How to Meditate, Even If You Can't Meditate
Even before I became certified as a Qigong instructor, level II Reiki healer, or a master practitioner of Neurolinguistic Programming, I was fascinated with and avid at meditation. As I practiced many different forms of meditation, I quickly realized how many of our typical, daily mental health issues and life goals could be at least partially addressed by accurate meditation.
Quite often, anxiety comes up in conversation. And, when I suggest that someone might want to try meditation, that suggestion is often met with a response like, "I don't know how to meditate," or, "I tried that, but I can't do it. All these thoughts keep entering my mind no matter how hard I try." These responses are indicative of the possibility that many people don't even know what meditation is.
What is Meditation?
According to Merriam-Webster, the first definition of meditation is "to contemplate." The second definition is more of what people tend to envision when they think of meditation: meditation is a practice of the mind that is done to achieve a specific benefit, such as improving one's spiritual health. This definition is accurate, but it does not explain why people often state that they can't meditate. If you are a person who has difficulty meditating, then this post may be some very good news for you.
Types of Meditation
Part of the reason why people think they "can't meditate" is because they don't realize that there are many different forms of meditation. The other part of most people's difficulty with performing this mental exercise is that they don't know how to get started with it. Here is a list of some of the most common types of meditation:
- Focused attention (The quieting of the mind that many people think they cannot achieve)
- Visualization (often used to attract success into one's life)
- Bodyscan
- Noting
- Resting Awareness
- Loving Kindness
- Skillful Compassion
- Mantra Meditation
- Zen Meditation
- Reflection
- Vipassana (Very powerful for getting rid of misperceptions)
- Trancendental Meditation
- Qigong
- Tai Chi
- Sound Meditation
- Pranayama (breathing exercises that may provide many benefits, including better blood circulation, improved alkalinity, and immune system support)
Most of the types of meditation in the above list are described in some detail on headspace.com. As you can see, there are many different forms of meditation. So if one form of meditation is something you feel that you cannot do, another form may be quite easy. However, I've come to the understanding that when most people tell me "I can't meditate," they're referring to the archetypical quieting of the mind often portrayed in martial arts movies. This type of clearing of the mind is called focused meditation.
Ergo, if you believe you can't do focused meditation, then I have good news for you: There is an easy way to do this type of meditation in which your own physiology will pretty much guarantee that you will clear your mind. In addition, the immediate changes to your physiology are proven to provide many health benefits with this tip.
How to Meditate: The Easy Way to Focus
To perform the quieting of the mind meditation, also known as focused attention meditation, take the following steps:
- Find a quiet space where you are confident that you will not be disturbed.
- Get into a comfortable position. It can be a lying position or a sitting position.
- Take deep breaths that expand the belly. This is called diaphragmatic breathing or belly breathing. Allow your chest to expand as well.
- Breathe deeply and continuously until you begin to feel a slight sense of lightheadedness or tingling in the fingertips. Depending on your own, unique physiology, this may require 10 to 50 breaths.
- Breathe out until you are comfortably at the bottom of your breath.
- Hold your breath for as long as you comfortably can. (you'll be surprised at how long you'll be able to hold your breath with very little air in your lungs after performing step 4).
- Inhale and hold your breath at the top of your inspiration (with your lungs full) for 10 to 15 seconds.
- Breathe out and relax.
- Steps 1 through 8 can be considered 1 set. I find that I have to do at least 3 sets to really get a strong effect with this breathing meditation. I tend to do 5 sets in one sitting when I do this type of meditation.
If you've tried this exercise, then I'm guessing you were probably pleasantly surprised at how clear your mind became after about 3 sets of counting your breaths. If so, then congratulations! You've just performed a focused meditation. Also, It's a kind of trick. You actually participated in pranayama meditation.
Pranayama meditation, often referred to as simply pranayama or pranayama breathing, is a Sanscrit way of referring to breathing meditation. As described above, it's a kriya yoga practice in which one performs exercises such as breathing to achieve a certain result. For the purposes of the example given, the desired result was to help people clear their minds even if they insist that their minds never want to "shut off." Deep breathing exercises are a powerful way to help you perform a focused attention meditation. One of my favorite ways to practice pranayama is the way Wim Hof explains it:
There are many different types of breathing techniques, all of which have different goals. The method Wim Hof describes is one of the best breathing exercises for anxiety. In the future, I will write a post specifically about pranayama to give breathing techniques the detail and respect that they deserve.
How to Do Mindfulness Meditation
Video by Yongey Mingyur Rinpoche
So, now that I've given you one life hack on how to clear your mind even if you usually find it difficult to do, I invite you to explore a much different way of meditating -- the type most people don't seem to think about. This type of meditation is called mindfulness mediation or awareness meditation.
Mindfulness meditation is a type of mental exercise in which one practices being aware of and accepting all thoughts and observations without judgment. Counterintuitively, being mindful of all your passing thoughts, without engaging in them or judging them, can easily result in achieving a clear and quiet mind. Let's take a look at a simplistic explanation of how this can be done.
- Find a safe space where you know you won't be disturbed.
- Get into a comfortable position of any sort, as long as you won't fall asleep while attempting to meditate.
- Typically, taking several deep, slow breaths is done in the beginning.
- Count to a number of breaths of your choosing -- maybe 5 or 10.
- Close your eyes.
- Pay attention to every noise, sensation, observation, and thought that you encounter as you sit (or lie) quietly.
- As thoughts enter your mind, acknowledge them. Do not judge your thoughts or yourself. Simply note that your thoughts are there and let them pass by. Imagining that these thoughts are clouds slowly drifting by may help you to perceive them in an unbiased way and let them go.
- Listen closely (without too much effort) to every distant sound.
- Imagine that you are levitating high above your location and can see everything that you are hearing.
- It's natural for random thoughts to come into your mind. As stated in step 7, just know that those thoughts are there and let them pass.
- After a while, you may notice that your mind has been clear for a few moments. If that is true, then move to the final step.
- Envision your meditation gently coming back to reality in whatever way you feel is best. For example, you may imagine that you're slowly descending from the height you were just at and gently coming back to rest in your house.
If you've performed the above steps, you may find it surprisingly effective that by accepting your thoughts, acknowledging them, and letting them pass, you ended up clearing your mind. By now, you probably realize that meditation isn't always like that typical scene in martial arts movies in which elite karate fighters force themselves to sit very still and clear their minds of all thoughts. These mental exercises can be actually very intriguing.
For instance, there is a huge following of the concept that what our minds do metaphysically can cause profound changes in our reality.
Manifestation
Video by Your Youniverse
Visualization meditation is a powerful exercise in which one becomes deeply emersed in vividly experiencing an imagined reality. The way this works is when a thought is experienced in great detail and with enough potency, the practitioner of this visualization becomes temporarily convinced that they are currently living in this new and desirable reality.
The state of temporarily, truly believing that you are living in a reality in which your wishes have come true causes a harmonization between your physical self and the reality of your mind's desires. This harmonization occurs because your subconscious mind cannot differentiate between reality and a very vivid, immersive, imagined experience. Since your subconscious mind believes the desired reality has become true, and you've felt very real emotions associated with the realization of this new life, metaphysically you were at least briefly in direct contact with the frequency that will harmonize with and attract your desired reality into your actual, physical life.
One very popular visualization exercise is a meditation to manifest money.
How to Manifest Money
Photo by Alexander Mils on Unsplash
- Get into a comfortable position in a comfortable place where you are certain you will not be distracted by anything or anyone.
- Take a few deep breaths, or even perform the pranayama described above.
- Have a crystal clear idea of what you want to achieve and what your reality would look like if you had already attained this goal.
- Involve every sense. Think of what you would see at this moment that you had begun to live your dream. What scents would you notice? Are you sitting in a chair or standing? Do you feel any textures? Is it a warm place or a cool one? What do you hear in this place at this time in this ideal reality? Is there a flavor associated with this moment?
- Experience with all the senses your desired reality so deeply and vividly that it literally feels like you are right there in that moment and actually living that life. If you're doing this well enough, you may forget that you were meditating in the first place and you may not realize that this is all envisioned until you snap out of it.
- Feel the emotions that you would feel if you were living in this reality where this desired goal has been met. The emotions are very important. Feel those emotions powerfully.
- Linger in this ideal moment of time for as long as you want.
- When you're ready to come back to your old reality, slowly envision yourself going back through the timeline that got you to that achievement, step by step, until you're back where you were before you closed your eyes for this meditation.
- Slowly wake up from your dream. Take note of all the steps you had to take to go back from the desired reality to the life that you're currently living.
- From here, it helps to make a very detailed plan on how you will get to that reality. And, the harmonization and the vibrations are already working to attract opportunities toward you.
Manifestation meditation can be done for absolutely anything, including finding love. Now that you've gotten an idea of how to do a good visualization and even use visualization to perform manifestation, there's another very important concept: raising your vibration.
All around the world, many skilled practitioners of meditation agree that certain thoughts and emotions carry very high and beneficial vibrations. Most agree that the vibration of love is the beginning point at which our vibrations are high enough to improve our reality. Christie Marie Sheldon is an author known for a concept she likes to talk about called "love or above." The idea of love or above is that if you are feeling the energy of love or a higher vibration then you are experiencing high vibrations and attracting to you a life that harmonizes with that very desirable frequency.
I, myself, have directly experienced profound and desirable improvements in my own reality after I began to focus on improving my own vibrations. As a Qigong instructor, life coach, and Reiki healer, I have seen many of my clients who were struggling with low vibration realities dramatically improve their situations after joining me for some high-vibration meditations.
How to Raise your Vibrations
Photo by Allef Vinicius on Unsplash
In order to raise your vibrations, there are at least a few different meditation techniques that could be used. Whatever technique you choose, it should be one that makes you feel love, joy, or a higher vibration. To get an idea of which emotions vibrate at which levels, check out this chart that I found at Blisspot.com.
One practice that may help you to vibrate at the frequency of love is the loving kindness meditation. To perform this technique, you essentially start off just like the other exercises described in this post: get comfortable, take some deep breaths, then imagine yourself receiving and/or sending loving and kind intentions. This can be accompanied by affirmations acknowledging all the good qualities about yourself. You can choose a person in your reality, think about them, and note all the good qualities about them. You can wish well for this person and even envision the good wishes you have for them coming true.
I found a good explanation of how loving kindness meditation can be done at verywellmind.com.
The World of Meditation
Photo by Greg Rakozy on Unsplash
In this post, I've described in a basic way a few different forms of meditation so that you may see how diverse and powerful the world of meditation is. At the top, I've listed 16 types of meditation, and that list is nowhere near comprehensive.
In the book, The Code of the Extraordinary Mind, Vishen Lakhiani describes a specific set of contemplative exercises that you could practice to "bend reality." Reading Vishen's book was one of the best experiences of my journey as I explored the concept of meditation. I encourage you to check out this book for yourself and see how the practices described in its text can help you to bend reality to your liking.
As always, I hope this post has helped you. Please leave a comment and subscribe to my email list and push notifications to be in the know of new opportunities I've found for my readers and to keep up to date on what is happening at DonnyPodcast.com.
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