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The
hype is true. Mindfulness meditation is a habit that will absolutely
boost your happiness. And if you think you have to be a Tibetan monk or a
limber yoga instructor to master it, you’re wrong. With a few simple
steps, you can build a lifelong meditation practice. And you can begin
today.
Why Meditate?
The reasons to
meditate are too compelling to ignore. Skirting the obvious fact that
meditation practices have survived millennia of human history,
scientific research supports meditation as a natural pain reliever and antidepressant, brain preserver, stress reducer, cardiovascular healer, and concentration-strengthening exercise.
But
even more compelling than the research is the simple notion that your
mind is where you live out your entire life. Everything you know, feel,
and do across your lifetime is anticipated, experienced, and remembered
by the filter of your mind.
Left to its own devices, our mind wanders
constantly. From what we need to accomplish today, to the person who
made us feel small yesterday, to the fun we expect to have over the
upcoming weekend. Research from Harvard
shows that our minds wander 47% of the time, on average, and that we
are less happy in these moments. Mind- wandering means we are missing
opportunities to be fully present in whatever it is we could be
experiencing at that moment in time.
How to Begin
Meditation
is about reclaiming the focus of our minds so that rather than jumping
from one random thought or feeling to the next, we can intentionally
focus our mind on whatever we choose. Mindfulness meditation works just
like physical exercise, in that the repetition of refocusing our
attention to our breath flexes our “focusing muscles” and gives us
greater focusing strength over time.
If you’re just learning to meditate, the steps are deceptively simple.
- Find a comfortable, quiet place where you won’t be disturbed for the next few minutes.
- Sit in a comfortable position, either on a chair, a cushion, or the floor.
- Focus your attention on your breath including the sensations in your nose, your throat, your chest and your abdomen as you inhale and exhale.
- Notice that your mind wanders to some thought or emotion.
- Bring your attention back to your breath.
That’s
it. You simply repeat, acknowledging whatever place your mind wanders
to, letting that go, and gently reasserting your focus to your
breathing. To ensure your meditation practice gets started on the right
foot.
Adopt a Relaxed Yet Alert Posture
Your
seated position while meditating can be cross-legged or
feet-on-the-floor. But what’s most important is to be both relaxed yet
alert. Your body should feel at ease, so don’t force your legs into a
complex lotus position if your knees start aching in pain. Instead, make
sitting up tall the priority. You can meditate with your eyes half open
or gazing at something in particular, but beginning with your eyes
closed can help focus your attention to your breathing.
Find Your Mind’s Observation Deck
The
key to refocusing your attention back to your breath is to take on a
role of an observer within your own mind. As your thoughts wander, try
to imagine yourself as an audience member watching the mind-wandering
play being performed on stage. Watch your train of thought and then
choose to block out the stage and its characters, and refocus on your
body and its breath. As a new play starts up on the stage again, try to
catch yourself and see it from the audience rather than being an actor
on the stage. As an audience member, work to detach yourself from the
action, not getting as caught up in the emotion of your own mind
wandering.
This is not easy. You may find whole meditation
sessions that go by and realize you’ve been completely caught up in your
wandering mind and didn’t even realize it. That’s par for the course.
Recognize that you’ve just gained insight into your own mind that you
may have never had before. Stick to it and try again during your next
session.
Build Consistency
Most
meditation teachers agree that the consistency of your practice matters
more than the duration of your meditation. Begin by meditating 5 minutes
at a time. But strive to do it every day. Even better, set a time and a
place for it so that it becomes part of your daily routine. Maybe
choose to meditate before you eat breakfast or just as you enter your
bedroom at night before settling in for the night. Give your practice a
few weeks to really get off the ground. As you develop, you can read books, take classes, or join organizations that will allow you to deepen and expand your meditation practice.
Try Happify's free track, Mindfulness for Beginners, featuring 28 days of guided audio meditations.
By Derrick Carpenter
Happiness Expert
