It feels like seven lifetimes ago when I was first introduced to meditation. I learned the hard way, with a mint green book called The Three Pillars of Zen. I was in my first attempt at college, right after high school, and I would hang out in the haunted corners of the art building and try to replicate the exercises they were talking about. I was even occasionally successful! But let me tell you, it was pretty frustrating sometimes. I was easily distracted by any little noise or sensation (like feet that had gone numb…) and the exercises themselves were more serious than was really useful for an absolute beginner.
Today, I’d like to break the shell on meditation for you, show you the benefits, and offer you far easier paths to get started. Numb feet are optional, I promise!
Why would you even want to meditate? Mostly because it offers a huge list of mental and physical benefits. If your immediate reaction to the idea of meditation is to reject it because it involves sitting still and being quiet, this post is for you, because you need it the most.
Meditation is part of the morning rituals of many of the world’s most successful people, and it’s taught in an increasing number settings from religious centers to schools to workplaces to tropical retreats. It’s a practice that can take many forms, and can be done in as little as a few minutes, or for hours at a time. It has a wide range of benefits for the body and the mind, and there are no negative side effects.
Meditation helps you regulate your mental state. In our busy, chaotic culture, we’re inundated with information, advertisements, social notifications, and countless things that we need to get done, not to mention stress from traffic, our boss, or unexpected bills. Regularly meditating can help you to keep your focus and have a more balanced, centered attitude that prevents you from being overwhelmed with life. Regular meditation has been shown to decrease both anxiety and depression, and can make it easier to learn new things.
Meditation gives you a chance to block the inputs from the outside world and quiet your mind. In these meditation sessions, you are better able to hear your own thoughts, and filter them down to the ones that are best for your life. This means you can make better decisions about what you spend your time doing, and you can focus on the tasks that will be the most productive. This is why so many successful entrepreneurs swear by it. They clear their minds of all the unnecessary nonsense that can clutter their thoughts, and move forward decisively.
Meditation also makes your intuition easier to hear. We’ve all got that gut instinct, and it’s oh so easy to ignore that little voice in the back of your head in favor of logic, or expert opinions, or simple disbelief. Your gut always knows what’s best for you, and keeping yourself centered with a meditation practice can help you to hear your own intuition more clearly and have the confidence to follow your deepest truth, even when it doesn’t make sense to anyone else except you.
Meditating can even decrease your risk of serious health problems. It’s possible that the dramatic reduction of stress and the associated extreme hormone disruption in chronically stressed individuals is what leads to the reduced risk of major health issues like heart attacks and strokes. Meditating on a regular basis has been shown to improve the function of the immune system, so you can fight off whatever plague is going around. It can even help to balance your metabolism as well as modulate insulin secretion, so it may help you if you’re working to lose weight.
Something we’ve been discussing a lot in my circles these days is depression, and how it’s a quiet battle many more of us face than we used to realize. Bringing it out into the open is helping us to create some better solutions, and one of the best ones is meditation. It’s no surprise then that meditation helps reduce anxiety and stress, as well as other mental illnesses. In fact, it was shown to be equally as effective as pharmaceuticals (and way cheaper, with no scary side effects!)
One of my favorite things about meditation is that it helps creativity and learning by enhancing neuroplasticity. Our brains tend to get resistant to learning new things as they age, such as languages, job skills, or names, but if we combine good nutrition and a meditation practice in our daily lives, we can keep our neural pathways more flexible and open to making new connections. Meditation has been shown to dramatically improve physical conditions like heart disease, and is excellent to help with pain management. It even helps regulate our immune systems, so we get sick less often.
If you put all these factors together, you can see how meditation not only can improve the quality of our lives, but the length of our lives as well.
It’s no longer an esoteric fad, even though meditation plays a central role in almost all occult practices. You don’t need to define yourself as ultra-spiritual or carry crystals in your pockets, and you don’t need fancy clothes or equipment unless you like them. There are simple, easy ways to get started, and you’ll see the above benefits (and many, MANY more) when you begin to incorporate a meditative practice into your life. Here are some different types of meditation you can do, and some tips to get you started.
- Practice deep breathing. This is a very easy way to begin focusing your mind while enjoying the benefits of meditation. As you’re sitting, simply notice the breath moving in and out of your body. What do you feel when you take in air, and when you expel it? Is your breath naturally deep, or shallow? As you are focusing, allow the breath to become deeper, and loosen the muscles and tension in your belly to let more air in your lungs. It’s perfectly normal to let your belly puff out as you do this, but don’t force it. Relaxing is the key. Counting each breath can help, or try counting One…on the inhale and Two…on the exhale. Your mind will wander, and as you catch the thoughts floating to the surface of your mind, gently release them and return to the breath.
- Be comfortable. Many meditation enthusiasts swear by the full lotus position, seated on a flat surface with both legs crossed and soles of the feet facing upward. For those who can manage it, that’s just fine. If you aren’t comfortable this way for whatever reason (like me – my knee can’t do that), sitting cross-legged, kneeling, or sitting in a supportive chair is just fine. I recommend sitting over lying down, as if you are sitting your mind will remain more alert; lying down encourages the mind to wander, or even relax enough to fall asleep. Aim for good posture and a neutral spine, feet flat and shoulders down and back, no reason for your meditation to cause a trip to the chiropractor. There are meditation benches designed to raise the hips above the feet when kneeling, and these are fantastic for decreasing pressure on your knees and preventing your feet from going numb like mine do.
- Dress for success. You don’t need fancy, fashionable yogi garb, just something loose and comfortable. Choose something that isn’t constricting and is breathable, appropriate for the temperature of the room. Make sure it’s something you’re particularly fond of, or maybe something you want to dedicate just to your meditation time. This will help put your mind in a place of focus. Fun fact! Those dark, voluminous robes you’d expect to see a medieval wizard in are somewhat factual. Their original purpose was to be a very basic sensory deprivation chamber, allowing a meditator to block out some light, sound, and touch input from their environment so they could enjoy deeper meditation with fewer distractions.
- Tune out the noise. There is a lot going on in the world. Sounds of traffic, conversations, pets, dripping faucets and the like can be terribly distracting when you’re trying to “empty your mind.” Noise cancelling headphones are an excellent step towards controlling the noise in your head and the noise in the rest of the world, and I highly recommend them, especially when starting out. If you have a small room or even a closet that can have soundproofing and lightproofing, you have the ultimate meditation setup.
- Have a guide. There are so many guided meditations and apps available, many of them for zero cost! That doesn’t even count the professionals that market their sounds on Amazon and elsewhere. Headspace and Calm are excellent apps that will guide your meditation time, and tracks your progress. A device I’ve tried with good results is Muse. It’s a headband that tracks your brainwaves and can give you realtime feedback on how well you are meditating. It’s never a competition, but you can gain valuable insight into what works best for your own meditation practice.
- Join a group. I know I have a hard time adopting a new habit unless I have a live teacher and some good old social responsibility. (Pro tip, this works with going to the gym, too…) An expert that can teach you and guide you through the steps, and some people around you who you relate to will make you a whole lot more comfortable with learning this new skill. Look into Buddhist temples in your area, or try Meetup.com. Yoga studios also often have meditation classes.
- Bring nature into your practice. Some say meditation in nature is easier, and there are some valid reasons for this. You can distance yourself from your regular daily hangouts (like the couch, where binging on Netflix is a temptation…) and you get fresh air away from things like cell phones and wifi. It’s also easy to focus on the beauty of the outside world, the delicate interplay of shadows and light on leaves, the curve of a hilltop, or the calmness of falling snow as a way to redirect your mind when it’s restless. If getting outside isn’t an option and your window doesn’t face a picturesque landscape, having a clean corner with a couple of flowers, ferns, or a small tree will serve the same purpose. Even a beautiful painting or photograph will enhance your meditation space.
- Mindfulness meditation. The goal of mindfulness meditation is simply to notice the world and yourself, as they are, right now. If you’ve had an argument recently, or you’re worried where your next paycheck will come from, this is a great exercise to try. Bring your mind, your focus, into your body and into the Right Now. Accept without judgement things that Simply Are. These are my thighs, and they are exactly as they are. This is the temperature of the air. This is how the fabric feels against my hands. Expand these thoughts as you need, whether it’s the state of your bank account, your car, your relationships, or your emotions. When you think things, simply accept them, and let your mind drift off of them. Do not judge any of these thoughts, only observe them as if they are bits of code floating away from a programmer. If you feel tension growing, focus on deep breathing, then return to the mindfulness of the present moment. I use this frequently when I find myself in a cycle of worry and fear.
- Transcendental meditation. When you’re ready to take the next step on the meditation journey, I highly recommend TM. TM was the inspiration for the entire White Album from the Beatles, Seinfeld has called it a “charger for your mind and body,” and even Russell Brand has called it “a shower for your brain.” It’s usually taught by a qualified instructor, and when you reach a certain level of proficiency, your instructor will give you a mantra as your new focus. Here are the exact instructions, from here, and you can choose your own mantra here.
- Close your eyes, wait a few seconds, and then start thinking the mantra. It is thought repeatedly only in the beginning of meditation.
- After a while you should “let it go” and “allow the mantra to change in any way it wants”. Whether it gets louder or softer, faster or slower down, clearer or fainter, we just take it as it comes. Its is more of a “hearing” of the mantra than repeating it, and that is why TM movement calls the technique “effortless”.
- Allow thoughts to come and go along with the mantra. There is no attempt to push thoughts out of our mind or use the mantra to override them.
- When the mantra disappears and the mind goes off on thoughts we quietly come back to it. This means that all we have to do is become (aware) that we are no longer hearing the mantra and the awareness of that will be quite sufficient to bring the mantra back to us.
- At the end of meditation stop thinking the mantra and wait about 2 minutes before opening the eyes.
Now that you’ve got some tips to get you started on your meditation journey, I’m looking forward to hearing your stories on how it goes! There is plenty more to discuss on this topic, and many more techniques, so stay tuned!