How to Meditate

Do you hear about meditation frequently? Do you hear about mindfulness? These have been around for thousands of years in various forms. In recent years, meditation has gained popularity worldwide. There are many documented and well-researched benefits of meditation in general and mindfulness in particular (see our research section for some examples). But, the number one reason to meditate is upgrading your inner experience!

There is a big chasm from the first meditation attempt to an established, high impact practice in your life. It doesn’t need to be hours a day, but it needs to be consistent, and done in a way that works. It may seem counterintuitive, but when you meditate, don’t worry about doing it ‘right’.  That said, if you don’t click into a meditation gear, you won’t make much progress and won’t feel the benefits in your life.

The immediate goal of meditation and mindfulness is to settle your mind, experience inner quiet, peace, and joy. The longer-term goal is to allow your brain’s neural network to quiet down, empower new and little-used pathways, and become much more sensitive to something other than your rapid-judgment, pattern matching, immediate awareness. 

Without some process, like meditation, your brain tends to do what it did before, avoiding new work or thought. Meditation conditions your brain to pause, sense alternatives, be less attached, stuck actually, to its established ways.

The challenge of meditation is how to get the brain to not do what it normally does long enough to open new pathways.

The environment

First, your early meditation practice should be done in a quiet, safe environment, where you are unlikely to be interrupted. Use a private space or ask any people around not to interrupt you. Silence your phones. If you need to, set a timer to let you know 5 or 10 minutes after your planned session time – but please don’t routinely end your sessions with a buzzer!

If a fountain, light background noise, or something similar is available, give it a try. 

Your clothes and position

When meditating, its best to wear comfortable, loose-fitting, cloths. There are many positions from the traditional balanced sitting position to lying down. You’ll need to experiment to find something that’s comfortable for meditation and doesn’t put you to sleep inadvertently.

I don’t really recommend the position in the picture, but, it really is a personal choice. 

Choose a practice that suits you

Meditation practices give your conscious mind something unusual to do, a focus of attention. Pay detailed attention to your breath, to your body sensations, to repeating a word-phrase-mantra, to contemplating a concept or paradox, or something along any of those lines. As you notice your mind drifting into other thoughts, you gently let the thoughts fade and return to your focus of attention. Stay in the present moment by choice, not force of will.

It’s important that you are gentle in this process, as you are working to create a useful balance and more pathways. I suggest accepting and allowing emerging thoughts to fade, quickly, but gently. The process of noticing and shifting back to focus is part of what you want to occur, not something you are trying to avoid. 

The breath, repetitive mantra (e.g., ‘peace’, ‘aware’, ‘repeat’, ‘om’), and heightened body awareness are good places to start. As with returning to your focus, each of these should be done in the softest manner possible.

Follow the process for your session

Meditation is a process of focused letting go, you don’t lead yourself to new areas of awareness, you allow it.

Start with 5-7 minute sessions, gradually increasing over time. Start with one of these focus areas:

• Gently watch your breath, don’t force it.
• Be silently aware of your body, where each sensation originates, emotional flickers, etc.
• Repeat a mantra silently, softly in your mind, eventually not even sensing its sounds, but just a recurring minimalist idea.

Some very experienced mediators rarely have sessions over 20-30 minutes, while others spend hours a day meditating. Find a balance that works for you. Like exercise, many benefits are in the first 15-30 minutes, don’t worry if you can’t fit in extended sessions. If you establish a 15-30 minute daily meditation practice it will gradually transform your inner experience and many areas of your life.

Lather, Rinse, Repeat

Try several types of meditation above and others you can find. You should try each approach at least a few times, but they don’t have to be sequential. Try different environments, different positions. The most important aspect is to keep coming back to meditation, 5-15 minutes at a time, at least a few times a week. A regular routine is helpful, but not essential.  You’ll start to look forward to sessions, and develop a sense of meditation in your life.

We wish you the best in your meditation journey.

Consider Joining RocketCalm

Traditional meditation is powerful but very slow. These approaches often take months or years before brain monitoring tools like an EEG (Electroencephalogram) begin to show shifts during a session. If you’re interested in a modern, effective path down the meditation road, RocketCalm’s program amplifies these powerful meditation techniques.

You can accelerate the process and feel the effects in your life right away. This rapidly lets you enjoy the benefits and feel the positive feedback that makes meditation a habit.

We use engineered sounds and guided instruction based on neuroscience to quickly coax your brain into deep meditative states. You experience deep meditative states in virtually every session, right from the start. Based on your time, mood, and meditation goals, you choose powerful meditation sessions as short as 3 minutes or long as 60. These include combinations of deep relaxation music, brainwave entrainment, guided breathwork, NLP based visualization, and other effective techniques. Most sessions are general meditation, but others add focus on topics like stress reduction, releasing anger, prosperity, great relationships, and so on.

Members simply click on any session to play or download.  RocketCalm works with your phone, tablet, PC, or MAC.

It’s easy and inexpensive to Join RocketCalm.  You’ll get the first month free and notice we keep the cost very low to reach the widest audience possible.