Heard of all the great benefits of meditation, but don’t know how to do it? Think it’s only for weirdo hippies? Think you have too active of a mind, or are too ADHD?
Meditation is easy. Anyone can do it. If you think it’s too hard, that’s because nobody has told you the easy technique.
Here’s how:
- Sit down in a comfortable position. No, it doesn’t have to be the lotus position. A comfy chair, or sitting up in your bed is fine.
- Set a timer. Start off with two minutes, and as you get more used to meditating, increase the time.
- Close your eyes.
- Take a deep slow breath in. Try to focus on the air coming into your nose, down your throat, and into your lungs. As you do, think to yourself, “In.”
- Pause, then slowly breathe out. Focus on the air coming out. As you do, think to yourself, “Out.”
- Pause, and as you do, think, “One.”
- Repeat this process, counting up to ten. Then continue, starting over at one.
- Your mind will inevitably start to wander away from the breath. That’s okay. Everyone’s does. That doesn’t mean you’re bad at meditation. Just realize your mind has wandered, and without any judgement, label your wandering thoughts as “thinking.” Then focus on your breath again. Try to feel pleased that you realized your mind was wandering and you were able to refocus.
- If you have trouble refocusing on the breath, try pausing for a second on the in-breath. This can help to quiet your mind. For particularly stubborn thoughts that won’t leave my head, I’ll try to conjure up the sound of a record scratching in my head as I pause on the in breath.
And that’s it. You’re meditating. Keep doing that until the alarm goes off.
I told you it was easy.
Sure, there are more challenging ways to meditate. If you want to put in the effort to learn those, you might get more out of them. But this is good enough to get you started.
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