The Beginners Guide to Meditation

Meditation cannot be another chore for your to-do list.

“I know I should really meditate” is a phrase I have heard from many clients. Unfortunately, the most commonly known type of meditation - following the breath - while powerful, can become just another task that we try to force ourselves to do because we ‘know that it is good for us.’ If we have any self-critical or perfectionistic tendencies, meditation can be yet another instance in our lives where we find ourselves lacking and judge ourselves for our inability to do something as simple as pay attention to our breathing.

The training of our attention like this, if approached skillfully and with proper guidance, can certainly be a powerful tool: it’s true that our attention shapes our lives and our experience in many ways. That being said, many clients that I see are burned out from having to pay attention to a complex landscape of emails, messages, social media, zoom meetings and more. That’s why I recommend a very different approach to meditating: do nothing.

That’s the instruction: do nothing. Another way to say it is, “Rest the mind in the experience of the senses.” Rather than try and keep our attention focused narrowly on a particular object, I invite clients to take a span of time that seems very easy (5-10 minutes, for instance) and just allow themselves to be present in their experience without needing to do anything. Thoughts will arise, that’s fine, but if you find yourself following a trail of thinking, allow that part of your mind to just rest for these few minutes. Imagine coming in from a long day of physical labor and just flopping onto a couch: REST.

More than ever, we are hyperstimulated. We take in more new information in the course of a day than some of our ancestors would have absorbed in months or even years. Resting the mind, allowing yourself the time to do nothing (even to be bored!) is something I recommend often. Give your mind a rest!