A Beginner’s Guide to Meditation
Meditation is good for you. It helps in achieving inner peace, boosts your health, improves your mood, and increases your mindfulness.
Why?
People who meditate are far less likely to react with negative emotions to any given situation.
If you meditate regularly and consistently, you are on your way to leading a balanced life.
Start meditating and make it a part of your daily routine.
Meditation is for your spiritual life, as exercise is for your physical life.
Meditation is a key habit that gives more value for the effort.
Exercise, nutrition, meditation, yoga, Pranayama, and kindness are some of the key habits.
Key habits are multipliers: they help you improve many other aspects of your life.
How? Have a fixed time for meditation.
Have a fixed place for meditation.
Have a fixed sequence of preparations for meditation.
Morning is the best time for meditation for the majority of people.
You will find it easy to practice if you meditate after your bath.
In the beginning, tell your mind repeatedly, “As soon as I complete my exercise (or running or jogging etc.), I bathe. As soon as I finish my bath, I meditate. As soon as I end my meditation, I…” This method is an enormous help in quickly developing a chain of automatic habits.
Meditate daily at the same place in the same room facing the same direction, sitting in the same comfortable position.
Start your meditation by reducing possible distractions: close the window/door, switch off TV and close your laptop or any other gadgets.
Close your eyes.
Visualise your mind as a clear expanse of blue sky without clouds, pleasant and peaceful.
Start breathing in a measured, conscious way.
Think that breathing consists of four stages: inhale, hold, exhale, hold.
Beginners can mentally count 1 to 4 or 1 to 6 for each stage of breathing.
Your mind will start having thoughts, random thoughts rising unbidden, emerging on their own.
Do not resist and do not prevent your thoughts.
Learn to observe what your mind is doing.
You are not your mind; your mind is not you.
Within a few days, you will become aware of your mind.
Your mind constantly generates thoughts. They are often random, without any rhyme or reason.
Your thoughts are mostly about the past (regrets, remorse) or about the future (worry, anxiety, dread, fear).
You will notice that the thoughts coming from your mind are rarely about the present.
You are already visualising your mind as a rectangular piece of pleasant, peaceful sky.
Now, think of the thoughts as clouds drifting across the sky.
Do not steer or control or direct them. Just observe them.
Do not try to stop them or speed them up. Just observe them.
They are mere clouds travelling across the sky and disappearing from view, just as new clouds start their travel.
Do not focus on what the thoughts are: they don’t matter, ignore them.
Many, many days later, the number of clouds drifting or speeding or floating across the rectangle of clear blue sky will be fewer.
Thoughts will not stop completely. It does not matter. Thoughts are fleeting, temporary. Let them come and let them go.
Huge benefits Miracle! Turning point! One day, you will discover that the rectangle of clear blue sky is just that, with very few clouds and, at times, no clouds at all.
That sense of bliss, that attitude of calmness, will not come soon and will not come easily. You have to work to achieve that.
Take it easy. Start small. Begin to meditate for just 5 minutes daily.
When meditation has become an ingrained habit, increase the duration to 10 minutes; later to 15 minutes.
Most meditators do not go beyond 20 minutes at a time. Instead, these veterans add 5 minutes of meditation in the evening before dinner or at night before going to bed.
Immense value for just a few minutes daily! So much benefit to you for so little effort!
Meditation is a key habit that impacts positively on many facets of your life.
It makes you mindful of the present.
It heightens your awareness.
It slows and regulates your heartbeat.
It reduces stress by enabling you to face the travails of daily life serenely.
It even improves digestion and sleep pattern, according to many surveys.
Start small Beginners mostly start meditating for 5 minutes and if they have the help of an app to time that 5-minute period, they can progress faster. The app can also provide chanting of mantra or background music for the duration.
Many free / paid apps are available. Beginners can consider free Android apps such as Insight Timer or Let’s Meditate or Medito.
Do not be tempted by people who try to sell you things such as meditation-robe, chair, sitting mat, bell or timer, personal coaching and so on. They are not necessary.
Start small. Once a day for just 5 minutes and then go from there.
If you start with big plans to meditate for 15 or 20 minutes, you will not succeed.
If you plan to meditate for 5 minutes at a time for twice or thrice a day, you will not succeed.
If you intend to meditate on alternate days or only on weekends and so on, you will not succeed.
Start small, keep it simple, do it regularly.
There will be days when you will not feel like meditating. You have to stick to it.
There will be times when “justifiable reasons” tempt you not to meditate. You must persevere.
There will be occasions when “changed circumstances” force you to consider abandoning meditation. Ignore them and go ahead, just do it.
It will take anywhere between 21 days to 90 days for any habit to become a routine act, performed automatically. Till then, be prepared to ignore all ‘valid’ reasons your mind presents you to abandon the habit.
Be prepared to be amazed, be ready to be astonished by the benefits you get from meditation.
Know that the benefits are not a one-time affair; you benefit not for a day or for a month or for a year; the gain is lifelong.
You will be a better person. Your life will become worth living.
You will flourish.
Good luck and all the best.
