A beginner’s guide to meditation

Raise your hand if you roll your eyes when someone starts to talk about meditating. Every time you have tried to meditate you become more anxious than before you started. Meditation is just not for you.

Meditation is really not about making your mind empty. That is called brain dead and that is not good. Meditation is about learning to be ok with your thoughts. Sitting in meditation is an exercise in becoming friends with your mind and thoughts. Just like a child that is constantly nagging you, you learn to turn off the sound. Meditation is something like that. You still and look at your thoughts, some need to be attended and some need to be ignored. Through sitting in meditation you practice how to not be reactive but accepting and letting go.

Just like you wouldn’t jump into the deep water without learning to swim, try slowly learning to meditate. Here is one simple meditation. Find a quiet place. You can sit or lay down. This is only for 5 minutes so you shouldn’t fall asleep, but if you do then that is ok. Most of our society is sleep-deprived. Even if you fall asleep only do this exercise for 5 minutes. Keep trying daily and eventually, you will stay awake for the 5 minutes. For the 5 minutes just watch ( be aware) of your inhale and exhale through your nose. Yes, your mind is going to travel and once you notice you are no longer watching your breath, look at the thought, if you feel you need to remember it, write it down and then go back to watching the breath. Continue until the 5 minutes are up. Do this once a day and see what happens.