Getting Started With Meditation: A Beginner's Guide to Finding Peace and Relieving Stress
Mindfulness is one of those words of wellness that means so much but mystifies so many.
At the essence of it though mindfulness simply means being where your feet are at. You are here in the present moment and fully engaged in what is happening within you or around you.
Sounds simple right?
For some of us, it is and for others, it takes some time to get to a state of being more mindful.
Our minds are awash with ancient instincts that were developed for simpler times. We didn’t have four thousand advertising messages exposed to our nervous systems each day along with ongoing triggers of our stress and rewards systems with the blips and pings of notifications.
Mindfulness has been practiced for thousands of years so if it did the people well in simpler times where stress was activated by life-threatening situations, might it also do us good today when our stress systems are on high alert most of the time due to stress we’ve imposed upon ourselves?
So let’s talk now about how we can get started with a mindfulness practice. Whether you’re looking to get started for the very first time or reboot a past practice, this article will guide you through the process.
It Starts With Change
Before we get into specific recommendations, it’s important to recognize that any new behaviour starts with the desire to change. In the realm of coaching and psychology, this field is known as Change Psychology.
Readiness to change is the biggest predictor of success in any goal that you set for yourself so take this part of the process seriously.
If you’re reading this article and you’ve made it this far, the good news is you’re likely ready to make a change and start a new mindfulness meditation practice!
Now let’s make it easier for you to get started.
There are only two things that drive us towards making a lasting change in our lives:
Getting away from pain
Moving towards pleasure
Pain is two times more salient than pleasure so as we’re talking about change, we’re also talking about what specific goal you are setting for yourself. You want to gain something of pleasure in making the change but you also want to acknowledge what you’re looking to get rid of that is hurting you in some way.
Take some time to think about this and even write it down for yourself. Be as specific as you can for why you are making this change.
“I am committing over the next 30 days to a daily practice of meditating for at least 10 minutes as a way to help with my anxiety and bring me calmer in my life.”
The Many Benefits of Mindfulness
You get to mix and match the myriad benefits of mindfulness in whatever way you like to come up with your purposeful goal. As a refresher here are some of the benefits that mindfulness and meditation can bring to you or negative things that it helps to take away:
Increased focus and attention
Greater empathy
Reduced blood pressure
Reduced stress
Lowers anxiety
May have a positive effect on depression
Improved sports performance
More resilient against adversity
Increased discipline and mental toughness
A greater sense of calm and peace
Aiding in overcoming trauma
Forming the Habit
Now that you’ve got your specific meditation or mindfulness goal set, it’s time to form it into a lasting change in your life. We do that through habits. Despite your best intentions, if something is not ingrained as an automatic response in the form of a habit, it’s not likely going to get done when things blow up in your life and get difficult. The key to forming habits is enough consistency over time that it becomes an automatic response.
What doesn’t get scheduled doesn’t get done, so make sure that you’ve got your meditation planned out each day in your calendar.
I recently completed a challenge of exercising for 60 days straight and reflected upon the experience in this video here: 7 Lessons Learned from Exercising for 60 Days Straight.
I talk about habits a lot in that video because it was clear that after a certain point, the task of exercise became a habit to my brain as a day no longer felt complete without that exercise routine. There are many factors that affect how long it takes to form a habit which is why somewhere between thirty and sixty days is smart to start with when it comes to the mindfulness goal you set for yourself.
We most often approach these positive changes in our lives with a short-term goal to get started but deep down at its core we are making the change because we recognize that it’s going to positively impact our lives if we continue it long-term and indefinitely.
So now, let’s talk about making the choice of meditation that works best for you because if it doesn’t resonate with you, discipline will only take you so far in terms of keeping you going.
The Many Options To Choose From
There is no one-size-fits-all to meditation and while I do recommend that everyone try to start with some form of seated mindfulness-based meditation practice, it might not be the right practice for everyone long-term.
Meditation Apps For Getting Started
Sitting meditations are a great place to start though for learning the basic skills in a controlled setting.
There are countless apps that help you to learn meditation. Some of my favourites include the Waking Up app by Sam Harris, Headspace, Oak, and Insight Timer.
Waking Up and Headspace have free trials to get started with and you can learn much of the basics of meditation just with the trial, and then they offer subscriptions to continue on with. This can sometimes give you just enough of an investment to want to take your practice more seriously.
Oak and Insight Timer offers free options for guided meditations or calming music to help keep you relaxed while practicing unguided.
The Basic Practice of Mindfulness
(You can download a free meditation track here)
Get into a comfortable position in a quiet and calm place where you won’t be distracted. There’s no right way to position yourself, you can cross your legs if it’ll be comfortable, keep them bent in a chair, or even lie down on the floor or your bed.
We usually start out practicing meditation with eyes closed but you can also leave your eyes open and soften your gaze.
It starts by bringing more attention to your breath and where you are directing it. It can help to place a hand on your chest and the other on your abdomen to feel where the air is going. Work on letting the belly expand and fall with each breath and keeping the chest relatively still.
We want to place most of our attention on our breathing. It can help to focus on the sensation of air passing the tip of your nose or that feeling of the belly rising and falling.
Thoughts will come into your head. A common misconception of mindfulness is that you are failing or not good at it because you cannot clear the thoughts from your head. This isn’t true though. We use meditation to detach ourselves from the thoughts by letting them pass by as if they were floating past us down a stream or like clouds passing by. The strengthening practice of mindfulness is in letting the thoughts go by while acknowledging them without holding on to them.
The work of meditation is in noticing when thoughts come to mind. You simply want to return to the breath each time you are distracted.
It can help to count your breaths or count the cadence of each breath as a way to occupy your mind a little more.
That’s all there is to the basic meditation practice! You can set a timer for keeping you to your goal time or just continue meditating as long as it feels good and gradually increase your time.
What Time of Day Should You Meditate?
It’s important to mention that timing during the day can make a big difference. We generally see it beneficial to practice meditation first thing in the morning to start your day off right but I’ve often found that I fall asleep or can’t focus well enough if I’m not fully awake, so for me mid-day or the evenings is when I meditate.
Right before bed may not be the best time either because if you’re getting sleepy, it’s once again hard to maintain the adequate focus needed for strengthening the mindfulness practice.
If you start this seated meditation practice for a few days and it doesn’t jive with you, consider a more active form of meditation like walking meditation, forest bathing, or qigong and Tai Chi. These practices can be equally mindful but helpful for those who spend a lot of their time sitting at work and need to expend some physical energy to restore balance.
Now you’ve got all that you need to get started with a mindfulness practice. Write down the intention for why you want to make this change, schedule your meditation for each day, and start practicing with whatever app or method you find easiest to follow.
Feel free to reach out if you have any questions or specific concerns with your meditation practice.