Why You should and should not do Group Meditations?
I recently did an experiment where I meditated with two of my friends from college for about three months. One of the reasons was to motivate and cultivate the habit of meditation into them.
Here is the short and simple answer to the question, "Why you should and should not do group meditation?"
Meditating in groups has a huge advantage in terms of the daily push that is required to meditate. The other important advantage, as the Indian beliefs and the scientific studies say, meditating in group has a substantial increase in the benefits seen. Whether you will benefit or not also depends on whom your are meditating with. If you force a person to start meditating and meditate with him everyday, when he is not actually interested, it would also demotivate you! So finding the correct group for meditating is really important. However, once you have a strong meditation group, or even a single partner for that matter, it will benefit you in a lot of ways, and I will discuss these benefits here in the article.What group meditation actually is?
When people/meditators join together to perform a similar type of meditation daily, and share their experiences and motivate each other to meditate daily, is called group meditation. Group meditation also means to meditate for a cause in some instances.
What are the advantages of group meditation?
- The most important advantage of group meditation is that it helps when you are not feeling motivated and boosted to meditate. Instead of missing on a meditation session, the meditation mates will motivate you to meditate!
- Another reason is the ripple effect. It is proved in studies that meditating with a group can increase the benefits of meditation substantially, it can also increase the healing effect it has on the mind and body.
- Studies also suggest that meditating daily, at the same time, with the same people, increase the bonding and happiness between those people. It is said correctly:
"You are who you be with"
- You learn a lot from people within the meditation community, and this learning is very important as it is a learning from experiences!
These are only the major advantages of meditating in a group.
Should you meditate in group or not?
After knowing all the advantages, you would probably say yes. But not always, should you meditate in groups.
Some people are introverts and they can hardly manage to stand a group, let alone be a part of one. Due to this, they will never be able to focus on the meditation because of the presence of so many people around them. But that does not mean introverts can not group meditate, once they familiarize with the group, they can do as well as others.
And not only introverts, some people like to meditate alone in their own cozy corner of the world. However i would suggest you try group meditation, or meditating with a partner, and if you feel uncomfortable, you can again continue your solo journey.
How often to meditate in groups?
Now you become a little skeptical! So what should you do? I would suggest try meditating in group for some time. But do not stop solo meditation sessions.
Go for group meditations once or twice a week, and see if you like it or not, while continuing your solo journey.
This will benefit you in many ways. One is that you will learn a lot from other people. Listening to their experiences and sharing your own, you will come to know that you are not alone who faces problems of a type. And you can also know how to get rid of those smaller problems which no app or website would tell you!
It is not compulsory to choose between the two!
You can include both the practices in your schedule. When I was experimenting with group meditation with my friends, I did not completely give in to group meditations. I also meditated alone on twice a week.
What you can do is, start with meditating in a group twice a week. And within one month, you will know for yourself whether you enjoy group meditations, or solo meditations.
What if you want to but can't group meditate!
There may be many situations where your daily schedule does not fit with the group. Or you can not find any group at all nearby you! In that case, there websites like Meetup, where you can go and make or find groups.
You can also motivate your co workers to meditate along with you. You can be a guide for them and all of you can enjoy the process. I tried this with my friends as I mentioned it above and it really works. Even tell them to motivate others, and soon you will have a small group of daily meditators!
You can also go in meditation retreats, there you have to meditate in groups and also you can meditate solo.
Headspace group meditations
Headspace has recently started the service of group meditations. But that is COMPLETELY DIFFERENT from the group meditations that i am talking about.
There is a difference between group meditation and meditating at the same time!
And headspace group meditation is just about meditating at the same time. The benefits of getting more results from meditation do not happen if your are virtually meditating in group!
What it does is just motivate you to meditate by telling you that there are 200 or 300 or whatever number of people meditating with you right now! And also they are usually around 10 minutes only, which is not advisable duration to meditate daily. You should at least meditate for 20 minutes daily to see significant results.
So now you know whether you should meditate in group or solo, and how often should you meditate with a group.
Share this article with your friends and family and motivate them to meditate by arranging group meditations! Keep Meditating, and keep experimenting with meditation to keep it interesting!
-A Mere Meditator
