When you’re learning how to meditate, you’re learning how to transform your life. In fact, meditation is scientifically proven to help people, which is why it’s recommended by top psychologists and mental health experts. In addition, we have received thousands of notes from people all over the world praising mindfulness as the key to overcoming everyday stress, burnout, insomnia, anxiety, addiction, depression, and chronic pain. In addition to feeling relief, people are also noting the benefits of cultivating compassion, gratitude, kindness, focus, joy and self-love through their meditation practice.
Mindfulness wakes you up to your life by teaching you how to build awareness, pay attention, face discomfort, be present, and surf life’s ups and downs. Better decisions can be made, relationships—including ones with yourself—can be strengthened, and you can begin to appreciate the beauty that has always been right in front of you. We can also improve our capacity for concentration and focus through meditation. It can help us recondition our minds to break unhealthy habits. In the age of distraction, it’s your superpower.
Meditation has physical benefits too. With regular practice grey matter in the amygdalae (part of our temporal lobes and believed to play a key role in our emotions) shrinks, in turn reducing anxiety and stress. This lowers blood pressure and enhances immunity and the body’s ability to heal.
While meditation can be honored as a practice that came out of traditions like Buddhism and Hinduism, today meditation is a universal and secular practice. It can be done by anyone, anywhere, at any time. There is only one catch: meditation requires practice and patience. Think of it in the same way we think of physical fitness: it takes more than twenty sit-ups or running a single mile to get lasting results. The longer you stick with it the easier it becomes and the more benefits you’ll notice.
The best way to learn how to meditate is to do it. The ideas will only get you so far, it must be experienced. If you’ve been meaning to try, start now with these eleven steps. We’re cheering for you.
1. Find a quiet place
Find a comfortable way to sit on a chair, couch, bench, or cushion in the most calming place you can find. It’s also okay to lie down if that works better for you (for many people, bending their knees as pictured below will offers support to the low back).
2. Set a timer
Set a timer for somewhere between one and thirty minutes. We recommend beginners start with five to ten minutes. It’s helpful to remember that you have the rest of your life to build up your time if you choose to make meditation a lifelong practice. In the meantime, it’s amazing to note how much can change when you shift your attention for just a few minutes.
3. Close your eyes… or keep them open
This is up to you. Both options have benefits. Most beginners find it easier to close their eyes so they’re not distracted by what’s in front of them. However, if you’re tired or tend toward daydreaming, keeping your eyes open, still and softly focused can help you stay in the present moment. We recommend choosing one and sticking with it for your entire meditation. Over time, you can experiment with both and decide what’s best for you.
4. Pay attention to your foundation
Every part of you that touches the ground is your foundation. Notice how you’ve landed. Does one side feel heavier than the other? Feel free to make small adjustments to create more balance in your foundation. Sometimes this happens just by noticing, sometimes your body isn’t ready to shift and that’s okay too. Come back to your foundation often. When the mind gets busy, we forget that we are in a body so it’s helpful to think about how your body is touching the ground.
5. Get grounded once your foundation is established
The act of grounding has two components. The first is to reach down to the ground as if you trying to grow roots. Notice how when you press into the ground with your foundation it helps you to sit up taller!? The second is to allow yourself to be held by the earth. In other words, stop working so hard. It is comforting to remember that the ground is supporting you even on the worst days (allow yourself to feel it).
6. Bring your awareness to your spine
If you’re sitting, straighten your spine until you feel tall and dignified. When properly aligned, the structure of the spine is designed to support you with minimal effort. If you’re not used to sitting like this, it’s natural to feel tired as you re-train your muscles to hold this posture. Do your best each time that you sit and we promise that it’ll get easier.
If you’re lying down, put your spine in a position that feels good to you and let your body relax.
7. Pay attention to your breath
Concentration is a fundamental tool of meditation because it cultivates focus. Because it is always there for us, we frequently choose the breath to focus on. Notice the rise and fall of every inhale and exhale. There is no need to change the way you’re breathing, though you may notice that the very act of paying attention to your breath will change it. That’s okay. Just stay with your breath. Notice the texture of your breath…is it smooth or jagged? Notice the length of your breath…is it long or short? Notice the balance of your breath…is the inhale longer than the exhale? Notice where you can feel the breath most predominantly…is it most noticeable in your belly, chest, nostrils, or just outside of your nostrils?
8. When your mind wanders, return to the breath
It’s natural to start thinking about anything but the breath, so rather than beating yourself up over it, gently invite yourself back to the breath. Over and over. This is the practice. You may need to bring yourself back sixty times a minute. This is how your capacity for concentration builds. The act of noticing that your mind wandered is what we call mindfulness. Many of us spend much of our life on autopilot. We get tangled up in thoughts and stories and we don’t even notice that our mind is spinning, as if it were trapped on a hamster wheel. The power of mindfulness is that we can interrupt the wandering of our mind into unhelpful territories.