” — Swami Muktananda
24. “Touch your inner space, which is nothingness, as silent and empty as the sky; it is your inner sky. Once you settle down in your inner sky, you have come home, and a great maturity arises in your actions, in your behavior. Then whatever you do has grace in it. Then whatever you do is poetry in itself. You live poetry; your walking becomes dancing, your silence becomes music.” — Osho
25. “Meditation and concentration are the way to a life of serenity.” — Baba Ram Dass
26. “The more regularly and the more deeply you meditate, the sooner you will find yourself acting always from a center of peace.” — J. Donald Walters
27. “Just as the waves can subside to reveal the stillness of the ocean's depths, so too is it possible to calm the turbulence of our mind to reveal its natural pristine clarity.” — Kathleen McDonald
    

These meditation quotes are a great way to target your meditation practice and come to better learn of its benefits.

Meditation and mindfulness are about the search for inner peace. They can help us develop a greater sense of self-awareness and draw closer to our Lord God. 

If you want to learn more about Christian mindfulness, meditation, and wellness, download the pray.com app — for daily prayer, bedtime Bible stories, and more — in the Google Play and Apple Store.