It seems everyday I am advising someone on meditation after the statement ‘I just can’t do it’.
But there you go, there’s your first barrier.. Just because you can’t instantly quiet all your thoughts in your mind for multiple minutes at a time doesn’t mean that you have failed. The art of mediation is to not be so harsh on yourself, you concentrated on your breath for 16 seconds, congratulations you have officially mediated.
I challenge you right now, wherever you are to close your eyes, breathe in to the count of 4, hold for 4 seconds then release your breath for 4 seconds. There’s your beginning to of successfully meditating. Now do that once a day for a week.
Maybe now you want to advance, it’s now your second week of meditation so do the above exercise twice. Maybe incorporate some extra mindfulness, how does your body feel afterwards, are you more relaxed? I thought so.
There is a massive misconception that meditation means no thoughts but I’m afraid to break it to you that unless you’re some master zen monk you will have thoughts as you sit in silence. The idea is to see those thoughts and acknowledge them but let them pass by. Realise that you are not your thoughts. This sounds cuckoo but once you get into a regular practise you start to understand. Suddenly you’re facing a stressful situation and your mental health is bullying you but you know deep down that everything’s okay, that you aren’t what your mind is saying and that was when I felt the benefits of what I was doing.
Another misconception is once you’ve started to meditate regularly that it’s really easy. Some days I don’t meditate at all, some days I can only do it for a minute before I just have to get up because I can’t even slightly tame that monkey mind. Yesterday I did 20 minutes morning and evening. But I didn’t do it by not sitting down and trying or by being harsh on myself for paying attention to my thoughts that day. Everyday is different and practise was needed to get where I am today.
So I’m hoping because you’re looking into meditation online and made it this far into my blog that you are looking for some different ways to get invested in a practise. There are Guided meditations to listen to (which I just find on youtube). You can try to concentrate on a mantra or an object such as a candle flame. Mantras can be as simple as ‘I am love’ or a phrase that you find positive. You can even use sanskrit if that works for you. My favourite way and how I learnt was to feel the sensation of my breath going in and out of my nose, lungs, stomach and thinking inhale/exhale as I did so and eventually I could remove those two words and just breathe.
So give it a go and what can you lose.
Earthly Luna Wellbeing 