How to Start Meditating

You heard that meditation can change your life. You’ve read some articles saying that mindfulness makes us happier humans. But don’t know where to begin or how to create and keep this habit? My personal experience has proven the benefits of daily meditation (both by consistently meditating and by lazily stopping the habit for months).

What is meditation? What are the types of meditation? How to start? How to maintain the practice?

Meditation is a practice to connect with the intuition and to observe the mind.

With a journal in hand, begin with these three steps to starting a meditation practice. This will give more meaning to the practice, help you progress towards your goal (or intention) of practice, and encourage you to create time for consistent practice.

1. Reflect on how you feel right now in life. How is your health mentally, emotionally, spiritually, physically?
2. Define the reason you’d like to create the practice.  Curiosity is where it starts. But what do you think you’ll gain in life from meditation? When this WHY changes down the road, recognize this and redefine your WHY.
3. Explore the variations of meditation practice— active, passive, breath work, guided, silent. What feels good to you? What aligns with your current needs, state, and style? There are some practices that are best from others. For example, experiencing depression or lack of motivation— explore more active styles of meditation and avoid still, silent meditations. Experiencing a lot of stress and lack of focus— explore meditations with stillness and calming breaths.

Beginners Tip: Start with single-focused awareness of the breath and return awareness to the breath when the mind wanders. Continue to return awareness to the breath when the mind wanders.