How to meditate (the modern way)

The science behind meditation is overwhelming. If nothing else, this study finds that meditation reduces the risk of death from cardiovascular disease such as heart attack and strokes by 48%. That’s quite a number. But beyond that, meditation has been proven to improve everything from blood pressure, immune system and cortisol levels to attention, concentration, and emotional intelligence.

So it’s something we all really should be doing. But how?

This is a crash course on meditation. It’s kind of like describing jogging to someone that never has jogged before. So let’s get a couple of things down straight away:

Our kind of meditation — the practical, non-religious kind — is done in regular clothes, in regular posture, on regular chairs. No chanting, no stretching, no prayer beads.

What we are trying to accomplish is training our minds to focus on the present moment. To sort out relevant information and prioritize. You can compare it to lifting weights: we are strenghtening a muscle in our brains. The goal is not to be perfect from the get-go. You will struggle. It will feel overwhelmingly hard. But you’ve got to start somewhere.

OK, less talk, more rock. Here’s how you actually do it:

• First, find a space in which you can be undisturbed for the duration of your meditation.
• Then, lock the door, put your phone on flight mode, and sit down on a chair.
• Close your eyes.
• Breathe.
• Breathe with your stomach. Make sure you let your stomach blow out — look as fat as possible — when you breathe in.
• Now, try to find a place where you can feel your breath. It might be in the nose, in the chest or in the stomach.
• Focus on that point.
• If you find your thoughts drifting, just come back to that focus point.

That is how you meditate.

This sort of meditation, which might be called vipassana meditation or mindfulness meditation if you want to be fancy, is very basic but still extremely efficient. If we want to keep comparing it to physical excercise, we could use the deadift as a similar technique. It’s simple, and yet very efficient for getting stronger. And just as with deadlifts, the devil is in the details.

If you want to improve on your meditation, here are a couple of quick tips:

• When sitting, guide your posture with the word ”proud”. That should make you lift your chest and chin just a bit as well as straighten your spine.
• Set an alarm for 5 minutes at the beginning. It has been proven that a 100 minutes of meditation is enough to let you take part in the improvements such as lowered blood pressure. That is 5 minutes a day for less than 3 weeks.
• Decide on a specific time every day which you dedicate to meditation. It could be before breakfast, or after lunch, or in your car before you leave work. (Just don’t try this while driving.)

There’s a lot more to be said on this, but in this article you should find everything you need to get started and to reap the benefits of meditation. Let us know if you would need any more input. Write us a comment on Facebook or Twitter, or email us at hello@lightly.io.

Good luck!