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Quick Tips to Promote a Home Meditation Practice
Here are some tips to promote a home meditation practice. In class, we’ve done a little (very little) meditation as a way of transferring into our yoga practice, away from our busy day. But such a once-a-week, 3 minute meditation hardly begins to provide the fully reaped crop of benefits. I even read recently in a magazine how meditation provided benefits for your skin!
I encourage you to devote some time and attention to developing your hope meditation practice. Meditation is one of the 8 limbs of yoga. Dhyana (the Sanskrit term) is as beneficial as the physical postures we do. To learn more about all of the limbs, click here. An early issue of nilambu notes also discussed meditation more in depth including postures to sit and why stillness is important. Check it out here.
Meditation is sometimes defined as focusing (or aiming) the mind and sustaining attention upon an object or process. So you can focus on your breath (most popular), a lit candle, an image, an icon, a flower, a word, a mantra. It can be anything, even a piece of food – just any image you hold in your mind’s eye. The key is that you come back to that focus whenever you realize that your attention has wandered off.
The purpose of the practice is not to clear your mind or to induce any particular state of mind (or state of skin!), but to bring added clarity to whatever may arise related to your current life time experiences – events, emotions, dreams etc. Foster an attitude of openness, curiosity, and try to avoid setting up expectations or judgments. It’s not about letting go, but letting be – even if what is, is anger, fear, sadness – those scary emotions we push away sometimes. Another purpose is to simply bring some silence and space to our busy lives.
Before you meditate:
- Try to create a space. It can be anywhere – the foot of your bed, a corner. You want to be relatively undisturbed. It can be temporary or permanent. Make the space appealing, so you want to go there physically.
- Silence the phone ring (including your cell phone).
- Set up how you are going to sit – you can use a bath towel, folded up into a small rectangle to support your sit bones. The key is that you are comfortable and that your back is as straight as possible.
Sitting on blankets can help elevate the spine.
- Get a clock. I often use my silenced cell phone.
- Keep a piece of paper nearby. I often find it helpful before I sit and meditate to jot down the list of things that I have to do, that are needling my brain. If I empty my mind of tasks and safely write them down, it’s easier for me to focus on my point of focus. And I keep it nearby so that if, while I am meditating, I remember something I have to do, I can write it down. This task helps ease my mind to let it go. Otherwise, sometimes I find myself worrying about remembering the thought once I am done – which disrupts the whole point of the mediation. Ideally, it shouldn’t be disturbed and that’s why I try to empty it all out onto paper before I begin.
- Determine how long you will sit before you sit. I suggest starting with a small amount of time - 3 or 5 minutes and add 2 minutes once you find yourself at ease with 5. And keep adding 2 minutes until you are up to about 20 minutes.
During your meditation:
- Move your physical position if you need to. Try to do so gently and without speed and only if necessary (the pain is calling your attention away from your designated focus too often).
- “Be with each breath as though it were your first breath and as though it were your last.” In other words, relish it.
- Don’t suppress. Meditation creates a time and a place that is quiet and so sometimes things arise in our head that otherwise there isn’t room for. Just try to bring your attention back to your focus, gently, and perhaps try to marry the two. For example, if you are feeling angry – try to feel that when you breath in, instead of pushing it away. Do the opposite of what you typically do and see what happens. If you’re feeling good, try to breath out on that and think that with each exhale you are sharing that joy.
- Remember be curious and don’t judge. Many distractions will arise. Whatever. It doesn’t matter. Just keep sitting
- Check your time, whenever you feel moved to.
- Get up and stop at the designated time.
After you meditate:
In doing some research for this email, I came across a suggestion that I really liked: Keep a log of your meditation practice. It does not have to be long – just note
- how long you sat,
- the quality of your meditative experience (fidgety, tired, calm, mind full of planning, thinking of Tom, Dick and/or Harry);
- and then write another sentence or two about the quality of your day. If you are doing this in the morning, the quality of your night.
Oh yeah, and after you meditate, congratulate yourself!
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