How To Use Beads To Improve Your Meditation Practice

Have you ever tried to meditate without a guide and get lost? Or have you been looking for a way to deepen your current meditation practice?

Using beads is a great way to do that. I recently made a youtube video showing y'all how to make a knotted bead necklace for yourself but once you make the necklace, what do you do with it?

I made myself a knotted bead bracelet originally inspired by Catholic rosary, but personally i'm not a Christian and wanted something that would have more meaning than just using a rosary how I see fit. 

The rosary is used to repeat different prayers and contemplate on different aspects of Jesus' life. It can be a powerful tool to connect with the divine. Each bead is used to count the prayers as you say them, broken up by larger beads where you would do your contemplating.

I was inspired by this structure when creating this latest collection of prayer beads. Repeating numbers are a fun way to look out for messages from the divine. Each number holds a different vibration and you can use your intuition to feel out the different messages. I decided on 111 total beads for each necklace. I chose sets of five because five is the number of change and transformation. As we repeat our affirmations, or prayers or give thanks or count breaths with our beads it slightly transforms our mind to be attuned to whatever we are repeating. It just so happened that 111/5 is 22.2 which I found very meaningful.

How to use your beads:

First you need a strand of beads. We have a small collection of hand knotted prayer beads available in our shop as I write this out but you can use one you made yourself, a mala necklace, catholic rosary or whatever feels right for you. The idea is that each bead is a repetition. You can use the beads to meditate and count your breaths. You can repeat a prayer that means a lot to you. You can repeat affirmations. Or you can count your blessings. I personally use my beads to count 111 things im grateful for 1-2 times a day. 

You will sit down and decide how you would like to used your beads first. You can sit in a cross legged meditation posture, in a chair, or even lay down on the floor, couch or bed. I often do my gratitude practice while laying in bed right before falling asleep.

Next you will start with the pendant and move along to the first bead. Each bead is a repetition. You will move your fingers to the next bead repeating your affirmation, prayer, gratitude, or count. Continue moving to the next bead until you work all the way through your strand of beads and are back at the pendant. 

At that point you can decide if your practice is done or if you'd like to go around the beads again. 

The best thing about this meditation tool is that there are no rules. You can begin by practicing affirmations and shift to prayers, or counting breath or counting blessings or something entirely different that i'm not mentioning. Your practice will be as unique as you are and will evolve as your practice evolves.

The power of gratitude:

I have seen a huge transformation in my mindset because of a daily gratitude practice. If you are of the belief that your mindset creates your reality you want your mindset to reflect the type of reality you want to live. Most of us dont want to be stuck in suffering and pain. Gratitude shows your brain that there is so much to be thankful for and you will begin to shift from seeing the worst in the world to seeing the best in the world. Being grateful and feeling into that doesn't make the bad things disappear necessarily, but it will shift your mindset to see that there is so much more than the bad things out there. Your mind will become more resilient to the bull shit and you will be able to see the positive in a situation with much more ease.