Getting Started with Mindfulness Meditation
Getting started with meditation and/or mindfulness can feel overwhelming, for many reasons. One of the big ones is a fear of “doing it wrong”. For those of us with a harsh and punitive self-critic, it can be all too easy to find fault with any number of aspects of the experience. Right away, this sets up the very situation we might be trying to avoid: the pain of embarrassment and shame, which go hand in hand with that seemingly automatic self-criticism and self-judgment.
If this is what you experience when you try mindfulness or meditation, I want to invite you not to give up: facing the parts of you that instantly judge yourself for “not doing it right” or that believe you are not capable of this is precisely the purpose of this practice. Not a reason to stop.
Conversely, there is often the tendency to judge the practice. You might quickly come to the conclusion that “this isn’t for me,” sometimes even before you’ve had a chance to completely and honestly evaluate the experience. This might be coupled with some ideas you have about “people who do that sort of thing.” That thing being meditation.
It can be so difficult not to automatically judge the activity based on past experiences of people who participate in it. But rather than believing those ideas about what kind of person does this sort of thing, I encourage you to consider what it is that makes you uncomfortable about the possibility of being perceived as, “one of those people.” Consider the possibility that the judgement you are holding might be barring you from learning and experiencing something life-changing. Or at least, something valuable.
If you can push past the discomfort of these kinds of reactions to trying meditation, you will have already experienced growth. Below, I’ll give more guidance as to how to work through these automatic thoughts when they occur.
(Note: for the sake of brevity, the words mindfulness and meditation are used here interchangeably, though they are not exactly the same thing.)
How to practice mindfulness.
The actual practice of mindfulness, put simply, is a sustained effort to pay attention to your moment-to-moment experience. Physically, it can look a lot of ways: of course, we can sit on a cushion in the lotus position. But we can also practice moving meditation during any activity that doesn’t require complex thought. If you find sitting still on a cushion challenging, you can lie down on the floor. If being still feels like a lot to ask, you can try a walking meditation. You can practice mindfulness while doing mundane daily tasks like brushing your teeth or washing the dishes. The goal remains the same, regardless of how you practice: simply try to maintain awareness of your bodily experience. Notice what you are feeling in your body, and when you get pulled away by thoughts, as soon as you are aware that it is happening, return to your focus.
In order to keep your attention on what is actually happening here and now, it is best to start by directing the attention toward something specific. By far the most common focal point suggested by most mindfulness traditions is the breath. In the Plum Village mindfulness tradition, founded by the late Vietnamese Zen Master Thích Nhất Hạnh, guided meditations often begin with the words, “Breathing in, I am aware that I am breathing in. Breathing out, I am aware that I am breathing out.” Other meditation traditions narrow the focus even further. In the tradition of Vipassana, the basic meditation instruction is to focus only on the sensation of the breath as it enters and exits the nostrils.
Other meditation practices broaden the focus to the entire body. A basic body scan meditation (which is taught in Vipassana only once you have significant experience with the basic instruction) is a process of directing the breath and attention to each body part, and progressively relaxing them as you move your attention from the top of your head to the tips of your toes. Some guided meditations encourage you to direct your attention to each of your senses, fully allowing the experience of all of the inputs you can detect through each one.
The goal of meditation.
The goal of meditation is not to learn how not to think.
I’ll repeat that in case you were distracted. The goal of meditation is not to stop thinking. If you go into meditation expecting that it will teach you how to avoid your troubled thoughts, you will definitely be disappointed.
You can expect to spend most of your meditation sessions getting distracted. Each thought is like a beautiful butterfly, fluttering past. At first, you see the butterfly, you are enamoured with the butterfly, and before you know it you are up on your feet chasing the butterfly across the grass. This will happen innumerable times. At some point during the chase you’ll remember that you were meditating, and if you’re lucky you’ll get back into position again before the next butterfly happens by.
But eventually, you’ll notice a pattern. The butterfly is often a particular colour. And when it is, you usually chase it in the same direction. Next time you see it, you might think, maybe I don’t need to go in that direction this time. Or you might even notice the colour before you get up from your seat. And then you’ll do it all over again. But slowly, over time, the space between the stimulus (the butterfly) and the response (the getting up, the running) will get smaller. You will learn how to see the butterfly and not get up at all. You will learn how to say, “hello butterfly, I can see that you are beautiful and I definitely want to chase you, but I think this time I will just stay put.”
Sometimes, you might even pause to notice what your body feels like when you are gripped by wanting.
Sometimes, you will even wait a few moments between butterflies and wonder to yourself, “Is this it? Am I doing it?”
And the answer is yes! You were always doing it.
Because the goal of meditation is not to stop thinking.
The goal of meditation is to develop awareness of what is happening right here, right now. Including the butterfly. Including the grass. Including the desire not to get up and chase it as well as the urge to ignore that other desire and do whatever your body wants. The goal is not to fight the desires or the urges, but to notice them, to accept them, and to let them go whenever that becomes an option.
In other words, the goal of meditation is presence.
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When I started this post, I set out to write a simple, straightforward description of what it is like to meditate and ended up playing with an extended metaphor about butterflies. If that’s not a butterfly in action, I don’t know what is! But sometimes the distractions are beautiful! The point is not to stop them. The point is simply to become aware enough of the distractions that we have a choice as to whether or not we allow them to take us with them.
TL; DR: How to meditate.
Choose a focal point — something to pay attention to — and stay with it. When your mind wanders, notice what it wandered to, and then return your attention to the focal point. When you feel emotions, notice what they are. When you become aware that you are judging or criticising yourself, or making sweeping conclusions about what it all means, take note. Pay attention to your thoughts long enough to know what they are. And then, let them go. Return to the focal point, and start again.
That’s it. That’s the practice.
I can’t tell you what the outcome will be for you, but I can tell you that choosing it and maintaining it will offer you your own unique rewards.
It can help to have someone to talk to about your experience, and a therapist is a great person to bring those observations to. You might also consider journaling about what you noticed afterwards. This can help with any desire you might feel to believe any self-criticisms, and to address your unwillingness to let go of the thought-chasing. If you know you’ll have a chance to follow the thoughts wherever they lead you later, that can make it easier to let go for now.
If you’re curious about any of the ideas presented here, want to learn more about the many ways to practice mindfulness, check out this post for resources. And you can dig a little deeper about why mindfulness is often recommended by therapists, here.
