I already know what you’re thinking when you read the title - Once you see the word ‘Meditation’, your attention disperses.
You’ve probably got a good excuse, too - “It’s impossible for me”, “I can’t sit still that long”, “I don’t have the time/space/patience/etc…” However, I am inspired by the yoga sutras to share some encouragement towards giving your meditation practice another shot.
First off, believe me when I say that I empathize and sympathize with you. When I first started my own meditation practice, it could not last much longer than a couple minutes. I couldn’t settle in, between my well-known anxiety and what I now know as undiagnosed ADHD: my thoughts were bouncing around my head like caffeinated ping-pong balls.
The only thing I knew for certain was that I couldn’t give up.
So, that’s where I started. A couple minutes, a couple times a month. I soon figured out I could sneak up on myself by practicing my meditation as I laid down to bed at night, accompanied by a guided meditation or a white/brown/pink noise (Seriously - you can find a noise frequency for every color of the rainbow). The timer stretched from two minutes, to five, to ten. Then, as I took Yoga classes more often, savasana became something I relished in. Not at first - but it was a great way to force myself to meditate a little more often. Once I discovered Restorative Yoga & Yoga Nidra, subsets of Yoga that include much less sweating and much more relaxation, I started noticing how nice it felt when I gave myself ample opportunity to quiet my mind. A couple meditation sessions a month morphed into a couple sessions a week.
Now, when I find myself in need of stress relief, I turn to meditation. But how does someone go from calling a two-minute fidget fiesta into intentional, impactful meditation?
It starts and ends with the breath. But “Bring Awareness to your Breath!” is not practical advice for someone who has never paid attention to it before. First of all, how do you notice your breath without immediately trying to control it? I remember when kids in school would wait for a quiet moment to announce, “You are now blinking manually”. Everyone cursed them as they we tried to stop thinking about the involuntary moment becoming our entire awareness. My best advice is to accept you’re obsessing over it now. Breathe in as much as feels comfortable in your body. Then, breathe out however feels most comfortable. Your inhale doesn’t have to match the length of your exhale, or be exactly as long as the breath before it. As you set your marker to the comfort of your own body, allow your attention to drift from the filling and emptying of the lungs to where the breath is moving in and out of your body. This is most commonly the nose - Feel the air moving in through your nostril(s), then feel the sensation of it exiting. If you are breathing through your mouth, pay attention to the sensations on your lips or inside your mouth as the breath travels. If you are breathing through another orifice, I suggest you stop there and call a doctor.
Meditation is complicated on another front aside from the breath - the seemingly uncontrollable thoughts in our mind find a way to take us away from our breath and back towards stressors or obsessions. Again, I go back to the “manual blinking” example. The more you tell yourself not to pay attention to that one memory from the past, or the anxiety of a future situation, the more you obsess over it. I hope you grow to learn that these thoughts are not the impediment of meditation - they are the opportunities you require to practice meditation in the first place! You can’t let go of your thoughts if you have none to acknowledge.
Start by acknowledging and accepting you are having this thought in the first place. It has taken you away from focusing on your breath, but it has not disrupted the entire experience unless you open your eyes, throw up your hands and allow it to be your stopping point. You can come to recognize you are having this thought, that it is totally valid to be having this thought, but that you are going to tuck it away for the time being while you focus on the sensation of your breath. The quiet that meditation allegedly brings to folks cannot be created without the thoughts that come between the quiet. You are not “doing meditation wrong” when you have a thought. You are simply creating another opportunity to practice meditation.
Also, when was the last time you gave yourself permission not to think about everything going on right now or coming up in the future? To settle into the present moment you are in and simply hang out there, with space and no agenda? If you cannot come up with an answer to that question, it’s no wonder meditation is so difficult for you. You’ve gone most of your life without the option of stillness or silence.
If the idea of meditation keeps coming back to you and you believe you would benefit from it if you could learn to just… Sit there… Start with two minutes. Just two. Put on a guided meditation, nature sounds that transport you to a peaceful place, or thrash metal, if that’s what can keep you out of your head for that time. Don’t force yourself to stretch the sessions out for longer if you don’t feel ready. 20 minutes will feel like 2 hours if you haven’t taught yourself the basics first. Allow yourself a moment of reflection afterwards - even if it is only 2 minutes, did it make a difference in how your body feels right now? Does your mind feel a little more at ease? Do you want to make two more minutes for yourself to appreciate the stillness and the irreplaceable moment of the now? You can always come back to now!
Some of the greatest gifts we can give to ourselves also require some discipline on our part. Maybe you’re like me and need to force yourself to take a Yoga class to start meditating, or trick yourself into meditating as you fall asleep. As foreign as it feels, the more opportunities you give yourself, the more you’ll feel inclined towards peace and comfort during and after these moments. Meet meditation not as an obligation or necessity, but as a curiosity of what your mind is capable of. Don’t compare yourself to people who have been meditating years, or even just a few days longer than you have.
Asking for some time to do something solely for ourselves can feel selfish, especially if it involves asking for uninterrupted time away from our responsibilities, like children, pets, or work. However, don’t you think that gaining some extra calm, patience and gratitude would eventually impact all of those responsibilities positively?
I will always be here, encouraging you to try your best. If you’ve stumbled upon a technique that makes meditation easier or more effective for you, I would love for you to share it with anyone else who may be curiously reading on, or with other participants during any of my guided meditation sessions. Sharing this energy in a group is really impactful and helpful in my experience, although sitting in silence with others sounds counterintuitive!
With gratitude,
Christina
