How to Start Your Mindfulness Practice?
People from all walks of life talk about mindfulness: psychotherapists, coaches, psychiatrists, social workers, business coaches, New Age gurus, productivity „experts“, etc. I dare say that more people talk about it than practice it.
They talk about it because they know it works. We have ample evidence that mindfulness is an excellent practice to take up, one that has a number of benefits for, both, your body and your mind. It can improve your focus, it can give you more conscious control over your behavior, make you more aware of your emotions and even reduce your baseline anxiety levels. Studies that look at your brain structure indicate that, with sustained practice, mindfulness can visibly alter the thickness of cortical gray matter! Not long time ago, this was thought to be impossible.
But if it works so well, why is it that I say that more people preach than practice?
Because it’s not that easy to practice mindfulness. As a concept, it sounds simple enough, but what’s simple isn’t necessarily easy to apply. In this blog post, I’ll consider some basic points that will help you start your mindfulness practice on solid ground.
Intention
Be very clear about why you want to meditate. This is quite important for most beginners, although not for all of them. When I first began meditating in high school, I had no idea why I wanted to do that or what I wanted to achieve. I was given an opportunity to try out practicing mindfulness, I sad yes for the most adolescent reason you can imagine (to skip a class). I spent about five minutes focusing on my breath, opened my eyes and thought: I want to do this every day from now on. Every teacher I’ve ever had asked me that question: why do you want to learn to meditate and my answer was always something vague or a simple „I don’t know, I just do“.
As pretentious as this sounds, but I dare say I’m more of an exception than I am the rule. I’ve often wondered why but I haven’t come up with anything particularly wise. Most people I’ve worked with have needed a reason to meditate. So, find yours. Take some time to think about why you really want this. And your reason doesn’t have to be profound or deep. You don’t have to strive to attain nirvana or some other kind of special experience. If your motive is to deal with stress or anxiety or to get to know yourself better, that’s fine. The only important thing is to set an intention that truly motivates you, that produces a feeling.
Learn the basics
Learn what mindfulness is. Start with a simple definition and contemplate it until you understand its multiple facets. Start with something like this definition: mindfulness is the practice of developing awareness of your ongoing experience. This is simple to remember, and it says a few things:
1. It’s about being aware of your experience, not changing it or wishing it to be anything. This aspect of mindfulness is perhaps the most difficult. Sometimes your ongoing experience will be excruciating and attending to it mindfully means observing it and not trying to change it.
2. It’s a practice. That means it’s something you do, so it’s a choice. This is where intention comes into play. If you are going to make that choice every day, you need a good reason.
3. The word ongoing implies that the experience is always already unfolding. This part is, in my opinion, reassuring. No matter how hard it gets, it will go away. The word ongoing tells us that our experience is in constant flux, in movement. Whenever you think that mindfulness is boring, come back to this idea: your experience is never the same, if it seems that way, you’re not paying attention.
4. We all know what it’s like to be aware of many things at once even if we don’t practice mindfulness. While you’re reading this, you might also be aware of some external noise or a sensation in your body, a smell, etc. Your entire field of awareness is such that not everything in it is equally important. This is why we can talk about peripheral awareness and focus. In meditation, we can focus on one thing (like the breath), we can change what we focus on (meditations that involve visualizations or body scans where you focus on different parts of your body) – or, we can give up choosing and just see whatever arises, it’s something we often call “open awareness”.
See how many things you can get from just one short sentence?
Read a book, but don’t read twenty-five books about mindfulness. At least not right away. I’ve met far too many people who read more than they practice. Start with one method and work at it. When your practice becomes a stable, daily affair, learn new things by all means. But don’t overload yourself because that way you’re increasing your chances of failure.
If you need a simple book to start with, consider one of the two:
Wherever You Go There You Are by Jon Kabat-Zinn
Mindfulness in Plain English by Bhante Gunaratana
Both will give you everything you need to get started and can be a source of instruction for years. You may be interested in formal instruction and in that case, there are a few things that you can do:
· MBSR (mindfulness-based stress reduction) courses take 8 weeks to complete, they’re done in groups and may be helpful to learn the technique and be accountable until meditation becomes a routine.
· Find a teacher. If this is the direction you want to take, you can visit your local Buddhist center or monastery. Buddhist monks are not only exceptionally qualified, they also have a complex and comprehensive psychological system that will help you put your experience in an appropriate framework.
· Find a mindfulness coach, and in this case – choose carefully.
Form clear expectations
Here are some things not to expect:
· Don’t expect meditation to be pleasant. Sometimes it will be, sometimes it won’t.
· Don’t expect it to be easy. As you practice, you will learn how to be with your emotions without being overwhelmed by them, but meditation will always be turbulent. Metaphorically speaking, meditation will get you to face a lot of your demons.
· Don’t expect to be without thoughts. You will always have thoughts unless you’re dead.
· Don’t expect to be able to sit and meditate for 45 minutes right off the bat. Like building muscles in the gym, the “mindfulness muscle” needs time to develop. Also, not everyone has to be a bodybuilder. If you reach 20-30 minutes per sitting, you’re fine.
Here are some constructive expectations to make:
· Every sitting will be different in ways that you can’t predict.
· There will be periods (sometimes months at a time) where meditation will be downright painful, but also periods when it will be blissful. It will change and that’s the nature of our experience.
· Expect to want to avoid meditation with the lousiest of excuses and be ready to recognize them and call yourself out on it.
· Be ready to experience steady and slow progress – it’s not just mindfulness, there are no shortcuts when it comes to human psychology!
Start where you are
Before you start organizing your mindfulness practice, consider these two things:
1. Take a look at your schedule and decide where you can make space for mindfulness daily. I suggest you don’t do it just before you go to sleep – mindfulness is about “falling awake” not falling asleep.
2. See how much you can do now. Once you’ve decided on a technique (see below for guided meditations to help you) learn it and then sit and set your timer. Sit for as long as you can and then a minute more. When you can’t sit anymore, open your eyes and stop the timer. That’s your starting time. Use that time and meditate that long every day for a week and then see if you can do one or two minutes more.
Think about meditation as a marathon, not a sprint. Your practice should be daily. It’s best to embed it in an already existing routine. That’s called habit stacking and it will be it easier to implement in your daily life. For example, I do my morning practice right after I wake up. My meditation cushion is located half way between my bed and my bathroom, so even if somehow forget to meditate, I’ll stumble over the cushion and I’ll remember to do it. Waking up in the morning is already a habit, as is brushing my teeth and showering. Putting mindfulness between those two made it very easy to do habitually.
Journal
You don’t have to journal every day but it’s very useful to keep notes of your practice. Some of the things you may want to note are the following:
· What was the most common theme of your thoughts?
· What was the most pleasant aspect of the stting?
· What was the most difficult part?
· What excuses does your mind come up with to skip a sitting or to cut t short?
· What parts of your body are particularly reactive?
· What parts of your body are especially quiet?
Of course, not everything will be pertinent every time, these are just some suggestions to get you started. If you have a therapist, a meditation teacher or a coach, they may help keep you accountable too. Their role and the journal are quite similar: to help you understand the content of your mind, to help you progress in your practice, and to keep track of the progress you’re making – when progress is slow and subtle, it’s easy to overlook, and in order to keep your practice and stay motivated, you need to see progress.
Don’t stop with the meditation cushion
Try to extend mindfulness beyond your daily sittings. Remember to check in with your body and see how you feel when you work a lot or when you wake up or just before you go to sleep. See what you’re thinking about and what you’re feeling.
Be present as much as you can and reward yourself when you can.
Instructions
The simplest instruction is to sit with your back straight and focus on your breath. Every time your mind wanders, note where it went (use simple labels like “work”, “love”, etc.) and gently go back to the breath.
Never forget:
Distractions are not a sign of failure. Knowing that you were distracted means that you were mindful!
Some apps that might be helpful are:
Insight Timer
Meditation & Relaxation by fitness22 – excellent, nearly perfect app for beginners, but apparently available only on Android.
Meditation Studio
Here are some shot guided meditations that you can start with right now:
