What Is Light Meditation?

Light meditation is the practice of visualizing a light within the body that is believed to help with spiritual growth and the development of inner well-being. Different types of light meditation can involve the mental association of colored lights with specific areas of the body. Some meditation techniques may alternately entail visualization of a pure white light that meditation practitioners believe opens the mind's third eye and thus increases spiritual consciousness. Some meditation teachers or gurus emphasize chakra cleansing with white light visualization, while others focus on improving well-being through simpler white light visualization.

Areas of visualized colored light are often known as chakras in some practices of light meditation. A different color is assigned to each major section of the body, such as blue for the throat chakra and orange for the lower abdominal chakra. Each of the seven chakras is also associated with an aspect of spiritual health, such as anger processing, communication ability, or awareness of the connection between the soul and the physical body. Meditation practitioners have various ways of balancing the chakras and purging each one of external negative energies by picturing a cleansing white light moving through each one. Practicing light meditation that focuses on the chakras can be done with techniques such as deep rhythmic breathing, incantations, or listening to meditation recordings.

Some newcomers opt for learning light meditation through an approach that places less emphasis on the chakras and instead focuses on the healing effects of the white light itself. While meditation itself is not directly connected to any specific religion, many practitioners choose to incorporate their faith in a higher power that they believe to be the source of that healing light. This approach to meditation often involves guided visualization through the spiritual cleansing process of listening to the words of an experienced meditation guide. Meditating with this kind of white light visualization is often done in groups of people who are at various levels of this spiritual journey.

Many people report substantial benefits of light meditation, such as improved inner peace, better connections to others, and healing of old emotional hurts. Some proponents of these meditation methods even report that dedicated practitioners can even be healed of physical ailments through better balances of physical and spiritual energies. When this type of meditation is combined with activities such as Pilates or yoga, a good number of people also report that it can help lead to improved muscle tone and physical vitality.