Mantra Meditation

An important question in starting a mantra meditation practice is how long or how many mantras to recite.

As I’ve discussed before it is best to start small and built up.  You don’t want to burn out before you’ve really started your practice.

But how to measure your mantra meditation practice?

You can do this either with time or with the number of mantras repeated.

What is the point of measuring your mantra meditation practice? 

Its simple, you can’t manage what you don’t measure.  And this goes for meditation too! 

You may think you’ve done a fabulous job of concentrating for all of ten minutes.  But then discover it is only 1 minute!

So if you are measuring your mantra meditation practice, you can track your progress.

If you are choosing to measure with time, this is fairly easy.  You can take a timer or put the alarm on a mobile device of some sort.

But there is another way to measure a mantra meditation practice which is more traditional.  This is by using the mala beads.

Mala beads are a type of necklace with beads.  Usually the number of beads is 108 as this has a special significance in mantra meditation. 

Mala beads are made in a variety of materials such as amethyst and quartz crystal or woods such as sandalwood and tulsi.

The wonderful thing about mala beads is that you don’t have to worry about keeping track of the number of mantras you have recited.  Mala beads are made with a special knot at a particular place on the necklace which signifies when you have come to the end of one round of 108 repetitions of the mantra.

If you are a beginner you may want to start off with just 1 round of the mala beads.  Or if you have chosen a short mantra maybe 3 rounds. 

Once your practice has started you can build up your rounds of mantra repetition.

It’s up to you which way you want to measure you mantra meditation practice – either with time or with mala beads. 

Personally I really enjoy using mala beads.  You enter a different realm of the mantra meditation in using a mala bead necklace and all the worries of counting depart, but the choice is yours.

Decide which instrument is most appropriate and works best for you to maximise the results of your mantra meditation and good luck with your practice.

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