What Gets in the Way of Your Meditation?

What Gets in the Way of Your Meditation?

Meditation is quite easy to learn and it’s not hard to practice. What can be hard is to make it part of your life. Do you find that there is a lot of stuff that gets in the wayof your meditation?

We are not used to meditating

There is a lot of talk about how mindfulness and meditation are so popular these days. It’s true that things have certainly changed from when I was a child. Nowadays everyone knows what meditation is, or thinks they do. We hear of various famous people who are said to practice meditation. It’s easy to find books, articles, apps and lots of courses on meditation.

This is all great, but it does not change the fact that we are not used to it.

For those of us living in the west, it’s really only in the last fifty or so years that meditation has been available to us. It’s a new addition for most people. It is only beginning to be accepted in certain areas of society—it’s certainly not something that everyone does. You don’t walk down the street and see billboards urging you to meditate. TV shows are not full of people meditating.

When I was a child there was even less talk of meditation. I would have loved to have had lessons in school. My life could have been quite different. Now meditation is beginning to be taught in schools. This is a wonderful development. Our education system is so focused on getting across all the right information. It’s a shame that learning how to work with our minds is just down to us.

Those of us who are meditators support each other through our communities but we are not mainstream. We are still working out how to make meditation part of our lives.

It is not always comfortable to sit with your mind

One result of not being used to meditation is that we can feel some resistance to it. Although we have heard of all the benefitsand we want to try it ourselves, it is not always comfortable. Sitting quietly with your  mind is not always easy to do.  Timothy Wilson of the University of Virginia led a piece of research into how people react when they are asked to sit quietly without anything to  occupy them. People reported feeling uncomfortable. Shockingly, in some cases people went for the option of giving themselves electric shocksjust to have something to do.

Part of our unfamiliarity with meditation means that we are not always sure if we want the benefits that it brings. We want inner peace but secretly worry that it might be boring. When we don’t feel like meditating it can even feel like we don’t really want to let go of our old habits. We like what we are familiar with—even if it causes us problems. Often in workshops I have had long interactions with people who are convinced that their stress is just ‘how things are’ and that there is nothing they can do to change things.

When you have been meditating for a while, your confidence grows in the feeling of stability that it brings. You stop looking for answers and begin to accept the quietening down of the mind as a way of it returning to its natural state. 

There never seems to be enough time

On a more practical level, thinking that there is not enough time certainly gets in the way of your meditation. Most people live busy lives juggling work, family and trying to have some fun. We might want to meditate but we don’t know how to fit it in. Trying to do it in the morning means we have to get up too early. When we come home in the evening, we are too tired. Forget trying to do it during the day because things are happening much too fast.

At the risk of being repetitive, a lot of this comes down to not being used to meditation. If you look carefully, there are actually lots of timesfor short meditations during the day. It helps if we can just be quite natural about it. Taking a moment to watch your breath while standing in a queue is like a tiny meditation session. There can be many times like that—stopping at traffic lights, waiting for the bus, when you go to the loo. 

You can also use all the ordinary, routine activities that you do every day as mindfulness exercises. Try cleaning your teeth mindfully or taking a shower. When you cook dinner, notice each of your actions and stay present with them. Try not to let your mind wander to what you have to do next. 

All these small moments help us to get used to meditation. They make room for meditation in our life and help to make it a habit

There is so much stuff going on in our minds

Traditional Buddhist teachings on meditation the mind is likened to a wild elephantthat needs to be tamed. Although we might not like to think of our minds being like a wild elephant, we do know that for much of the time we don’t seem to have so much control over where our minds go, or how they behave. In fact, if we are honest, we know that there really is nothing that our mind cannot think about, or how far out it can get. 

All this noise in the mind can get in the way of your meditation. It’s not that we don’t want to meditate but our minds are so busy that it can over rule our intention to meditate. That’s why it is important to do regular short sessions. It helps our mind get more used to quietening down.

It’s easy to get discouraged

We hear so much good stuff about meditation that it can be disappointing when we do not see an immediate difference in our experience. Society is geared towards the quick and the instant result. We can see from how we surf the internet how impatient we can get when things don’t open fast enough.

Once we start meditation, we want to get it right. We want to be experts. It is easy to get frustrated at how much our mind wanders. 

The thing is that there is no such thing as a bad meditation. Every time we meditate we are managing to create new neural pathwaysin our brain that will help us to make mediation a habit. Research is showing that changes can be found in the brain after practicing meditation for just eight weeks. We can learn to be patient with our wandering mind. Each time it strays from the method, we just notice and bring it back. That’s how meditation happens.

What to do when things get in the way of your meditation?

Having an enormous sense of humour about the whole thing really helps. Meditation is important but we don’t need to take ourselves too seriously. We also don’t need to give ourselves a bad time about it all. 

I remember so clearly the moment when it really dawned on me that it was my choice to meditate. Yes, my meditation teacher was encouraging me, but no-one was forcing me to do anything that I did not want to do. I had adopted an attitude towards meditation like taking a nasty medicine because it was supposed to be good for me. Suddenly it hit me that if I truly realised the benefits of meditation, then it would seem natural to want to try and make space for it. It was such a relief! I could drop all my attitude and just get down to trying to find a way to fit it in.

Now I see meditation much more like cleaning my teeth. It’s something that I do several times a day. It helps my dental hygiene and I understand that it’s necessary and important. Just like I don’t want to go out with my mouth smelling bad, I want to work with my mind. If I don’t want my mind to run away with me and go wild, I need to meditate. There’s nothing to struggle about any more.

TIME TO MEDITATE

A 60-page e-book packed full of practical tips and guidance on how to make meditation part of your life

You can find out more here

4 Ways My Kindness Suffers from Lack of Attention

4 Ways My Kindness Suffers from Lack of Attention

It took me a long time to realize that my kindness can suffer from a lack of attention. Although it matters a lot to me to be kind, I am only too aware that it is not always easy.

 

Do you know the Cherokee folk story about the grandfather talking to his grandson? The Grandfather describes the two wolves that he feels are always battling within him. There is the kindly, caring wolf who looks for peace and harmony and then there is the fierce, angry wolf who likes to fight and make trouble. The grandson asks which wolf will win the battle and his grandfather replies, ‘The one that I feed’.

 

I always feel that the old grandfather is actually telling the story of how our old brain can undermine our newer brain, the prefrontal cortex at any provocation. Our old brain, or reptilian brain has been passed down to us from our early beginnings when our attention was primarily focused on hunting, procreating and staying alive. It was much later, when we started to gather together in communities in order to protect our families and raise healthy children, that we began to learn the value of cooperation and connection.

 

So, from one point of view, the wise grandfather is reminding me that kindness might be part of our evolutionary make up, but our self-interest is instinctive. In other words, if we don’t pay attention then our old brain can hijack all our well-meaning intentions.

 

These are some of the ways it can happen for me.

 

When does my kindness suffer?

 

 When my opinions take over

We are going through tough times in world events—disastrous wars, austerity, Brexit, climate change, Trump, an increase in support for populism—and our 24/7 media coverage brings it all very close. Like many people, I care a lot about these issues and have strong opinions about how they need to be addressed. The thing is, it’s all too easy to talk about the people that I disagree with in very harsh terms. Sometimes I do not even realize that I am doing it!

 

When an issue is one we value dearly, then it is hard to tolerate opinions which seem to cut right across those values. We can use the fact that we feel ‘passionate’ about our causes to cover up how we behave in supporting them.

 

I have come to realize it is not so much use to campaign for things that matter to me in a style that does not fit my values. I don’t make loads of New Year Resolutions, but I am determined to find a way to speak up with strength but not harshness.

 

 

When I am too stressed, worried and pre-occupied

When we are stressed, or worried our horizons tend to narrow and we focus more on what is going on for us than with other people. Even being in a rush can lead us to overlook the needs of others. Stress can act in the same way as a threat and trigger our old brain responses. Our thinking brain tends to shut down and we focus our attention on just getting by—rather than noticing other peoples’ needs.

 

The irony is that we benefit ourselves from practising kindness—it’s not just about the other person.Research shows that kindness can improve heart function, lower blood pressure, slow aging and strengthen our immune systems. The author and scientist, David R. Hamilton explains that through the production of the hormone, oxytocin and the neurotransmitter, serotonin our levels of wellbeing are raised. Anxiety, stress and depression can all be reduced through preforming genuine acts of kindness. When we can open our hearts and minds to pay attention to the needs of others, we feel a sense of relief to connect with the world beyond our own individual worries.

 

 

 When someone I care about is having a bad time

A few months ago, a close friend of mine got into a frustrating and demoralising hassle about a new work project he was initiating. It was a project he cared a great deal about and he was not given much chance to fight for it before it was cancelled in quite a callous way. When he told me the story, I found myself immediately leaping to his defence and blaming the other people for their lack of vision. I was able to support him with his frustration and disappointment, but it was only later that I realized that I had not been very fair to the other people involved.

 

That’s another tricky thing about kindness. Most of us are pretty good at giving kindness to those we love and are important to us. It gets much more difficult when we are asked to offer kindness beyond the circle of those we care about—and then even to people we disagree with and perhaps do not even like! I try to remember that there are plenty of people who don’t like me, but I still would like them to treat me fairly.

When I am able to separate a person from their actions, it gets much easier to wish them well and want to show them kindness. However, I can only do this when I am paying attention and not simply reacting.

 

 

 When I feel let down

It’s only natural to look for emotional support from people we love and trust when life gets hard. We know that being able to express our worries in a supported environment will help us to cope better. The thing is, although each of us is hard wired for kindness and we value and need social connection, all of us are struggling to manage our own day-to-day worries and challenges.

 

Although we all want to live happy lives and for things to go well, we know that difficulties come along as part of the ups and downs of life. This happens to everyone. When I am going through a challenging time and need my friends to be there for me, it’s not always possible for them. Perhaps they are struggling themselves. When I am paying attention then I can remember this. When I am not then I get hurt.

 

 

How can I pay attention?

 

Meditation

Why is our attention so fickle? We have seen how our reptilian brain can over-ride our more sophisticated reasoning brain but there is more. In 2010 two Harvard psychologists,Gilbert and Killingsworth developed an iPhone app which tracked the happiness of volunteers throughout the day. The results were astonishing: for almost 50% of our waking hours we are thinking about something different to what we are doing, and it does not make us happy. Our ability to ruminate, to think of events of already passed and to anticipate things that have not yet happened clouds our attention and takes us away from our immediate experience. We are simply not fully present to vast stretches of our activity.

 

Meditation enables us to bring our minds home, to pay attention in the present moment, without judgment. It helps us to connect with our own inner capacity for kindness and builds resilience to the challenges of life. Neuroscientists are discovering that as soon as we begin to practice meditation it is has positive effects on our brain. It is my meditation practice that gives me the foundation for kindness.

   

 

Making a habit of giving the benefit of the doubt

With meditation as the ground, I try as much as possible to give people the benefit of the doubt. It’s not always possible to manage it straight away, but gradually it becomes easier to come back to it later on. Perhaps there is an initial burst of frustration, or impatience but then I see what I am doing and remember kindness. It is as an act of self-compassion to forgive myself for not getting there faster.

 

 

 Remembering to put myself in the other person’s shoes

Another useful technique is to remember to put myself in the other person’s shoes—to try and see things from their point of view, from their own experience. It is hard to begin with but gradually it becomes possible to find the thread of another person’s insecurity, worry, sorrow or conditioning that could be informing their behaviour. If I can, I try to see myself as I might appear to them—what would they see when they look at me?

  

Most of all, it helps to remember that however much we want to act with kindness and consideration, we are subject to the overwhelming power of our basic instinct to preserve ourselves. Although our kindness is hard-wired we need to pay attention to it in order to bring it into action—it needs intention and focus. Our self-interest is instinctive. Meditation is a sustainable way to calm down our hyper-active minds and pay attention to what is going on with ourselves, with people around us and with our environment.

 

 

 

 

 

If you liked this post and feel inspired to go more deeply into kindness, you could try this online course

How to Make Everyday Kindness a Habit

You can find out more here

How to Survive Bad Times with an Open Heart

How to Survive Bad Times with an Open Heart

In the UK three out of 4 people have been so stressed at least once over the last year that they have felt overwhelmed, or unable to cope.

This statistic is from a recent report for the Mental Health Foundation which shows astonishingly high levels of stress. Isabella Goldie, director of the Foundation is quotedas saying, Millions of us around the UK are experiencing high levels of stress and it is damaging our health. Stress is one of the great public health challenges of our time but it is not being taken as seriously as physical concerns.

 

With Mental Health Awareness Week focusing this year on stress, there has been quite a bit of media attention around stress-related issues. As someone who has been going through a bit of an intense time recently, it got me thinking about how meditation helps with working with stress.

Seeing the problem

During a particularly hectic day a couple of weeks back, a friend messaged me wanting to talk through a problem she was having with someone in her family. I did my best to be there for her. I listened, I responded but slowly it crept up on me that I was having to try really hard to have an open heart because none of it seemed as challenging as my own bad time. I was almost resentful that she kept going on about it all! That was a bit of a shock. It brought home to me that somehow what I was dealing with was intense enough to affect my open heart. I needed to re-apply my attention to how I was applying my meditation practice in action.

Here are some of the ways I have been trying to work with managing bad times in a way that enables me to maintain an open heart—a heart that is open and available to what is going on for others, rather than being focused primarily on what is going on for me.

1. Respecting people’s wish for happiness while understanding suffering

It’s natural when you feel down to want to feel better. You just want to be happy and to get on with life. The key thing to remember is that is exactly how everyone else feels as well. Just about everyone we meet wants to be happyand not to experience suffering and pain. We would like things to go well for us and for us not to have to face disappointment, loss, and grief. We work hard to try and avoid having to face things we don’t like and don’t want.

Life shows us clearly that while there is nothing wrong with the wish to be happy it is not as easy as we might hope. No amount of money, possessions or fabulous holidays will protect us from the challenges that life can bring. Every day each one of us is getting older, sometimes we get sick and one day, eventually, we will die.

The truth is that suffering is part of life. We won’t manage to live a care-free life! Nothing is permanent, everything is constantly changing. Our lives are made up of a string of moments that we weave together to try to make a whole, when in fact, we have no idea what each minute will bring. Just because we wake up each morning and go through our usual routine does not mean that the routine is cast in stone. Consider people having to flee their homes to escape, fires, or flooding or volcanic eruptions.

None of this means that we should not seek happiness but perhaps we can open our hearts to include everyone’s wish for happiness, not just our own. Perhaps also we can ease the intensity with which we long for happiness by accepting the inevitability of suffering. When we can acknowledge that things are tough, we give ourselves a chance to learn about what we are going through and how we could do things differently.

 2. We are all in the same boat

All of this points to the fact that there is more that unites us as human beings than divides us. We might look different, with our own interests and dreams but joining us is a deep thread of common humanity. We all face worries about how we look, being in work, having enough money, finding love, caring for our families and staying healthy. In addition, we have strong imaginations and the ability to create worries simply from within in our minds. Anyone who has laid awake worrying at 04.00 in the morning will know what I mean.

As we have seen, we all look for ways to escape from our worries but it does not always work. As human beings we have to live with our imperfections, with our bodies that can seem so fragile and easily damaged and the impossibility of knowing all that we think we need to know.

Next time you are on a train, or tram, or plane try this exercise:

  • Notice who your neighbours are—take a few moments to scan the compartment, tram or bus and to see as many of the other passengers as you can.
  • Take note of the thoughts and emotions that pass through your mind as you do this:

—notice if you make a comment in your mind about someone

—notice the people you feel drawn towards and the ones you do not like the look of

  • Try to imagine how they might see you as you sit, or stand alongside them
  • Take a moment to be aware that everyone travelling with you wants their day to go well and to avoid any unpleasantness

—just as you do

  • Then realize that inevitably for some people things will go wrong during the day

—let that feeling touch you and help you to feel a common humanity with your fellow travellers.

Doing exercises like this helps to remind us of how things are for other people. We are reminded of the deep thread of inter-connectionthat runs through all of human experience, and we are reminded that it is not just us who struggles. Realizing that just as we can be in pain, so can others can help to keep an open heart.

 3. Helping others helps you

When we feel down, it can be hard to find the energy to do something for someone else but if we can make the effort, the benefits are considerable.

Research shows that kindness can improve heart function, lower blood pressure, slow aging and strengthen our immune systems. The author and scientist, David R. Hamiltonexplains that through the production of the hormone, oxytocin and the neurotransmitter, serotonin our levels of wellbeing are raised. Anxiety, stress and depression can all be reduced through preforming genuine acts of kindness. In his ground-breaking book, The Healing Power of Doing Good, Allan Luks documented the good feeling that you get from helping others and which is now referred to as the Helpers’ High.Older volunteers suffering from arthritis and other painful chronic conditions found that their symptoms decreased when they were actively helping others.

 

The thing is that when we can pay attention to the needs of other people, it lifts our attention to the bigger picture beyond our own individual bad time. Stress and worry tend to close us down, whereas thinking of others widens our view and ensures an open heart.

 

 4. Build your resilience

For me the foundation of all of this is my meditation practice. I was drawn to meditation in the first place because I wanted to understand how my mind works. I can’t say that because I meditate I no longer worry about what might happen in the future or go over things that have already happened because I still do. The thing is that I take it all much less seriously than before. I have come to understand that there is a quiet, spacious aspect of my mind that worry covers over, and meditation enables me to access. On one level this can simply be being present to what is happening for me right now—recognising that all I can be sure of is the moment I am currently living. On a deeper level, it is an acceptance of my thoughts and emotions because I know that they do not have to define me—that my mind is bigger than they are. So even when I am facing challenges and bad times, a part of me trusts that I have sufficient resilience to bounce back from it in time.

The neuroscientist, Richard Davidson places resilienceas one of the four skills of wellbeing. When we are so stressed that we say or do something we regret later, or when we are so overwhelmed that we feel threatened by everything we need to cope with, we are experiencing an amygdala hijack. The amygdala is the brain’s radar for danger and the trigger for the flight-or-flight response. During a hijack it over-rides the brain’s executive centres in the pre-frontal cortex. Davidson’s research into the effects of meditation on the brain shows that meditation helps to strengthen the pre-frontal cortex and weaken the right-frontal cortex, which registers depression and anxiety.We now know from neuroplasticitythat the brain can change according to experience and research is confirming that we can learn to increase our resilience to hard times through a regular meditation practice.

What can we take from this?

Having an open heart is not something we achieve and then take for granted. Keeping our heart open is a process and sometimes it is going to be hard. Maybe we won’t always feel we can make the effort but if we want to manage our bad times with kindness, and wisdom then we don’t really have a choice. Our own wellbeing is dependent on maintaining an open heart because within that openness lies many of the solutions we need to work through our bad times.

 

 

Visual good friend 

Hello there!

If you enjoyed this post and want to go further try this online course

HOW TO BE A GOOD FRIEND TO YOURSELF

You can find out more here

Meditation When It Matters

Meditation When It Matters

Many of us have returned from our summer break by now and are back into the swing of our working lives. My partner and I just got home from attending our usual annual retreat in Lerab Ling, a Tibetan Buddhist centre near Montpellier in the South of France. We have a tiny cottage in the forest where we stay during our retreat time. It is our opportunity to enjoy some quiet time in nature, while receiving meditation instruction to nourish us throughout the year.

We drive there from Amsterdam and our arrival is always a sensitive time. We are tired from the preparations to leave and the long journey. We know we have a lot to do to set up the cottage for our stay and, as it is remote, we have no idea what we will find when we open the door.

Not how you want to begin a holiday

Not how you want to begin a holiday

This year was a shock. When we went to the room where we sleep we saw that the skylight had leaked through and damaged the area around the window. To make matters worse, this has been an on-going problem, which we thought it was all fixed and done with. When you are on retreat in another country in August and you need to arrange work to be done it can be a big hassle. My heart fell and I felt pretty fed up. Thoughts like, ‘I don’t need this’ and ‘Why can’t things just go smoothly for a change?’ chased each other through my mind. I felt pretty sorry for myself.

This is where meditation kicks in for me and I really see how much it matters in my life. Negative emotions can still come but they do not bite like they used to. They don’t get a hold on me and define my behaviour. Even while I am feeling miserable there is a part of me that knows that it won’t last, that I am not going to feel this way for ever. There is a fundamental part of me that accepts that life has its ups and downs and difficult things will certainly happen, so I am not as surprised as I used to be when things don’t go as I want.

We can think that as meditators we should be able to manage our emotions perfectly but that can just be another way of putting ourselves down. Of course, the more skilfully we can manage our emotions the better but meditation is not an instant cure-all and we can celebrate the steps we take as we go along. Developing a sense of perspective and learning—however slowly—not to take things too personally are two of these important steps. It helps build confidence in meditation to be able to see that although your mind can still get pretty intense, some things are a little easier.

The sky and the clouds

The sky and the clouds

One of the most helpful images I know of to help build confidence in meditation is the example of the sky and the clouds. The sky represents our natural state of openness, spaciousness and wellbeing—our natural mind if you like. The clouds are the thoughts and emotions that pass across our minds. Thoughts do not spoil the mind, or leave any lasting impression—they simply come and go, like clouds. As we become more familiar with meditation we can begin to experience that for ourselves and get a different take on how to handle things going wrong. It becomes more possible to accept things as they are, rather than wishing them to be different and even to develop a certain sense of humour about the craziness of it all.

We are talking about building mental resilience—the ability to overcome obstacles and recover from hard times. It means having a place of inner peace that is always available to us and that helps us to work with how we see things. It enables us to face change and difficulties as opportunities for growth, rather than simply to view them as threats. Not surprisingly, Richard Davidson places resilience as one of the four skills of wellbeing. We know from neuroplasticity that the brain can change according to experience. The experience of meditation will help to develop activity in the pre-frontal cortex, which in turn helps to calm the fight-or-flight response of the amygdala when facing stress.

Meditation when it matters

Meditation when it matters

Sure enough, as I struggled to connect with a sense of inner peace while surveying the damaged skylight, I could look through the rain-stained and murky window to see the clear blue sky beyond. The perspective was there for me to see—however challenging things are in the moment, that moment will pass.

 

If you would like to know more about meditation and resilience, watch this short video where Richard Davidson and Jon Kabat-Zinn explore this further.

 

 

img-meditation

 

 

 

How to start meditation in a way that will last

This online course is designed to help beginners make a sustainable start to their meditation practice. You can find out more and sign up here

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Meditation: five reasons why it can be hard and how to overcome them

Meditation: five reasons why it can be hard and how to overcome them

When you started with meditation did you think that within a week or two you would immediately be feeling the benefits only to find that it is harder than you thought? Meditation itself is quite easy to learn but getting used to doing it regularly can be quite a challenge. If you learn meditation by attending a course then you have the support of weekly meetings to get your routine together but once the course ends, and you are on your own, it can be a different story.

 

None of this is surprising when you think how hard it is to learn anything new. Getting into a rhythm of regular exercise, or learning a language, or practicing a musical instrument can all be frustrating at times. It helps to know why we can find it hard to make meditation part of lives because then we can see what to do about it.

 

1. We don’t have the habit of meditation

Even though meditation has been around in the west now for a while, it is still something that only a minority engage in. It’s quite new to most of us—we didn’t learn it in school, most likely our parents did not do it and maybe most of our friends and family don’t meditate either. We’re reaching out to something new and that is rarely easy.

new-habit

Add to that the fact that the brain loves habits as a way of conserving energy and has no way to tell the difference between a habit that is good for us and one that is not. Making the connections in the brain to set up a new habit is a process which takes time, because given the choice our brains will fall back into familiar patterns of behaviour.

 

2. Distractiondistraction

One of our most enduring habits is distraction. The Harvard study carried out in 2010 by Gilbert and Killingsworth showed that for 46.9% of our waking hours we are thinking about something different from what we are doing and that on balance, it does not make us happy. This is how we can go through so many of activities on a kind of autopilot—going through the motions with our attention elsewhere. In meditation we bring our mind into focus through paying attention in the present moment—whenever our attention wanders away we just gently bring it back. If we can learn to manage our distracting urges, rather than give into them, then we have the possibility to of being more intentional about what we say and do. This will help to increase our dependability, improve our relationships and raise our performance.

 

3.We are more into doing than being

Busy mind and peaceful mindResearch carried out in 2014 showed that most people do not like being left alone with their thoughts and that some were even prepared to give themselves mild electric shocks in order to have something to do. We are so used to being busy—both in terms of activity as well as everything that goes on in our minds—that we find it very hard to simply be with ourselves.

When we sit down to meditate then we are doing something that we are not used to doing, that cuts across our habitual distraction and involves us sitting quietly with our own minds. Is it any wonder that we might find that we would prefer to do something else?

 

busy.Waiting4. The choices we make

Of course we are all busy with many demands on our time but it is the choices we make with the time we do have available that is critical for us in establishing meditation as a habit. Although we say we have no time to meditate we do tend to find time to check FB, the news, watch a bit of TV and perhaps enjoy a glass of wine. There is nothing wrong with any of this but if we find that meditation helps us then we do need to look at our choices and see how and where it is possible to find time for it.

The trouble is that inspired by our first experiences of meditation we tend to make over-ambitious plans for our meditation routine and then get disappointed when we cannot keep to it. The trick is to start small—maybe 5 minutes a day—but to try and do it at least five times a week. That way we are making room for our new habit and building it into our routine.

Finding a trigger for meditation is another useful strategy. Perhaps we want to do our session in the morning after we have showered and dressed—so showering becomes the trigger for meditation. I have a client who lays out a tray for tea and then does her five minutes while it is brewing. Drinking the tea is her reward for meditating—because, yes, giving ourselves a small reward for building our new habit helps to make it routine.

 

5. Uneasiness with meditation

One of the subtler reasons we find meditation challenging can be that it makes us a bit uneasy. We’ve already talked about how hard it can be to sit in a room doing nothing, and how we love to keep busy. With meditation we learn to be with our minds as they are without judgement, letting go of our resistance to whatever arises. Without the usual defence mechanism of our distractions we can taste the delicate balance of our lives and sense our fragility in the scheme of things. Although we want the benefits that meditation can bring, there can be times when it feels as if in trying to bring them about we may lose our familiar preoccupations that remind us of who we believe ourselves to be.

 

So what can we do?

Don’t get too critical about how you are meditating—the chances are you are doing just fine. A question I like to ask in a meditation workshop is, ‘Who feels that everyone else is doing it right and you are the only one struggling?’ Most times almost everyone’s hand will go up. We tell ourselves all kinds of stories about how we are not meditating in the right way, and that our session was a waste of time because we had lots of thoughts and distraction. One thing I was always taught as I learned to meditate is that there is no such thing as a bad meditation—meditation is just what happens.

Making a welcoming place in your home for meditation will help with this. Find a spot that works for you and make it cosy and accessible, so that when you have that 5 minutes for your session then you know where to go. Maybe have a special cushion or shawl that helps you to settle and feel comfortable.

Don’t feel that you always need to do your session alone. You can find a local meditation group, or maybe pair up with someone else you know who is trying to meditate. You don’t need to meet up for every session but you could share schedules and things that work over a skype call. Having someone to share with really helps to overcome resistance.

Don’t get too precious about your meditation—try to find lots of short moments throughout the day when you can just do a few moments of meditation. I call these Stop Moments and you can do them anywhere—waiting in a queue, on a bus or train, while waiting at a red traffic light or as you take your first sip of coffee. Taking many short Stop Moments helps to break through distraction and is another tool in building habits.

Taking time to allow yourself to experience the benefits of meditation is perhaps the best way of ensuring that you will want to find a way to continue. This infogram from Emma Seppala gives a great overview. Take time to become familiar with the benefits as they are described and focus on the ones that speak to you. You might not feel all of these every day but if you sit long enough you will begin to experience a difference that will make you want to keep practicing. Remember that neuroscientific research into the effects of mediation on the brain shows a positive change after only eight weeks of practice.

10-Science-Based-Reasons-To-Start-Meditating-Today-INFOGRAPHIC

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

If you are wanting to begin with meditation and need some support, you might find this practical online course helpful. It is available from Awareness in Action at any time – you can sign up whenever you wish.

Find out more here

 

 

 

 

If you are looking for personal guidance and coaching about your meditation practice contact me for details.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Pin It on Pinterest