Meditation is an ancient, time-honored practice of quieting the mind. The purpose of meditation is different for each who embarks on that journey: to achieve mental and emotional well being, elevate consciousness, reaching towards enlightenment, and as a foundation for developing natural spiritual gifts. Psychic skills development involves practices and exercises that assist in opening your own natural psychic receiving mechanisms. This allows you to merge with the spirit realm to receive information, healing, insights, comfort, and support. While no two people receive exactly the same way, one especially simple way to develop psychic skills is through meditation.

When the body and mind are in a harmonious and relaxed space, our access to the field of non-ordinary reality increases exponentially. Even if you have no previous experience with meditation, you can learn to incorporate it quite easily into your daily life. Psychic development is like exercise; efforts over time spent building your psychic skills muscle makes you a stronger receiver. With diligence and disciplined effort, you can create your own personal psychic development practice. You do not need to attend group classes to develop your own abilities. All you need to begin is a healthy attitude of experimentation, ideas about how you will meditate and where, and a journal.

Although meditation practices were initially rooted in sitting in silence, it is important to recognize you may not be particularly hardwired for this sort of practice. If you are someone who doesn't relax easily into a silent space for a certain period of time, do not be concerned. Meditation can take many forms: a walk in the park, relaxing under a tree, laying belly-down on the ground to connect your heart to the earth, gardening, or any grounding or mind-calming activity such as cleaning, breathing exercises, Tai Chi, or Yoga. I call this Active Meditation. With Active Meditation, the goal is still the same: focusing on an activity consistently for a period of time for the purpose of finding your center, and clearing your mind. These activities act as a reset for the body and mind, increasing your chances of tapping into natural psychic gifts.

Because no two people receive the same way, crafting your own personal meditation practice may take a bit of exploration, especially if you are a beginner. Some techniques will work for you, and others won't. In the beginning of my own meditation practice, I would shut out lights and lay in the dark on my bed breathing. It was an honorable attempt, but for someone with an active mind like me, it wasn't particularly effective. And I usually fell asleep. When I altered my practice to sitting up in a well-lit space and listening to soothing music, it was much more successful. Here is how to know if you have found a successful technique: you feel more calm and relaxed, you stop talking to yourself in your own mind, thoughts slow down, and you are able to be fully present in the moment. If you can find one or two things to amplify your own level of focus, either breathing, visualization, or music, you will be off to a great start. Eventually you will feel confident in what truly works for you.

When developing a meditation practice for developing your psychic skills, it is important to note that a great beginning point is grounding, clearing, and protection. I advise finding a method that personally works for you.

Here are the top ten benefits of incorporating meditation into any Psychic Development practice:

1. Enhanced Self-Awareness: Flowing busily through life can disconnect us from a sense of our true self. Meditation allows us to become more aware of how we think, what we believe, and how we behave and respond to certain situations. This lends personal power.
   
   
2. Activation of the Third Eye: This area in the middle of our eyebrows, at the pineal gland, is largely responsible for our ability to receive information, messages, and visions. Our third eye activates slowly over the course of our lifetime, and we can greatly assist this opening through meditation. It is important to create a pace that feels good. Sometimes opening our third eye too quickly creates a flood of constant information we are not prepared to receive. Learn to create balance and know when to slow down and when to intensify your own meditation practice to support this growth.
   
   
3. Relaxation of the sympathetic nervous system: Our sympathetic nervous system is responsible for moderating our heart rate, our bronchial passages, constricting blood vessels, perspiration, and blood pressure. Meditation techniques have been shown to relax this system, which has long-lasting, positive effects. Having a relaxed nervous system affords your own psychic abilities a chance to achieve leverage, being able to easily connect to spirit.
   
   
4. Balancing of your chakras: The chakras are invisible spinning discs of energy in our aura field that correspond with certain glands and organs in our bodies. Keeping our chakras open and flowing ensures a greater alignment and sense of responsiveness. In addition, it promotes a general sense of wellness.
   
   
5. Cleansing and clearing of your own aura: Our aura is the invisible energy field around our body. Every person has an aura. We can cleanse, clear, and manipulate the aura to assist in promoting physical, emotional, and mental health. A positive state of alignment affords and ease of receptivity.
   
   
6. Making room for more active positive spontaneous insights: Who doesn't love receiving positive affirmations in the form of feelings, vibes, and reinforcement when our psychic abilities reveal to us helpful insights? Adhering to a consistent meditation practice increases your own good vibes meter, and will draw to you from your environment synchronicities, repetitive number sequences, symbols, power animals—all of which carry supportive messages to assist us on our life path.
   
   
7. Restoring a sense of deep connection to all living things: Meditation undoubtedly raises our consciousness and lends the enhanced awareness that none of us are an island. Seeing, sensing, and feeling the fact that we are one with all living things on this planet is a powerful experience. Expanding consciousness within ourselves to this reality moves us to make changes that positive impact our world and the environment.
   
   
8. Releasing energetic disturbances to the body and mind: We are constantly inundated with disruptive energies around us; whether it be electromagnetic energy from our devices, environmental pollution, chemicals in our food and water, people who drain our energies, and the constant stream of information on the internet. Over time, you can better build a spiritual barrier of protection, as meditation assists in making a clean break from and releases those disturbances.
   
   
9. Opening your heart: Living with an open heart greatly benefits the development of our psychic skills. Our heart is the road and avenue of psychic receptivity. When our hearts are blocked, we stifle access to the purity of spiritual insight. Meditating with the intent to open the heart expands our limitless capacity of perception.
   
   
10. Attainment of life perspective and balance: Living this life, as a spirit in a human body, is a mixed bag. We know we are spiritual beings, and we also must honor our own humanity. We all struggle, and we all experience pain. Meditation affords the chance to quicken perspective and a stronger sense of balance during times of adversity and challenge.

As you can see, the benefits of incorporating meditation techniques into your psychic development rituals and routines enhances and builds a beautiful yet personally tailored practice. Meditation accentuates and amplifies your natural psychic gifts. In addition, the physical and emotional benefits make meditation a multi-faceted self-healing tool.