5 simple steps to meditating when you think you can't
It seems meditation is becoming more and more accepted in the western world. Now we could look at why this is from two perspectives. Firstly, there’s the unfortunate rise in anxiety and stress levels. However, I prefer to look at the more positive reason, which is that we’re becoming more ‘open minded’ to trying alternative methods to deal with our emotional/mental battles, rather than reaching straight for the pills.
Although I find the second reason encouraging, I am still almost daily responding to questions and scepticism around meditation. So I thought I’d take some time to give you a few simple steps to help you give it a go, even when you think you can’t.
Step 1: Overcome the usual skepticism
One of the first things I do when I am teaching someone new to meditate is overcome a few of the usual stereotypical roadblocks they generally have coming into the practise. The most common one is that they think meditation is about getting to a point where you’re not thinking.
Firstly, you can not ‘not think’. The brain is a thinking machine and if you turn it off, you die. Just like if you were to turn off any other major organ of the body. Like the heart for example, you’re not going to be around for much longer.
Therefore, I like to suggest that meditation is a way of controlling your thinking. So the whole ‘I could never get my mind to be quiet’ roadblock isn’t really the objective at all. In fact, those that have a ‘busy’ mind often become some of the best meditators as the process of narrowing their thinking is quite satisfying.
Step 2: Get Comfy
Another preconceived idea when it comes to meditation is that you need to sit like a pretzel (more appropriately known as the lotus position). This was one I bought into when I first started too and would find myself struggling to stay focused because it felt like either my knees were about to snap off or my lower back was about to give way.
Now if you do yoga everyday and are quite flexible, then you might find this position comfortable (and this is actually why the position is so often associated with meditation, because the original teachers would practise yoga daily and this would be a great position to ‘lock’ there bodies into so their mind could concentrate).
However, if you’re like me and are about as flexible as an ironing board, I would recommend a sitting position where you simply feel comfortable. For me, this is just sitting in a chair with my feet flat on the ground, shoulders relaxed and hands resting in my lap. The only posture recommendation I do give is to active your core (pull your belly button in) and have a nice straight spine. This is so your telling your body that is still an exercise, not time to sleep which it will often think it’s time for if you don’t do this.
Step 3: Find what works for you
There’s a lot of different variations of meditation however they can all be rolled up into a single summary. Which is ‘concentration on a single thing in the present moment for a period of time.’
The ‘thing’ is where the variation comes in. This could be the cycle of your breath, a mantra, a sound or even a part of your body. In the guided meditation I teach I’ll let people find the strongest sense they can connect with. As we all process information differently, some of us are more prone to learn and process things visually rather than auditory. Experiencing different types of meditation to find that ‘thing’ that resonates with you the most I feel is a worthwhile step.
Step 4: Progress comes in the depth of the meditation, not in doing more advanced methods
Another roadblock I experienced on my meditation journey was that I thought for me to become more advanced in meditating I needed to try more advanced types of meditation. This at first makes complete sense as this is the usual case to develop any other skill. With meditation though, it is not in how many different types of meditation you can master that makes you a more experienced meditator, but in the depth of your practise.
Once you find a method that works for you, stick with it. I often have vastly different experiences from day to day doing the very same mediation process. Just when you feel like you got the hang of it and want to try another type. I would encourage you to do the same meditation again and try and go a little deeper with it. This realisation was huge for me in taking my meditation to the next level.
Step 5: Enjoy the ride
Now everything I’ve suggested above, forget about it. That’s right, let it all go. This was probably the biggest step for me. The expectation of what I was wanting it to do for me was the biggest block in it doing its magic.
It was the moment where I almost gave it up as I thought it wasn’t delivering on what I wanted it to do for me, was when I really kicked in. I thought I’d give it a go one more time with this type of ‘carefree’ approach and I took me to a place of peace I’ll never forget.
This was also a bigger lesson learnt in life in general. That once you let go of expectations, life opens up to become this blissful state of joy for the present moment. So my last recommended step to meditating, even if you think you can’t is to just simply enjoy the process. Relax and surrender to it and I can assure you that it will do more than any expectation you can think up of what you want it to do for you.