Struggling to Meditate? Here are Four Tips to Improve Mindfulness
Struggling to Mediate? Don’t worry, it's totally normal. It took me years to meditate on a consistent basis. I’ve meditating every morning for the last three months and now I can’t imagine starting my day without it. Here are four tips I wish I knew when I first started:
Observe and Accept your thoughts
A common misconception about mediation is that, in order to practice successfully, you are supposed to be completely void of thought. The purpose of mediation is to observe your thoughts as they arise and merely allow it to exist and naturally fade away. Instead of fighting against the poor attention span of the mind, aim to fight with it by accepting the mind's flaws. You do this by focusing on your train of thought while you are meditating. When thoughts begin to arise while you meditate, observe the thought and do not give it any attention. By observing and not thinking, you prevent your mind from attaching stories to the thought. The beauty about this method is, the more you develop the skill during meditation, the easier it will become to practice this method in your day to day life.
2. Focus on your body and breath
Your body and your breath are the holy grail of successful mediation practice. Training the mind to be aware and remain in the present moment is the end goal, but the good news is, your body and your breath are already there!
If you find yourself lost in thought while meditating, bring yourself back to your body. Breath through your nostrils and draw your attention to the breath inflating the lungs. Focus on the rising and falling of your abdomen.
Bring your mind to focus on specific body parts. For example, while breathing slowly, focus on your left hand, then your right hand. Now switch your focus to your left knee, then your right foot, then your back and so forth. By focusing on certain points of the body you are using the body as an anchor to the present moment. Learning to use my body and breath to my advantage was a total game changer and improved my mediation exponentially.
3. Forget about the time
I learnt of this simple method from an Italian man I met at a Buddhist retreat. When you sit down to meditate, try to think about the time as little as possible. Get rid of the timer(if you can), forget about how long you want to meditate for or how long it has been since you sat down. Simply sit and be totally aware of your mind and body by remaining in the present moment. By paying attention to the time you are essentially strapping a harness between your mind and the outside world.
The concept of time prevents you from being fully mindful and aware of the present moment (ironic I know); we constantly experience regret over the past and worry about the future. Time is the enemy of the present so why would you bring them with you while meditating?
4. Don’t Lose Faith
Lastly, don’t lose faith. Mediation is hard and takes practice. In my experience, it was for this reason that I struggled for so long to meditate on a consistent basis. The truth is consistency, concentration and effort are all important but are in vain without faith. In the beginning, you may feel an urge to scrap mediation because you feel it is not helping you; this probably means you are close to a breakthrough. Faith in that meditation will help you to better control your mind and reach higher levels of consciousness will act as motivation to continue, and endure you through any periods of doubt.
Personally, practicing mindfulness and awareness through meditation has given me greater control over my emotions and has without a doubt improved my life. I would recommend anyone to start meditating more often and I hope these tips will aid you along your journey.