How to stick to meditation and make it a mindful habit
Simple rituals can turn meditation into a mindful habit, by enhancing your intention and strengthening your motivation.
That meditation is beneficial for our health and well-being, there’s little doubt. The problem is that most people that tried meditation find it difficult to stick to it and ultimately to turn it into a non-negotiable, mindful habit.
Meditation is just like exercising, eating right or any other healthy habit, after all: we know it’s good for us, yet we struggle to keep at it.
Establishing some sort of ritual can assist you to make meditation a more natural part of your day, by enhancing your intention and strengthening your motivation, which in turn will help you mindfully stick to your practice.
What are rituals?
The definition of ritual varies widely. According to the Cambridge Dictionary, a ritual is “a set of fixed actions and sometimes words performed regularly, especially as part of a ceremony”.
Like it or not, all of us have a number of actions and activities that we do, more or less consciously, in our daily lives.
Some of these activities range from brushing our teeth in the morning even if we’re half asleep to automatically stepping on a scale after dinner to get our weight; from checking our email as soon as we turn on our computer to browsing through our favourite social network feed or instant messaging system every single time we unlock our phones. However, those activities are not related to a ceremony or meaningful events — the more unconscious or automatic they are, the more they seem like a mere routine activity or a mindless habit.
That’s why I prefer to refer to rituals according to another definition, by Scientific American:
Rituals are “the symbolic behaviours we perform before, during, and after meaningful events.”
The connection to a meaningful event is, therefore, an essential part of the very concept of rituals, at least for the purposes of this article. In fact, most recent psychological conceptualizations of rituals have contrasted them with routine actions, such as mindless habits.
Benefits of Rituals
Rituals can be extremely effective and researchers have demonstrated that they can have a causal impact on people’s thoughts, feelings, and behaviours, even for those who claim not to believe that they work.
Moreover, rituals allow you to quickly and more easily engage in a specific mindset (think classical conditioning and the Pavlov effect) and perform an activity.
Rituals reduce anxiety, bring your awareness and attention to the present moment, which is what mindfulness is all about, and also help create meaning, by acting as reminders of what we actually care about.
By adopting certain rituals before your meditation practice, you can condition your mind and body to get ready for what is to come, which may lead to more fulfilling meditations and to turning it into a mindful habit.
Rituals before meditation
Practising meditation is a conscious, meaningful event, no matter for how long (from a couple of minutes to several hours) or how often it happens (every once in a while, daily or even several times per day).
Just like you would not run a marathon without preparing yourself, stretching, hydrating, you probably shouldn’t jump into meditation sessions — particularly longer ones — without any sort of preparation.
Pre-performance rituals are very common. Have you ever seen a football player do the sign of the cross or kick the ground two or three times before going on the field, or before going for a decisive penalty kick? One may dismiss that as a superstition, but whether it is or not, it subconsciously works as a ritual. Some of the most successful athletes and performers use rituals.
John Yates, in his “The Mind Illuminated: A Complete Meditation Guide Integrating Buddhist Wisdom and Brain Science” masterpiece, suggests a Six-Point Preparation for Meditation. They are based on motivation, goals, expectations, diligence, distractions, and posture; in summary, they are about setting and holding a specific conscious intention for your meditation.
Developing, establishing and using a pre-meditation ritual helps you set a tone conducive to meditation, assisting with all of those aspects of preparation outlined by Dr Yates. It will also help to provide some sort of separation between your daily life, that is, what you were doing and thinking before the practice, and your upcoming meditation.
Performing a ritual before sitting may help you set the specific conscious intention for your meditation practice, by turning it into a solemn moment.
What can a pre-meditation ritual involve?
Anything you want, as long as you practice it consistently and mindfully.
Simple, novel rituals reduce anxiety, lower elevated heart rates, and improve performance — provided they are imbued with symbolic meaning.
Rituals can and should evolve. The important thing is to give them meaning: the activities you perform as part your ritual should be non-ordinary, at least in that context.
There is a list with a few options to inspire you below, but it is best to stick to what is simple and effective, as some activities are better conducive to an improved meditation experience, by helping us settle down, unwind, relax and focus.
Breathing exercises before meditation
Regularly practising breathing exercises before sitting for a meditation session may allow for deeper, more focused and intense practices than when such techniques are not performed.
There are many breathing techniques available for you to choose from. Some are based on the different rhythm of inhaling, holding and exhaling, while others focus on how to breathe, that is, which part of the respiratory system should be activated and in which order.
One technique that is particularly beneficial is diaphragmatic breathing, which you can read all about in a separate article:
Stretching, practising yoga or qigong moves before meditation
Meditation, particularly when undertaken for long periods of sitting, can be quite taxing on the body. There are actually meditation techniques, such as Vipassana (or mind-body awareness) that rely on this stillness, and the discomfort that normally ensues, as part of the meditation technique itself.
However, even if one intends to remain as still as possible, some quick, simple stretches or practising yoga before the meditation can help alleviate unneeded discomfort in the body and have it better prepared to withstand the whole session.
Stretching, practising yoga or qigong moves before your practice can help you achieve and maintain proper posture during meditation.
Stretches or practising yoga can also help you warm up your body, which in turn will lead you to be more alert and mindful, and less drowsy.
Expressing your creativity
Some people find that establishing a specific timeframe or some specific goal in order to express their creativity before meditation can make them more focused and set their minds free for meditation. These may include:
- Writing a poem.
- Painting.
- Singing or playing a musical instrument.
- Dancing.
- Writing one (or three, or ten) things that you are grateful for.
Other ritual activities to set a specific, conscious intention
All sorts of other activities could be integrated into a pre-meditation ritual, as long as they help you focus and dissociate from your day-to-day life, by getting you ready for your meditation practice:
- Progressive relaxation or body scanning.
- Fasting, particularly if you do your meditation in the morning.
- Light incense or a candle, or turn on an oil diffuser.
- Drink coffee or tea (careful, however, as it might make you too jittery and anxious).
- Adjust the window, curtains and lamps to get a nice light in.
- Ring a meditation bell.
- Play a song.
- Recite a mantra.
- Read a passage of a book, or a poem.
- Focus on or repeat verbal affirmations.
Some friendly advice
There is a risk that, the same way as you can condition yourself to be more conducive to an activity through a ritual before it, you may become dependent on this ritual in order to properly perform that activity.
Therefore, although having a pre-meditation ritual may help get you in a conducive mindset for meditation, one should be careful not to choose any activities that are hard to do.
Keep the conversation going…
Do you agree, disagree or want to share your impressions or experiences? I very much welcome your feedback! Please leave a comment below.
- Do you have any pre-meditation ritual or any other pre-performance ritual?
- Do you find that having a ritual before your meditation or any other activity helps you put the right mindset for a fulfilling practice or better performance?
- Has your ritual evolved with time?
