editation is a weird thing that people either love, hate or are totally dubious about. I’m very much a beginner in this space but I’m loving my exploration of this practice. I used to be the type of person who thought they couldn’t meditate but I’ve been taking baby steps and it’s bloody good stuff. Here’s how to meditate if you think you can’t meditate.
Don’t stress about clearing your mind
Meditation is not about clearing your mind, it’s about focusing your mind. It’s a common misunderstanding that you’re supposed to think of nothing while meditating but the opposite is true. All you need to do is focus on what you are doing – breathing and calming yourself. It’s totally fine for your mind to wander, just bring it back as soon as you can and remember that you’ll get better at it over time.
5 minutes is fine
There some yogi-wellness gurus that swear by hour-long meditation sessions twice every day but really, no one has time for that. 5 minutes is plenty to get you started and if you feel like you need to do a bit extra, go for it. Wake up meditations are excellent if you have trouble getting up in the morning and there are some great ones for going to sleep at night too. There are energiser meditations and wind down meditations and most only last about 5 to 13 minutes. It doesn’t have to be time consuming at all. If you can spend 10 minutes on Facebook, you can spend 10 minutes meditating.
Meditation is not hippy dippy bullshit
A lot of people shy away from meditation because it has roots in the holistic wellness space (which isn’t everyones cup of tea) but it’s actually a very powerful tool for increasing mental awareness, sharpness and over all wellbeing. Mindfulness is an incredibly important part of leading a happy and successful life. Jerry Seinfeld, Oprah, Martin Scorcese, Steve Jobs and Arianna Huffington are all serious practitioners of meditation and if it’s good enough for them, it’s good enough for me. Plus we all have to do everything Oprah says always otherwise we’ll die.
Awesome Meditation Apps
I’m very much a beginner meditator myself and I tend to dabble a bit but I’m making more of an effort to meditate in the morning and at night, like lovely bookends in my day. I use iSleepeasy when I’m going to sleep. It’s very cliche and it borders on being funny but the damn thing works so I keep on using it. I use Buddify to wake up in the morning (they have a few great ‘start the day’ tracks) and sometimes in the middle of the day if I need to centre myself. The Buddify meditations are great because you don’t have to go into full shut down. Some of them are designed for walking around or when you’re waiting in line so you can just dip in and out whenever you need to.
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Are you a meditator? Would you ever try it?
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