Easy Meditation for beginners – 7 steps
This post may contain affiliate links. Learn more.
Deze post kan affiliate links bevatten. Lees meer.
Meditation recently became a must-have tool for everyone who wants to be calmer in their lives. Those who still think that meditation is a floaty business only for hippies and yoga-freaks have a lot to catch up on. Therefore, we will discuss 7 easy meditation steps for beginners in this blog (even if you hate sitting😉!).
The benefits of meditation have been known for centuries across religions in different forms. It has also been scientifically proven that people who meditate have better focus, are calmer, and are generally better able to deal with stressful situations.
Calming your mind will bring calm and happiness to your life!
Why is it so hard to meditate, especially for beginners?
The meditation as most of us know it, sitting in stillness, is but one form. Dancing, fasting, singing, and walking can also be meditation under certain circumstances.
Whilst we all want to escape the busy rollercoaster of our lives and push the pause button, sitting down can be the hardest thing imaginable. Our mind always finds reasons and excuses to avoid our meditation.
When we have decided we really want to meditate, we prefer even the most tedious household chores above sitting down in stillness. Why is that?
It is really quite simple: our mind prefers to stay in its safe predictable habit pattern where things churn around and around at hyper-speed. Because what if we encounter insight that scares us when we finally are calm?
Stop pushing yourself to meditate in a certain form or for a set time
The best way to get over the apprehensiveness to sit down and meditate is to meditate in different forms. Stop to push yourself to sit down on your newly acquired uncomfortable meditation pillow with stiff legs and a painful back. If you don’t like it, you won’t do it.
Your mind will always win by distracting you, which makes it even harder for you to meditate.
Apart from our form of meditation, the same goes for time. To meditate 20 minutes a day seems impossible for most of us. So, don’t meditate for 20 minutes a day! Instead choose a time window that you feel that you can easily do, like 5 or 8 minutes.
You will see that once you have stopped to adhere to the ‘necessary form’ and ‘best time’ and other ways that you must meditate in order to become ‘good’ at it, you will feel much happier to actually go and meditate.
Meditation for Beginners: most common struggles
A lot of people nowadays are struggling with stress – at work or at home. Especially, in these times where COVID-19 is present around the world, more people work from home. They have to juggle work with for example taking care of the kids.
Others face strict lockdowns and are spending most of the day inside often small apartments. A good friend of mine spent 4 months with 9 family members in one small house. To travel or go for a long walk is not always allowed, making the situation even more strenuous.
In these times, it is important to meditate and find some inner peace. But how can you fit this into your daily schedule?
To make it easier to start meditating, especially for beginners, we have made a list of 7 things you can do to teach yourself how to meditate.
7 Step Guideline: Meditation for Beginners
- Prepare your meditation corner, or if you don’t have space for it, make sure that you have some room to move around and that the space feels nice.
- Put on some music that is light and melodious, which does not remind you of anything in particular. There is an amazing collection of meditation music on YouTube and Spotify.
- For about 5 – 10 minutes just keep standing up and let your body flow with the music, however slightly. If this feels weird, don’t worry about it and just continue. Try to do it with your eyes closed or opening them only ever so often. Focus on moving your body softly with the music and notice how your body responds.
- After you have moved with the music, only then sit down on your mat, or pillow, or even in your bed if you prefer to lie down.
- Set your timer to 10 minutes. If 10 minutes seems like a lot, only aim for 5 minutes. It is more important to meditate regularly than to meditate for long stretches of time in one go.
- When you have found your meditation position, try to really focus your attention on your body for the first few minutes. How does it feel to you? Are there any painful parts of your body? Just give yourself a quick scan.
- Then, once you have given yourself a body scan, go with your attention to your breath. Simply count your breath going in and going out. So, one in-breath, one out-breath. Two in-breaths, two out-breaths, and so on. Once you are at 10, restart at one.
We hope these 7 exercises can help you with a start in meditation. So you can practice and become calmer and more resistant to stress.🧘
Interested in reading more? Have a look at Retreating from retreats: 10 Mindfulness exercises. In this post, we discuss 10 easy things you can implement in and around your home to practice Mindfulness. 😇
Amazon and the Amazon logo are trademarks of Amazon.com, Inc. or its affiliates.
Bol.com en het Bol.com logo zijn handelsmerken van Bol.com of haar affiliates.
One Comment
Pingback: