Below are three meditation techniques I frequently recommend to people. These meditations are useful for strengthening your connection to the Divine Energy (this has many names: Holy Spirit, Great Spirit, God, Allah, Goddess, etc.), removing unwanted thoughts, and releasing fears, stress, anxiety, depression and many other unloving emotions.

1. Connecting to the Divine Energy Meditation

To begin, sit quietly and let your mind go blank.

Breathe deeply while envisioning the Divine Energy entering your crown chakra (top of your head), letting your breath carry the Divine Energy through your body all the way to your feet.

Next, release your breath, envisioning the energy circling up around your body until it rises out of the top of your head. Repeat this process as many times as you feel it’s needed. I recommend 15 minutes or more daily, but even a few minutes can be beneficial.

The results will differ from person to person, and even from session to session. You may experience bliss, or at the very least, your mind will be calm and you’ll forget about life’s stresses for a little while.

My ultimate goal when doing this meditation is to connect to the Divine Energy because of its healing powers. It is possible to connect to the Divine Energy the first time you try this meditation, but it usually takes days or months, so don’t give up too soon. Each time you try, you are making progress, and eventually you’ll feel the Divine Energy.

2. Releasing Day-to-Day Negative Emotions Meditation

3. Releasing the Past Meditation

This meditation has been life-changing for me. The goal of this practice is to release the trauma, pain, anger and discomfort from past events, such as being bullied, problems with your parents, unfairly losing your job, breaking up with a love interest or friend, etc. The first time I used this technique was after a real estate offer fell through. It was the perfect house for us and the only one within our price range. After having our offer outbid, it felt like nothing was going right, especially since I had been unemployed for nearly two years. I had never had a problem finding a job before in my life. At my core, I knew my inability to forgive my past was limiting me from accepting the universal abundance in my present day.

To heal my past, I spent an entire morning releasing everything that entered my mind — from my parent’s bankruptcy when I was a child during the 1970s recession (a hungry, cold and dark period) to being bullied in middle school, as well as many other events that I had long forgotten about. Then I moved onto more recent events, such as failing to keep my graphic design business afloat and having to declare bankruptcy due to the financial meltdown of 2008. (It was a lesson in forgiving others and myself.) After I finished the meditation, I felt peaceful, but I wasn’t sure what would come of it.

Well, my life dramatically changed within a few days. The low-ball offer my husband and I had placed on the house, (the one that had been outbid), was now unexpectedly accepted. The next day, I was called to interview for a good-paying position as a creative marketing manager. What made this call so odd was I didn’t apply for the job. The employer had found me online (and I got the job).  My daughter commented at dinner, “It’s like the universe is punking us.” Yes, but in a good way.

It was an amazing transformation that resulted from me asking for healing and being willing to release and forgive my past. With the removal of each blockage, I had more room to accept the abundance, happiness and health the universe had to offer.

To practice this meditation technique, find a comfortable place, such as your bed. Let your mind go blank and wait for the first negative memory to arrive. When it does, acknowledge it, and then give it to the Divine Energy for healing by saying, “I give this to you. Please take it and heal it. Thank you.” After releasing the memory for healing, let your mind go blank again and wait for the next memory to appear. Continue doing this meditation until the memories trickle to a stop. The first time could potentially take hours. I recommend doing this weekly in the beginning, and then as needed after that.

NOTE: Some people have expressed a concern that they felt worse during or after meditation, so I wrote another post , It Might Get Worse, Before It Gets Better, which helps explains this.