Practices

Meditation
Buddhism began by engaging people in mediation by encouraging mindfulness. Mindfulness is developing a consciousness of yourself and your inner feelings. A common misconception is that to meditate you must be in an upright position but all you need is a peaceful place where you can clear you head and know the steps to complete concentration. The seventh step in the eight-fold path is meditation and Buddha meditates under the bodhi trees. Samantha and vipashyana help explain the origins and basics of meditation. Samantha translates to peacefulness, the development of peacefulness. Vipashyana is clear seeing, and involves intuitive cognition of suffering. There are many different types of meditation such as Theravada ,there are over fifty methods for developing mindfulness and forty for developing concentration, while in Tibetan there are thousands of visualization meditations. Breathing is the main component that controls how one becomes mindfulness through mediation.
The Five Hindrances (Nivarana) are the obstacles to concentration which breaks meditation.
1. Sensual desire
2. Ill will, hatred, or anger
3. Laziness and sluggishness
4. Restlessness and worry
5. Doubt http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buddhist_meditation