Why And How To Meditate : 10 tips to get you started
I got to “learn” how to mediate the hard way during my yoga teacher training. There was no guidance nor specific technic from my teacher. We would just sit every day for 50 minutes in total silence and stillness.
I have later on struggled with implementing a regular practice into my life so I can understand where you’re coming from. So my goal here is to encourage you to start your journey by taking baby steps and turn it into a daily and sustained routine.
What is meditation ?
Many people are intrigued about what meditation is, its purpose and how to actually meditate.
To make it simple, meditation is an intentional practice, where we draw our attention inward to increase a sense of calmness, inner peace and emotional balance.
Seated meditation usually begins by bringing our awareness to our breath, becoming aware of the flow of our thoughts, without judgement.
With a practice of meditation, we want to slow down this endless flow of thoughts or rumination to anchor our mind in order to be fully present in the here and in the now.
Is mindfulness and mediation the same ?
I would say that the concept of mindfulness encompasses the concept of meditation. We could practice mindfulness without the formal act of “meditating”. Mindfulness is the act of paying attention, noticing and being present in whatever we are doing. For example gardening, cooking, walking could become mindfulness practices, meaning we are involved in the activity with our unconditional presence.
Mindfulness can be practiced both informally (at any time/place) and formally (during seated meditation).
While meditation is usually practiced for a specific amount of time, in a seated position with the eyes closed and the spine erect.
Why meditate ?
For now 20 years, a vast body of research has demonstrated the numerous benefits of a regular practice of meditation/ mindfulness. Among them we can find an improved sense of focus, sense of calmness, resilience, lowered perception to pain, stress and anxiety, decreased symptoms of depression etc.
Mediation has the power to change our biology, physiology, biochemistry and modern science has just started to be able to explain how. I give a few links at the end of the post if you are interested to read more about it.
Personally, when I started my spiritual journey, I got very interested by the Buddhist perspective, saying that we should not spend effort improving the external conditions of our lives to reach happiness since every experience of the world is filtered and interpreted by our mind : to be happy or to suffer is a choice that ultimately resides within us. This is where mediation has greatly helped me.
With meditation, our brains are literally being rewired. The more we meditate, the more we become present and respond to everyday life situations with calmness, compassion, and equanimity instead of reacting to our environment.
Physical exercise is to our bodies is what meditation is to our brain.
More recently, the field of epigenetics has shown that meditation can directly act on the cellular level of our body, changing our gene expression, promoting anti-inflammatory genes and turning off pro-inflammatory genes. This discovery has enormous implications as we now know that inflammation is the underlying cause of many of our modern diseases from Alzheimer’s, heart diseases, cancers to autoimmune conditions. Some research in epigenetic have also suggested that meditation could have an effect on the process of aging.
How to start meditate ?
1) Do it first thing in the morning, when you wake up
Your brain might just left the Theta waves state (the state we are before falling asleep and right away after we woke up), and I found out that the mind is much clearer and grounded after waking up than during the rest of the day as the minds becomes more active and “noisy”.
Also you can see it as a nice way to extend the night, keeping your eyes closed and staying in this “half-awake” state is not so bad and can even become very enjoyable.
The second advantages to do it in the morning is that it’s then done and you don’t have to “worry” about it for the rest of your day.
Finally, starting your day with a meditation practice will prime your brain that will condition many of your behaviors and thought you’ll have during your day.
2) If you practice yoga, do it after your regular practice
I used to do my yoga poses (asana), followed by breath exercises (pranayama) and only then I felt ready for my seated mediation. This is also how many schools are traditionally teaching, starting from the body to reach the mind/ soul. It makes sense as yoga will help open up the body to sit effortlessly and relax the mind to be stiller. This has been known for thousands of years, in Ancient China for example, monks were practicing martial arts as a preparation for their seated mediation.
So if you do have a regular practice of yoga or any other physical activities that soothes the mind (such as Tai Qi, Pilates, Qi Gong), you can try to see if that works better for you.
3) Don’t lie down, it will send the signal to your brain that you’re going to sleep
You can sit in any positions that feels comfortable, and contrary to the popular belief, it doens’t have to be in a lotus pose. The most important is to sit comfortably without straining any part of the body with a back straight, from the base of the spine to the top of the head.
You must wonder why it is important. It’s not because it looks good but it’s because it keeps your mind more alert as if you starts to slouch forward, it also send the signal to the brain that you’re tired and the mind is less likely to be present.
Alternatively, you could also sit on a chair, as long as your spine is straight and you could also sit on your bed and lean against the wall if that helps.
4) Start small but do it every day
Repetition and frequency have been proven better than length in order to create long lasting change in our body and brain. In other words, it is better to do meditate every day for 5 minutes than 30 minutes once a week. Moreover when we want to form a new habit, consistency is much more important than performance. You can start by setting a time-based objective but make sure that you make it small, for example you could set a goal of 3 minutes to start with. Once you feel comfortable with that and it becomes effortless, you can gradually increase the duration of the session. The most important is to make a priority to meditate every day, no matter how short the session is.
5) Start with guidance
You will notice that time passes much faster when someone is leading and giving you instructions. Many times when I have led a meditation, people were amazed to find out that they have been sitting still for ten minutes.
There are some good videos on mediation on YouTube for free. Some apps like Headspace are also good. If you use Spotify , they offer a wide range of meditation playlist. Yogaglo offers high quality meditations with very experienced instructors. I also recommend Sam Harris’s app “Waking up”. I like his very calming voice and the depth of his knowledge, plus the fact that his course is based on both practice and theory.
Choose according what resonate with you, the voice of the instructor, the content of the session, the duration etc. It is very personal so you need to try a few before knowing what you like and what works best for you.
6) If you decide to start by yourself, I recommend the breath-focus meditation
Simply observing the air flowing in and out of the nostrils, counting in the mind 4 for each inhale; 4 each exhale (increasing to 8 on the exhale when you feel more comfortable). You can then add on by noticing the subtle qualities of the breath, its depth, its temperature, its texture, bringing the awareness to the belly (diaphragmatic breathing). The effects are immediate, and it will bring your body and mind into a deep state of relaxation, that will be your first reward.
Note that this is the just one technic among many others such as loving-kindness meditation, mantra-based meditation, visualization meditation, mindfulness mediation etc.
7) Meditation is NOT about trying to block all your thoughts
It’s about noticing the thoughts arising without any judgement, without identifying to them and releasing them. Understanding that you have the control of your thoughts, not the opposite. Becoming aware of what is going on in your own mind, like an observer watching a movie playing.
I like to imagine that my mind is a vast blue sky and that each though that arises is a cloud. As soon as I notice it, it dissipates just like it has appeared. There will be a lot of clouds at the beginning of your practice and its normal, but as time goes, it will slowly decrease. Those moments “in-between” the clouds /thoughts are the moment where you are experiencing pure consciousness, a deep feeling of peace and presence, without the filter of the mind.
8) If you have tHoughts arising during the practice, it doesn’t mean you are doing it wrong
This is part of the process, it will inevitably happen. What is important is to keep resisting getting lost in your thoughts, constantly bringing your consciousness back to your breath or the focus of your meditation.
This very process of noticing your thoughts is what will break our repetitive patterns of thoughts, the action of ruminating. Forcing our attention to come back to our breath every time is what actually changes our brain structure and functioning, what researchers call neuroplasticity.
The very act of meditating has been shown to create new neural pathways in the brain and to decrease the activity of the amygdala, the part of our limbic brain associated with fear and stress.
9) Get curious about the sciences behind mediation
I know personally that is has really helped me to maintain a certain level of motivation to keep practicing. As a comparison, we spend hours doing physical exercises to get our bodies into shape. To sustain such tasks requires a minimum of interest or enthusiasm. This interest comes from believing that these efforts are going to benefit us in the long run.
Working with the mind follows the same logic, if you know why you’re doing it in terms of short and long run benefits, it becomes more powerful and motivating. I give some links at the end of the post to start with.
10) Consistency and patience are key
You don’t expect to lose weight or build muscles in one week when you go to the gym, nor should you with meditation. We don’t find anything strange about spending years learning to walk, read and write, acquire professional skills, so should it be with “training” our minds.
Best would be to have no expectation. Don’t see it as a practice of attainment or achievement but a journey of self discovery to become a better version of yourself, a way to improve your self love, your confidence, your self worth and in return your relationship with those around you and the way you experience the world.
To conclude, I hope I can create a ripple effect by inspiring you to start meditating or at least being more mindful in your every day life, with the people around you, with yourself. To be more present, emotionally balanced, more compassionate, more loving, less judgmental. And in return I hope that you can inspire the people around you to do the same.
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Resources :
https://chopra.com/articles/whats-the-difference-between-meditation-and-mindfulness
https://www.matthieuricard.org/en/blog/posts/why-should-i-meditate-part-1
https://positivepsychology.com/neuroplasticity/
http://saronlab.ucdavis.edu/shamatha-project.html
Recommended books
Why Meditate : Working with Thoughts and Emotion. Matthieu Ricard
Tantra : The Supreme Understanding. Osho
The Power of Now : A Guide to Spiritual Enlightenment. Eckhart Tolle
Beyond the Self: Conversations between Buddhism and Neuroscience (The MIT Press). Matthieu Ricard and Wolf Singer
Happiness: A Guide to Developing Life's Most Important Skill. Matthieu Ricard
The Healing Self: A Revolutionary New Plan to Supercharge Your Immunity and Stay Well for Life. Deepak Choopra