3 Steps to Beginning a Mindfulness Meditation Practice.
Clearing your mind is not one of them!
Mindfulness meditation can support us to feel more grounded and present in life. It can:
Build our ability to respond to anxious or self-critical thoughts.
Expand our relationship with our bodies.
Create space needed to respond rather than a reaction when triggered.
Boost self-trust and self-acceptance.
Allow us to access self-supportive responses during stressful and painful experiences.
Support us in not adding more suffering on top of truly justified grief.
Below is a simple (but not easy) way to get started with a practice. Life is complicated, let’s keep this simple!
1. Take your seat.
This is an important part of your practice as meditation is about synchronizing your mind and body. We tend to forget the body when preparing to meditate. Being aware of your body is part of the path to connection with your whole self.
You can sit on a cushion with crossed legs, kneel, or sit in a chair. If you are in a chair, make sure your back is slightly away from the back of the chair and your feet are firmly on the ground. Use whatever props you need to feel comfortable. Comfort is more important than sitting in perfect position!
Drop your hands where they naturally land on your thighs. This is the ‘calming the mind’ mudra. Your back should be long but not stiff, almost as if a string was attached to the top of your head.
Check-in with your shoulders and make sure they are not up near your ears! Bring awareness to your jaw and let go of tension here. Your mouth can be slightly open or lightly closed. You chin should be tucked slightly in.
Your eyes should be slightly open and you should have a light gaze on the floor 4-6 feet in front of you.
2. Place your attention to the breath.
In meditation, we often use our breath as a focus point to anchor us in the present moment.
Bring your attention to your natural inhalation and exhalation of breath. You do not have to manipulate your breath in any way. You can do this at the tip of your nose or your belly. Another option is to follow the in-breath and out-breath from your nose to your belly and out your nose.
If you notice your awareness moving away from the breath, notice this and gently bring your attention back to the breath.
3. Label thoughts ‘thinking’.
Eventually or right away, you will have a thought or even a stream of thoughts. This is perfectly ok. Notice that you are thinking. Silently, label it “thinking” and gently bring your awareness back to the breath. Try not to push thoughts away or label them good or bad. We are not suppressing or judging our thoughts. Just notice that a thought or thoughts have come up, label them thinking, and come back to your breath.
Be gentle with yourself here. We are human; thoughts are not a bad thing! The practice is not about clearing your mind. There is a myth that the point of meditation is to clear our minds. This sets us up for self-judgment and leaving the practice. Thoughts during meditation are welcome and normal. I want to scream this when I hear the phrase “now clear your mind” in meditation instruction!
The repetition of continually coming back to the breath when thoughts come into our awareness is the practice. It is what builds that mindfulness “muscle” (more accurately the pre-frontal cortex and it’s connection to the amygdala).
Try it out for 1, 3 or 5 minutes. It doesn’t have to be really long sessions to have an impact. It is much more important to meditate for 5 minutes 4 or 5 times a week than sitting for a long period of time once in a while.
For the purposes of keeping this a simple description, I described using the breath as a focus point, sitting and keeping your eyes open during your practice. There are many other possible focus points, positions (or movement) and ways of working with gaze (or eyes closed) that are just as good! It’s about exploring what works for you and sticking with that. This is especially important when having experienced trauma, anxiety or painful emotions.
You do not have to have a special meditation space or fancy meditation props to practice. Let’s make it as practical, accessible and doable as possible. Sitting for a few moments before opening your computer to work or on your bed before going to sleep are great options to start.
Give it a try. And remember, if you are having thought after thought it doesn’t mean you are doing it wrong or are bad at meditating. It means you are human with a brain - that’s a good thing.