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How to Begin a Meditation Practice

Benjamin Schulz
Jul 30, 2017 · 7 min read

Go to a quiet place and sit so that you can remain comfortably motionless for at least five minutes. If you cannot sit, then stand. If you cannot stand, then lie down. Fix your gaze on a point somewhere directly in front of you, without focusing your eyes on anything in particular. Then, concentrate your whole mind on the feeling of your breath coming and going. If your mind wavers to anything else, notice the difference, and return.

Stop reading now and go do this.


The Elements of Meditation

There must be some reason that you want to meditate. While there are no really bad reasons, you should know that your reasons will determine how you apply yourself. Take time to understand them; they are truly yours. Take them seriously, care for them, and remember them.

Concentration is surprisingly difficult. Perhaps, when you sat motionless and silent, you saw things in your mind that surprised you. Perhaps you saw things that frightened you. Perhaps you could not settle your thoughts for even one breath. Perhaps you spent the whole time just trying to get comfortable in your seat. No matter how your experience varies, the work will demand effort.

Meditation is the practice of focusing body and mind to a single point of understanding. To meditate effectively, you need to consider three fundamental aspects: posture, breathing, and persistence. As you learn how to hold your body, how to breathe well, and how to forbear, your practice will grow.

Posture

Imagine you are suspended from the sky by the top-most point of your head, with the rest of your body settling freely into its weight. Dwell on this feeling long enough that it becomes vivid, and you begin to feel your body relax. Breathe in, and feel the string pull you gently upward. Breathe out, and feel the weight of your body pull gently downward.

As you sit in this way, notice those parts of your body that feel tense. These parts will begin to hurt as you remain motionless. Adjust your posture so that these tensions subside. Take enough time to do this well, and do not trouble yourself too much if you are not able to relieve all of the tightness. Remaining still for a long time will become uncomfortable eventually, no matter how well you do it.

The traditional meditative postures (full- and half-lotus) are the easiest to settle into, and to remain in for a long time. However, if you are unable to sit in such a way, it need not prevent you from meditating well. There are a host of alternatives, and numerous sources that discuss them in technical detail. Even sitting in a chair can work. Continue to experiment, until you find a posture that will consistently allow you to sit through an entire session, without adjustment.

Whatever posture you adopt, it should be alert but relaxed, balanced but not strained. Rest your hands in your lap or on your knees. Keep your chin tilted very slightly downward, so that your gaze settles easily on some point not too far in front of you; this will encourage your neck and shoulders to relax. As much as possible, keep your back straight, with your spine following its natural curvature, and with the weight of your upper body resting squarely on your pelvic bone.

Having a body is uncomfortable, and if you sit for very long, you will necessarily become aware of this fact. Discomfort should be avoided when possible, but it is not an indication of failure. Explore alternative postures or arrangements, until you are consistently able to settle yourself. Do not be discouraged if little aches and pains trouble you; tension in the body becomes habitual throughout life, and is a difficult habit to break. Through patiently applied effort, you will eventually feel out a posture in which you can easily come to rest.

Breathing

Once you have found a posture that you can maintain for the session, turn to your breathing.

Take one to three deep breaths to settle your mind and draw your attention. Once you are settled, place your tongue on the roof of your mouth, just behind your front teeth, and begin breathe through your nose. Continue to breathe in this way until it feels comfortable.

Next, concentrate on the point just below your navel. As you do, breathe in, and imagine the air entering your nose and filling your belly. Let your abdomen expand to let in the breath. When you are full, relax and feel yourself empty, as your abdominal muscles return to their places and the air goes back out. Continue this type of deliberate abdominal breathing, until it becomes habitual. If you find you have forgotten, and gone back to breathing with your chest, notice and return to your abdominal breathing. This practice alone can occupy a whole session of meditation, or even many sessions. Take as many as needed.

As you become comfortable breathing from the abdomen, it should become easier to settle into breathing more slowly and deeply. When you are ready, gradually push your breaths to become deeper. As you do so, notice the point just after your out-breath has finished, and just before your in-breath comes, when your lungs feel almost empty. Slow your out-breath as you approach this point, and try to let it linger for a moment or two. Do not strain, or hold your breath; just let the flow of air slow to a trickle. Once all the air has trickled out, let the in-breath come. Allow the next few breaths to pass naturally, so as not to become winded, and then repeat the cycle.

Although your breathing is deliberate, it should not feel tense or forced. If you feel short of breath, light-headed, dizzy, or tight in the chest, stop. Breathe as you normally would until the feeling subsides. Your breathing should allow you to settle into a state of calm concentration. If, instead, you begin to feel tense, nervous, or agitated, it means that some aspect of your breathing has become exaggerated. In this case, forget about breathing for a while, and just sit. When you are are ready, take one or two more deep breaths, and try again.

As long as you live, your breath is with you. It can pass silently, happening as if by itself. Or, it can be actively observed and controlled. Meditative breathing is somewhere in between. It may take many sessions of applied, conscious effort to develop your breathing technique, but once established, these new techniques will come to feel just as natural as breathing did before.

As something that is always there, your breath is a reliable point of focus. Take advantage of it. Each breath is an opportunity to remember.

Persistence

Meditation is not easy. That does not mean you are bad at it. That does not mean you will fail. Everyone becomes distracted, weary, or discouraged at times. When your mind wanders off your breath, notice that, and return. Do not trouble yourself with recriminations or judgements. They are not useful. Just return. If you should feel pain or discomfort in your posture or struggle in your breathing, notice that too, and adjust so that they leave. If they do not leave, then remember your reasons for meditating, and persist. If you miss a day, or a week, or a year, just notice what has happened, and return. You can always sit or stand or lie down, and your breath will still be there. What matters is that you keep going.

Always keep going. Concentration is not a work that is more or less done. Either you are doing it, or you are not. Apply yourself to the task with all your effort. In true practice, there is no bright or dim, great or small, weak or strong. If you are doing it, you are succeeding.

As concentration deepens, you discover a place you can always return to. The breath is just one door leading there. You may forget that it is there, as life churns and flows, or you may lose your way. When this happens, you may become weary, or discouraged. Those very feelings, though, are also a chance to return. Do not try to drive them away. Breathe them in, remember what you are trying to do, and continue.

A Personal Note

Fifteen years ago, I turned my mind deliberately to my breath for the first time. Hunched in the dark at the edge of my bed, I closed my eyes and clenched my fists and tried to really concentrate. I did not have a teacher, or a spiritual community, or even a trustworthy friend. I had no idea what exactly meditation entailed, or where people went to learn about such things. I had only a faint recollection of reading somewhere that there were esoteric religious practices that prescribed following the breath as a means of awakening. Awakening from what, into what, I could not really say. Breathing in and out, though, seemed easy enough. Surely I could manage that.

Other things were not going so well. I had dropped out of college. I was failing to cope with my sick mind and my sick body. I had struggled to hold a job stocking shelves on the night shift at a big-box retailer, and then failed that too. I felt weak. Even the parts of the world closest to my life seemed to careen wildly out of control.

Meditation only affirmed these facts. Even something as simple as keeping track of my breath was hard. I felt restless as I sat. My mind darted off every few moments, while my breath plodded numbly on without it. It was nothing like the bright sharpening of the mind that I had imagined. It was another thing to fail at.

Meditation will not solve all your problems. It will solve very few, if any. Even if you see breathtaking sights and wonders, even if you hear the music of aeons near and distant, even if heavens and hells sprawl out, and gods and demons throng before you, and even if it makes you weep tears of joy or laugh aloud, none of it is real; it all vanishes with the next thought. Meditation is not a solution to your problems. It is not even an escape.

Meditation is a return. You return to truths you cannot change. You discipline yourself and learn to see clearly. You no longer turn away. You dig up the roots of things. Returning to the source, over and over, you learn to make every challenge into a beginning.

Just return.

Benjamin Schulz

Written by

Wind howls through the gaps, and empty space is full of song.

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