Meditation is an intensely personal and, for some people, private experience. It is a complete and total relaxation technique and some may need unique circumstances to help bring upon that level of rest.

For most people, however, there are basic guidelines to follow to get the most out of your meditation sessions. Here is a helpful list you can follow the next time you have a meditation session.

• Meditation is inexorably tied to your body. If you don’t feel confident and happy with the current state of your body, you will have a very hard time relaxing properly. This applies to all aspects of your body. If you are planning on meditating later that day, try to eat extra healthy that day so when you go to meditate, you know that you’ve made healthy choices that day.

When people sit down to meditate, they are often all chasing a different goal. Some simply take to meditation as a way to relax and think clearly. Some take to meditation because it helps them concentrate and focus. While others are hoping to gain insight about their life and gain a special wisdom that can only be obtained through the introspection that comes with meditation.

Here are a few helpful tips to help you gain the insight and wisdom you’re looking for from meditation.

• Everyone knows that when you meditate, you are told to clear your mind of any troublesome or bothersome thoughts so that you may delve into the realm of deep and complete meditation. But if you are looking to gain wisdom on a particular nagging question, you can simply focus on that one topic as you relax and let your mind go, except for that one burning question. Let all your other worries from the day fall off your back like rainwater, but keep the topic you wish to gain insight on close to your heart. You will see better results this way if that is why you are choosing to meditate.

One of the biggest problems that faces advocates of meditation is the idea that it’s all quack science.

Meditation somehow got thrown into the same pot as Feng Shui, crystals and astrology. But unlike those things, meditation does have dozens of studies that back up the beliefs of its practitioners. Here is a short list at some scientific studies that showed that meditation does, in fact, benefit the human body as well as the mind.

• Scientific Research on the Transcendental Meditation Program: Collected Papers, Volume 1: 385–392, 1977. In this study, college students were used to see if meditation helped with memory. As it turned out, it did, and the results were overwhelming. After a 40-day meditation program, memory was up four times in testing over a control group who did not meditate. During the study, the meditation group was tested against a control group that simply sat with their eyes closed. Similar studies have been done since 1977 and they all show results that prove that by meditating, you can improve your mental sharpness significantly.

Of all the trends and fashions that “new-age” medicine has brought to Western society, maybe no single practice was more widely adopted than meditation. And when you look at meditation objectively, it makes perfect sense that those that live in a hustle and bustle world would welcome a chance to sit in a quiet, comfortable place for an hour, put on some relaxing music and light some scented candles and do nothing but let their mind empty of thoughts.

For many, it sounded like a really nice way to relax, but the health benefits that go along with meditation were an extra bonus. Here are ten reasons why everyone should take up meditation.

Meditation has a reputation as an activity related to religious practices and hippy-dippy pseudo-science. This is unfortunate, because meditation is a simple, effective stress management tool that can be used by a anyone – and solid medical research has shown that meditation is highly effective as a way to lower stress and even manage pain

It’s particularly effective at the end of a long, stressful day – you can set aside a short period when you get home from work, meditate, and then enjoy your evening with a clear mind and more relaxed body.