A Beginner's Guide to Meditation
When the word Meditation comes up, I immediately think of old monks who spend hours at a time meditating every day. However, meditation is something that everyone can benefit from and enjoy. Meditation is definitely something that I enjoy delving deeply into during my free time. I feel like when I first started getting into meditation I really struggled with the focus side of things. I often felt uneasy and almost jitterish from simply sitting there and focusing on my breath. However, I later learned how to meditate through a really cool app called Medito. I’ll be sharing information that's kind of a mix between Medito’s information and my own personal experiences. For starters, how do I make sure I meditate every day? Consistency is key in anything you try to do! A trick I found for consistency is incorporating it into your morning or night routine. This really helps with assuring that you actually do your daily meditations. So how do you actually meditate? Meditation is a concept that is fairly simple, yet hard. The essence of meditation is staying in a comfortable position and focusing on your breath and emptying your mind. A simple meditation would include:
1. Finding a comfortable, upright position, whether you’re sitting on a chair, or criss-cross applesauce on your bed, any position you find comfortable is totally okay. 2. You have to find a time that you’re comfortable with. For beginners, you can start with 5 minutes and slowly increase the time when you feel comfortable. However, if you don’t have enough time to meditate for long periods of time, you can do sessions of 3-minute meditations.
3. Find a guided meditation app. A guided meditation is a meditation, but there is a speaker that guides you and makes sure you are on the right path. I personally use Medito, because their daily guided meditations are good and there is a tracker of your streak and how many minutes you’ve meditated. However, if Medito isn't really your type of thing, there are tons of other assistive apps out there as well.
4. Feel your Breath. Notice your breath going in and coming out, as long as any sensations that come along with it, for example, your stomach expanding and collapsing, your nostrils flaring, or your chest slowly growing on each inhale.
- Notice that you’ve wandered. Obviously, your thoughts won’t magically disappear on command, and sometimes your attention will wander onto what you’re having for dinner, or a project you haven’t started that is due soon, and that is totally okay. The best thing to do is acknowledge your thoughts and return to the breath.
6. Be kind to your mind. Meditation is all about mindfulness! It’s easy to feel frustrated and almost embarrassed when your mind wanders, but the most important thing is to just acknowledge it and let it go.
Although the benefits of meditation might not be the most obvious, meditation can help you increase your focus, self-awareness, imagination and creativity, patience and tolerance, and most importantly your sleep quality🙂. If you have any additional questions or tips on things I can add then please shoot me an email!!