If you're new to meditation, you may find yourself overwhelmed by the sheer amount of meditation strategies, techniques, and opinions. Every book and blog seems to have a different opinion on how you should be meditating.

When you're beginning your meditation journey, it's important to just pick a strategy and stick to it. It's difficult to predict how a particular strategy works for you until you've done it for a month or two anyways.

However, this does not mean you should close yourself off from other strategies and ideas. You should not restrict yourself to one strategy, especially as a beginner. You need to experiment and find out what works best for you.

As you get more serious about your meditation practice, it is natural to become interested in different strategies and techniques. Exploring them can have great benefits.

Changing Small Things Can Have Big Results

Sometimes changing your meditation practice isn't some grand affair. It can be as simple as meditating at a different time of day, meditating in a different space, or meditating in a different posture.

Sometimes you'll encounter roadblocks in your journey. These are normal. Don't worry. When you encounter roadblocks on the highway you take a detour. Often these detours are small and short, allowing you to move past the roadblock quickly. Changing one small thing in your practice can have the same effect.

You Learn From Different Teachers

When you become interested in a new meditation technique, it inevitably leads you to new teachers and teachings. In all likelihood, this is why you became interested in a new technique in the first place, a piece of writing by an expert in that technique.

For example, if you're looking to adapt your mindfulness practice to include some loving-kindness techniques, you may end up reading some of the teaching of the Dalai Lama. The insight you can receive from the writing of someone with such a deep understanding of loving-kindness is different from the writing of someone who is an expert in Zazen or mindfulness.

You Open Doors in Different Communities

If you live in a center with a reasonable population base, there probably are great resources for you to explore. Changing your strategy can often mean going to group meditations or participating in a retreat.

Not only will these experiences open your mind to new ways of meditating, but they may result in lasting friendships. There are great things to be learned from talking with other people who are on their own meditation journey.

If taking a different strategy means stepping out of your comfort zone and exploring a completely different way of meditating, do it. There are important lessons to be learned.

An Open Mind

In any meditation practice it's important to keep your mind open to new ideas. Profound realizations don't always come as a result of intense focus and effort, experimentation is sometimes what leads to results.

Approaching your meditation with openness and inquisitiveness brings a fresh quality to the meditation. If you have a thought that is spinning around in your mind, greet it with open arms, follow it, and let it go.

In the same way, being open to a new technique or strategy can lead to a rewarding meditation practice that you can call your own.

Give a Strategy Time to Work

All that said, it's important to give a meditation practice time to sit and allow it's effects to be felt.

Do you remember the first time your meditated? Think about how far you've progressed. In order to improve a practice it must be repeated. You should not be afraid to try new things, but make sure you're giving a technique time to be understood.