How to Start Meditating And Why It Can Change Your Life
In this beginner’s guide to meditation, you will learn how to start practicing in as little as one minute per day, why meditation can change your life, the scientific research backing meditation, and some unique techniques that you can use if traditional meditation hasn’t helped you in the past.
What Meditation Is
Meditation is a practice where you train your attention.
As defined by the meditation teacher, Jon Kabat-Zinn, “the awareness that arises through paying attention on purpose, in the present moment, and nonjudgmentally to the unfolding of experience moment by moment.”
Meditation is an ancient technique that has been practiced in multiple cultures and religions for thousands of years.
How To Start Meditating
The easiest way to start meditating is to set a timer on your phone for five minutes and then close your eyes.
Focus on your breath and take a few deep breaths.
Count, from 0 to 10, with each breath in and out. When you reach 10, start at the beginning again.
When you find yourself getting distracted, don’t beat yourself up. This is what our minds do: they get distracted.
Just begin counting again at 0. Keep going until the timer goes off.
The Scientific Benefits Of Meditation
Hundreds of studies have been done on mindfulness meditation. One recent meta-analysis found that, for healthcare workers, meditation:
Reduced stress
Reduced anxiety and depression anxiety
Reduced distress
Improved burnout
Increased empathy and compassion
Improved emotional intelligence
Improved emotional regulation
Correlations have been found between mindfulness and lower levels of depressive syndromes, higher levels of subjective well-being, and higher levels of eudaimonic well-being.
Mindfulness meditation offers individuals a chance to engage in a different relationship with their subjectivity by standing back and observing one’s experience of the world. In addition, it is theorized that this process, known as ‘reperceiving’, can lead to additional positive outcomes that include self-regulation; flexibility in cognition, behavior and emotions; clarification of values; and exposure
Why Meditation Can Make You Happier
Meditation helps you to train your attention, which is one of the most important elements of happiness, because it is the single most powerful resource that you possess.
Attention shapes our lives through filtering through all of the available existing information in the world and selects only a small portion of it, creating the world that we perceive to be ‘reality’.
In this moment, as you read the words on this page, your attention is focused on comprehending and understanding the text. You’re probably not, at this moment, thinking about the way that your pinky toe is pressing into the bottom of your shoe — but now you are. Now it is in your attention. You can’t help but notice it.
We can’t possibly pay attention to all of the things that are happening around us. There is so much going on at any one time: the sounds, the smells, the noises, the flickering light, the way our clothes feel, our latest emotional pain, the grocery store list, the nagging worry about a mole on your arm, that email you’ve been putting off. Our attention can only handle seven pieces of information at one time, give or take two (coincidentally, the average number of digits in a phone number!) From the nearly endless supply of stimuli, our attention must be selective.
There are two ways in which we select the objects of our attention: involuntarily and voluntarily. Involuntarily, we find our attention pulled by sounds, movements, interest or habit. Voluntarily, we choose to point our attention towards something that we have deemed personally meaningful or important to us, something that is important enough that we are willing to neglect the other stimuli and focus upon it.
William James, the founding father of psychology, argued that “effort of attention is the essential phenomenon of will.”
It is not easy to control our attention, because there is no shortage of stimuli out there in the world that beg for your attention and that hope to capitalize upon your lapses into involuntary selection. Any application that has a pop-up notification captures your involuntary attention.
But attention is also what allows us to pursue and experience well-being.
Attention allows us to engage in many positive choices, such as:
Choosing thoughts and battling unproductive ones, which is a core skill of resilience
Envisioning our future selves and lives in order to set goals and objectives
Choosing to execute upon strategies and implement habits or interventions, or override unhelpful / habitual responses
We have very little control over what happens to us and over the ultimate events of our external lives. While we can certainly increase the probability that good things will happen to us through activities like building strong relationships, finding a job that fits our strengths, exercising and eating healthy, and so on, it is an unfortunate truth of life that these are only valiant attempts at very best. Even those of us who live the most blessed, fortunate life imaginable will absolutely come to know and deeply experience suffering. While it might seem bleak to recognize that the only assurance in this life is that we cannot control the external world, it is in fact something that can set us free.
Your attention influences how you feel about your life, your self, and the happiness and joy that you get from both. Your happiness comes from cultivating inner harmony through the power of your attention.
The most expedient way to improve the quality of life is through taking responsibility for one’s own attention. Mindfulness and meditation is one way that you can do this. Through training your attention to observe your experiences, reframe your perspectives, and cultivate positive states, you will be able to increase your happiness and well-being.
Unique Meditation Techniques
If you have tried traditional meditation techniques and struggled to make them a habit, don’t worry: there are many other ways that you can integrate mindfulness practice into your daily life. Here are several non-traditional techniques that you might try.
Visual Meditation: We created this visual meditation that will help you to direct your attention towards loving yourself. As the words change on the screen, mentally say them to yourself.
Moving Meditation: Stretch your body and, as you do, focus on how it feels in each muscle.
Group Meditation: Many meditation teachers offer in-person and virtual gatherings to bring people together to practice.
Loving Kindness Meditation: This practice helps you to cultivate greater compassion for others.
Mindful Walk: Go on a walk and stay open to witnessing your surroundings, like paying extra attention to the sights, sounds, and smells.
