You want to improve your health and overall wellbeing, and so you have made the decision to start practicing meditation. A question you now face is: where to begin? What lies ahead? Read what I learned through my experience as a beginner to meditation.

Begging Meditation

By Michelle Ehrensaal

Student Intern, Shambhala Publications

Sit on the ground. Relax. Focus on your breath. This “meditation” stuff will be easy, right? Yeah, my thoughts exactly—before I began my journey down a path I never even knew existed: the path of meditation. Now, you might be thinking: Silly girl, I know about the path of meditation! The journey to enlightenment! The key to peace! But if you haven’t started your journey, I have to tell you, it is impossible to really know.

It was February of this year when I sat down on my closet floor to meditate for the first time.  I had just picked up Susan Piver’s Start Here Now and was reading it in conjunction to taking her online course with Shambhala Publications. It has since been three months and I am truly puzzled still at how my life has transformed. I am living proof that anyone can not only learn how to meditate but can learn to cultivate compassion for themselves and others in a way I had never known to be possible. Again, you might be thinking: I love myself and care deeply for others! This girl doesn’t know me! And I accept both of these things to be true, but in the words of Susan, “You must not take anything I say at face value. Try it out and see for yourself.”

7 things I learned…

1. The hardest part is developing a habit

We’ve all been given this warning before. Our busy lives permit us from developing a number of healthy habits such as sticking to an exercise routine, getting a full night’s sleep, drinking 8 glasses of water a day, and so on. Although I was given fair amounts of forewarning, developing a habit of daily meditation was exceedingly difficult all the same.

In putting my practice first, all of my responsibilities that followed became easier to take on and I felt lighter.

As is true with most things, the hardest part is to simply begin, and meditation requires you to begin again and again each day. It doesn’t only take discipline (of course, it does require this to some extent), but it will take more. The hustle and bustle of contemporary life makes developing and maintaining a habit nearly impossible. So, to overcome this hindrance, you will need a plan.

Morning Meditation

The course I took advised beginners to meditate in the morning due to the simple idea that it is easiest to develop a habit by starting each day with a routine. In my experience, I found this to be true. I set my alarm to sound every morning just 15 minutes earlier than the norm and practiced meditating for 2 to 5 to what eventually became 10 whole minutes. My mornings are the best time for me to practice because I am what one would consider a “morning person,” and because the rest of my day tends to resemble that of chaos.

On many mornings when first beginning my meditation practice, I skipped out on it due to my desire to sleep in (just 10 more minutes!) or because I forgot about meditating altogether. What I have learned is that the key to avoiding discouragement is not to be married to the idea of practicing during one specific time of day. Limiting myself in this way made starting my meditation practice extremely difficult; I now refer to the morning as my “ideal” time to practice. There have been a number of days since I established this new approach that I have skipped meditating in the morning but have carved out time to practice just before bed. I call this time my “back-up” time.

Pro-tip:

My recommendation to you is to find a time that best fits your general schedule. It can be any time of the day. Think of it as your “goal” or “ideal” time. If you know beforehand that your ideal time to practice won’t easily fit into your day, find a “back-up” time when you have 10 free minutes. This new time might be just before lunch or dinner. Whenever the time may be, it creates consistency in a way that is not so limited-- and what I have come to understand most about meditation is the importance of developing even the smallest form of consistency within your practice!

2. Make your meditation practice your priority.

Unfortunately, it isn’t easy. Below is my first week’s record of meditating, which reads as follows:

Week 1

Monday: Completed 2 minutes of meditation.

Tuesday: Completed 2 minutes of meditation.

Wednesday: Thought about my meditation space, almost sat down to meditate, did not meditate this day.

Thursday: Forgot to meditate this morning, thought about meditating later in the day, did not meditate this day.

Friday: Scorned myself for the past 2 days. Completed 2 minutes of meditation.

Saturday: Forgot all about meditation.

Sunday: Scorned myself for how week 1 turned out. Completed 2 minutes of meditation.

My second week looked something similar to what you see above. The point is that it is too easy for countless responsibilities to come between ourselves and our practice. I decided that If I was serious about beginning this journey, I needed to take serious action! So, what combat method did I choose to take? I made a vow to myself. On Monday morning of Week 3 I looked in the mirror and said to myself:

 Self, my practice is my priority. No other task, whether it be related to work or leisure, will come before my meditation practice because loving myself is the most important thing.

Over the weeks that followed, I learned what it truly means to put meditation before all other things in my life. In putting my practice first, all of my responsibilities that followed became easier to take on and I felt lighter. In fact, I developed such consistency in my practice that on any day when I pushed meditation aside, I felt overwhelmed. As weeks have now turned into months, from time to time I go back to my mirror and recite my vow to my reflection to ensure my priorities are in order.

The instructions will tell you to sit this way and look that way, but the point is to just do it.

3. Start small

The easiest way to bail out early on your meditation practice is by getting discouraged. Meditating for this magic number of 10 minutes a day may sound like an easy feat, but I advise you to proceed with caution in approaching your practice with this mindset. In my experience, this exact mindset is what caused me to beat myself up during the first two weeks of my journey.

Pro Tip: Magic number… 2?

After what I experienced, I believe it to be fairly impractical that as a beginner to meditation one is able to sit down and practice for 10 whole minutes. Yes, 10 whole minutes! In Susan’s course, she suggests that in your first week you try practicing for 5 minutes each time. While this is a much more practical starting point than 10, I still struggled immensely and was frustrated every time I sat down to meditate, which is the opposite point of the practice. At the start of the second week, I changed my set practice time from 5 minutes to 2. This may sound like a backwards step, but I promise it is not because my gratification levels took a huge leap forward! In making this simple alteration, meditating went from discouraging to illuminating. Seriously. It was that simple.

4. Don’t overthink.

At the start of my practice, I really struggled to escape the four corners of my mind. Each time I sat down I would evaluate my posture and the positioning of my hands on my thighs and my eyes on the floor and then re-evaluate it 15 times over. When I finally started to practice, I’d think: How do I know if I’m doing this right? I can’t be doing this right. After wasting precious minutes overthinking things that ultimately weren’t very significant, I realized I was allowing my practice to have the opposite effect than it was supposed to be having, which was making me anxious rather than relaxed.

I have learned that there is no point in getting caught up in the “technicalities” of the practice. The instructions will tell you to sit this way and look that way, but the point is to just do it. I created a rule for myself to help with the trouble of overthinking and that is to never use the word “correct” in reference to my practice, ever! This simple rule has taken a huge weight off my shoulders by relieving me of pressure that should never be present in meditation.

5. Keep a journal – or have some outlet to discuss your experience.

Sitting down to meditate everyday eventually became very difficult without an additional form of external support. Start Here Now emphasizes the importance of finding a supportive, like-minded community to help maintain your practice, which I initially found to be rather odd because meditation seemed to me to be a highly individualistic practice. After my second week in which multiple bail-outs on meditating occurred, it was easy for me to understand the significance behind this idea of “community.”  I needed somebody to keep me “in-check,” and to talk about my thoughts and experience with. Unfortunately, living in a house with four other busy college students did not provide me with such support. By “support,” what I really mean is an outlet that would allow me to reflect upon my practice in a space that goes beyond my mind.

The entirety of my journey thus far has resulted in a strengthened relationship with myself because I feel that I know myself better than I ever did before meditating.

Since the time I was twelve years old, I have kept a journal. I find it to be the most useful way for me to express my thoughts and ideas. My journal is a space where I can unload with no expectations from the world around me and, most importantly, from myself. I decided that while I lacked a community of like-minded individuals around me, my journal would serve as a support-system all the same, as it always has from the time I was a little girl. A simple piece of paper and a pen allow me to unload my thoughts about my practice, as well as the benefits I’m receiving during my every-day life. I often write about a time that day when I experienced the benefits of my practice, like remaining focused throughout a lengthy exam or helping me kick anxiety before a presentation.

6. Be open to experiencing your emotions.

It is strange to think that meditation can lead you to become emotional, but it really can have this effect. The entirety of my journey thus far has resulted in a strengthened relationship with myself because I feel that I know myself better than I ever did before meditating. I don’t really know what it is about sitting with myself and listening to my breath—the audible inhale and exhale—that connects me to who I am. I feel like I am listening to myself for the first time, and this can be emotional.

The openness I have allowed myself to feel has resulted in a happier and more positive “Me!” It is difficult to explain why such a small amount of time spent listening to my breath each day has led me to become head-over-heels in love with myself; it just has. For this reason, it feels as though meditation has completely transformed my life.

7. Always come back.

If maintaining a meditation practice was easy, there wouldn’t be countless books and an online course designed to guide individuals through the practice. Carving out 15 minutes of my day has been more difficult than I ever could have anticipated; but the good news is, only we ourselves have control over our fresh start—so get used to starting over! Meditation is always ready to welcome you back; no matter how long it’s been since you’ve sat down to practice.

Learn more about Susan’s online meditation course here.

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Susan Piver is an author and meditation instructor whose books include How Not to Be Afraid of Your Own LifeThe Wisdom of a Broken Heart, and the New York Times best-seller The Hard Questions. Learn more. 

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