Meditation guided sessions have a plethora of benefits, but you may not have been aware that through meditation you can treat obsessive-compulsive disorder, also known as OCD. While there are many methods to treat OCD, meditation can be a very attractive method due to its individual nature and also because of its privacy. When using guided meditation in the format of a CD or DVD, you can easily choose when you want to meditate as opposed to other treatment options.
To maximize the benefits of meditating to treat OCD, it is best that you meditate twice daily for at least twenty minutes each session. As you notice your OCD symptoms lightening, you can reduce your meditation exercises to once a day. You may want to set aside specific times to meditate, and if you do that you should make sure to spread the two sessions out far enough so that it does not feel like one forty-minute meditation session. For example, you could have one session in the morning and one at the end of the day, or you could also try one just as you come home from work and the second before going to bed.
When performing your meditation routine, eliminate all thoughts except for one visual aid or a word to focus on as a guide. This should be a simple image or word, but also one that has some importance to you and can keep you feeling calm. When you feel your mind’s attention wandering away, gently bring it back to this guide.
If you choose to chant a mantra during your meditation session, be sure to choose one that carries some weight or significance to you and can help you abate your OCD symptoms. If you choose to do visualizations, these can be equally or even more helpful. You can begin by visualizing the behaviors you wish to correct. You can think about what causes them to begin with. Then, slowly, you can visualize yourself performing these behaviors less and less frequently until they are as corrected as you want them to be.
When visualizing, however, be sure not to let your mind stray. If you adhere to the task at hand, you will have a much higher success rate than you would have with a wandering mind. You may find it helpful to work on one behavior at a time instead of all at once, just so that there is a greater focus to your practice of meditation guided.