Normally the word meditation brings a vision to our mind of a person sitting on a mountaintop totally away from everyone. Many people have the perception of the person who practices meditation as a "sanyaasi" or the word meditation frequently scares people as they believe that meditation is very rigid, hard to follow and too tiring.

Meditation has various forms of concentration. The purpose of any concentration exercise is to focus our full-undivided attention on a specific aspect of functioning of our mind or the body. This is done to accomplish a certain goal or develop a certain skill. Exercises such as yoga, breathing exercises, visualization are all forms of concentration. Unfortunately people get so obsessed by the environment and posters that they forget the basic objective of these exercises.

In contrast to yoga, meditation is aims to prevent thoughts in a natural way, by deeply relaxing the physical body and then trying to keep the mind completely "blank" with no thoughts. The calmness of the mind achieved during meditation is essential - to hear the voice of Higher Self and other masters who may try to assist us. With meditation we improve our telepathic transmissions. Regular practice of meditation trains our mind to acheive this stillness of the mind.

One of many benefits of meditation is that it opens our mind to new ideas. Meditation is a very effective technique for improving our creativity, problem solving capacity and treating our physical ailments.

Meditation is also sometimes described as "listening to the silence between thoughts". Without a true silence in your own thoughts, you cannot listen to thoughts of others.