Meditation is a lifelong journey. Checking in daily with this profound practice impacts all areas of life and takes us way beyond feeling better into being better. The following are some suggestions in helping you establish your daily meditation habit:
- Meditate every morning before you do anything else, to center yourself for the day.
- Establish a distraction-free space for meditation.
- Decide how long you will sit before you begin to meditate, and set a clock or a timer to let you know when your time is finished.
- You can sit quietly or go to www.youtube.com/baptisteyoga to access free guided meditations. Below is a 5 minute guided meditation you can access now.
- Keep it pure and simple. Don’t try to do anything or induce a certain state of mind; simply become more clear about what you are experiencing each moment.
- Stay in your body—it is an anchor to the present moment.
You may experience all kinds of sensations—for example, you may feel fidgety, uncomfortable, or itchy—but this is all just resistance. Just let the sensations go and begin again. If emotions rise to the surface, don’t struggle to contain them. Let them come up and out for release. Feel your feelings without losing yourself in them.
Related: The Power of Meditation, Part 1
Related: The Power of Meditation, Part 2
Stay in this quiet and still space for as long as you have allotted for yourself. When you are ready, open your eyes.
We invite you to try on the following 5 minute meditation led by Pino Rizzi.
The Goal of Meditation
Remember, the goal of meditation is not to stop our thinking or even clear our minds. In fact, that would be impossible. In the same way that our hearts beat, our minds think. Meditation is the practice of being less immersed in our thoughts and knowing the difference between thinking and being lost in thoughts. If we don’t know the difference, we live in the stories in our heads and never come out of ourselves long enough to see the world as it really is.
Don’t try to stop your thoughts. Don’t block them: Let them come up, and then let them go. See your thoughts as clouds floating through the sky of your mind. Stand back and watch them drift by. This practice lets you see just how impermanent your thoughts really are, and takes away their power to rule your life. It teaches you the important truth that you are not your thoughts.
From time to time, you’ll forget to be present and get wrapped up in your thoughts, but as often as you forget, remember to let them go and come back to your hands. Again and again, you simply begin again.
