A Meditation on Meditation

A couple years ago, I took a Masters-level course called Mindfulness and Positive Psychology.  Even though I was training to be a counselor, had been in therapy myself, and was a mental health advocate, I had never meditated before, or even attempted to do so. As someone dealing with moderate daily anxiety, I felt like I could never "succeed" at meditation or mindfulness. That class taught me how to usher clients into using meditation, how to use positive psychology in my practice, and that I was so very wrong about my ability and personal thoughts on mindfulness.

I find that a lot of folks ask me about mindfulness and meditation, because a lot of people want to do it, but no one knows where to start. This makes sense, because going to a meditation group may seem overwhelming and inaccessible (although, if you go, you will find yourself surrounded by positive and thoughtful people), and listening to people talk about meditation sounds like magic ("I just accept my thoughts and let them go"). Not only that, but these questions seem to always come up: where does one get "good" guided meditation? (There are a ton of free guided meditations all over the internet; YouTube, apps, websites, etc. You'll have to find the ones that work for you), do I need a pillow and candles and incense and a quiet room? (No, no, no, and yes. Quiet is very helpful, and all of those other things are just things that people like to use, but aren't necessary), how long do I meditate and how do I know I'm successful? (As long as you want. There are 3-minute meditations and 30-minute meditations. If you even try, you can consider yourself successful). These thoughts are all manifestations of people's anxieties surrounding something unknown, and gathering these questions and the answers to these questions are important to moving forward in meditation.

When I started this class, my professor assigned us a book that I have purchased many times over and have given to friends, fellow counselors, and even got a copy to put on the bookshelf at my practicum site. The book is titled Mindfulness: An Eight-Week Plan for Finding Peace in a Frantic World, written by Williams and Penman. It costs less than $10 on Amazon. The book will explain to you the basics of how mindfulness works, walk you through a variety of mindfulness activities (this involves much more than seated meditation!) and will link you to their free online guided meditations. This is a great starting place. The speaker of these specific guided meditations has a smooth voice with a British accent, and is very relaxing for me (after listening to enough guided meditation, you'll find that certain voices will relax you and certain voices will grate on you). At the same time, I downloaded the free Breathe app (this is by far my favorite app for guided meditation). Both of these things helped me recognize what I like in guided meditation (a smooth and calming voice, body scanning, meditations for different times of the day, walking meditations), and what I don't like in guided meditation (grating or distracting voices, complete silent meditation, meditations longer than 15 minutes). These preferences will be individualized for you, as you learn more about yourself and about meditation.

Additionally, meditation is meant to acknowledge, accept, and release your thoughts, rather than to "clear" your mind of them. This is extremely important, because we - as the general public - get the idea that people who meditate are a blank slate and have a calming void in their minds. This is just not true. Everyone has fleeting thoughts, everyone has ruminating thoughts. During meditation, you are often focused on breathing or bodily sensations instead of those thoughts. If those thoughts do pop up - which they will! - the idea is to say, "Okay, I am thinking about paying my rent this month, and feeling anxious about it. That is okay, and normal. I am going to notice that I am having this thought, and I am going to move on and refocus on my breathing." This is harder than it sounds, but even attempting to do it, is and should be considered success.

Like everything, meditation takes practice. This is why 3-minute and 5-minute guided meditations are fantastic. We can all usually find an extra five minutes in our day (when we wake up, during our lunch breaks, on our commutes, stretching at the gym, in the shower, before bedtime, etc) and practicing meditation daily makes it part of your life and will help you feel more comfortable with your thoughts, and with yourself.