Have you ever tried to learn how to meditate? Maybe you’ve tried it once and it didn’t “work” so you dropped the practice. With so many people hyping about its benefits, why is it so hard to do?
If you’re like me, you began trying meditation out because you wanted a certain benefit. For me, I wanted a positive coping mechanism for my anxiety and stress. My therapist suggested learning to meditate so I took a little class and then tried it on my own.
And I mostly fell asleep.
Just about every time I tried.
Hey, at least I was relaxed right? Good enough. The truth was though it was hard. Calming the mind..trying not to think, nearly impossible for my brain.
Here’s the thing though, that’s a misconception. When it comes to meditation, I propose we change our perspective on how we view it.
You Are Not Your Thoughts
The purpose of meditation is not to become void of all thoughts, but to not focus on them. To let them pass by, observing them like clouds.
Getting into observer mode though can feel awkward if you’ve never done it before. It requires you to view yourself in a whole new way. For this to happen, you can’t identify as your thoughts, but as the one observing them.
When your stomach growls at you, this isn’t you you, just your body. You decide if you should eat or wait. Thoughts are stomach growls, simply things we choose to give our attention to or ignore. The choice is ours.
When Meditation Becomes Fun
There is a reason why meditation has become so popular, and while I’m sure there are plenty of reasons ranging from wholesome to less wholesome, for me the reason I love it is because now it is a fun activity.
Yes, my body calms down, and stress melts away, but eventually, I began to have experiences…my consciousness was transported to other realms, and my energy began to change, and thus my life began to change. How I reacted to things changed, how I saw myself changed, and all for the better.
Learning How to Meditate
While yes, it would be amazing to learn meditation in India or on some mountain top in Japan, there is no need to go to these places to learn this practice. As with many things, there are so many methods out there to choose from and almost all can be done wherever you are right now.
My suggestion as a meditation teacher and coach is to start with the basics of course. Try simple guided meditations for a short duration. Download Insight Timer or Calm and find beginner meditations. You may have heard this before but there really is no way to do mediation “wrong.” Just taking the time to observe and allow yourself a break from the world is all you need to do.
Stay open to how meditation can change things for you in your life. Work at making it a habit, starting with just three minutes a day, and observe how you, your life, and how you react to the world around you changes just due to this simple practice.
Joy D. Fanning
Joy D. Fanning is the owner of Astronaut of life, a meditation company that makes guided meditations. She is a teacher on the apps Insight Timer and TaskHuman. Go to https://www.astronautoflife.com to learn more.