1. Private religious devotion or mental exercise: Meditations involve techniques of concentration and contemplation and are used to reach an increased level of spiritual awareness.
2. The act of thinking about something carefully, calmly, seriously, and for some time, or an instance of such thinking: Joshua and Amelia spent each morning in meditation because they were convinced that daily meditations helped them to clear and to relax their minds.
3. Religious discipline in which the mind is focused on a single point of reference: Meditation may be a means of invoking divine grace, as in the contemplation by Christian mystics of a spiritual theme, question, or problem.

Meditations are thought to be a means of attaining conscious union with the divine; for example, through visualization of a deity or inward repetition of a prayer or mantra (sacred sound).

Some forms of meditation involve putting the body in a special position; such as, the seated, cross-legged lotus position, and using special breathing procedures.

4. Etymology: "discourse on a subject"; from Latin meditationem, meditatio, from meditatus, past participle of meditari, "to think over, to consider".

A process which uses various techniques to help individuals improve their self-awareness: Active meditation therapy procedures have included breathing, movements, visualizations, and exercises.

Often, active mediations are guided by instructors, and feedback between students and instructors are considered important to the processes.

Active meditation involves a series of tensing and then relaxing all of the muscles in the body, usually starting with the head and moving down to the feet.

The use of active meditation is considered a safe treatment and it is often useful in connection with other forms of therapy.

A form of prayer in which a structured attempt is made to get in touch with and to deliberately reflect upon the revelations of God: The objectives of Christian meditation are to increase the personal relationships based on the love of God that marks Christian communion.

1. A typically self-directed practice for relaxing the body and calming the mind: Most medical meditation procedures have come to the West from Eastern religious practices; especially, from India, China, and Japan, but it can also be found in many other cultures of the world.

Until recently, the primary objective of meditation was religious, although its health benefits have also been recognized, and so during the last decades, medical meditation has been explored as a way of reducing stress on both the body and the mind.

2. A state of consciousness in which an individual strives to eliminate environmental stimuli so one's mind has a single focus that produces a condition of relaxation and a relief from stress: Dr. Diedrich told June, his patient, that the primary objectives of medical meditations are to clear her mind of stressful outside interferences.

The physiological reactions that are desired and produced by sitting calmly and alone in a quiet place with the eyes closed and the arms and hands relaxed, paying careful attention to breathing and to repeating a short word or phrase at each breathing cycle: Some relaxation meditations are done for fifteen to thirty minutes each session, twice a day, by those who are striving for physical and mental control.

This approach to quiet relaxation meditation has been used by some physicians to produce therapeutic alterations in stress control, as indicated by a reduction in blood pressure in hypertensive patients.

A type of contemplative thinking: Transcendental mediation is based on ancient Hindu practices in which a person tries to relax by sitting quietly for regular periods while repeating a sound, a word, or a phrase that is continuously repeated as a prayer.