Hello and welcome to this introduction to meditation.
In this introduction i want to explain how to meditate,
What meditation is and isn't,
And do a small guided meditation.
Let's start off with the posture.
You can meditate in different ways.
You can lay down if you prefer to lay down or you can even stand up.
Most people like to sit.
For a seated meditation make sure the spine is erect.
You can still support your spine with the back of a chair or even the couch.
Your hands can be put on your lap and you can close your eyes.
Now i want to talk about what meditation isn't.
A lot of people have the idea that meditation is about stopping thoughts or that they can only meditate when you don't have any thoughts.
That's not the case at all.
Meditation is about exploring and understanding your mind.
Mind wandering and thoughts are to be expected.
That's completely normal.
Each time that you notice that you're thinking that is the practice.
The practice is not to control experience but it is to train to be aware of what's happening in your mind.
So if there's one thing i want to teach with this practice is that you need to be kind to yourself when you realize you're thinking.
Because that is the practice and with kindness you will teach the mind to be more aware of what is actually happening.
And from there on we can see the relationship that we have with our thoughts and start to change this relationship.
What do we then actually do during meditation?
Well i'd like to start off with doing a concentration meditation.
I don't really like the word concentration meditation.
I prefer the term centering because concentration can mean that people start to hyper focus on something.
So centering might be a better term here.
And centering means we'd want to put something in the center of our experience without losing track of the rest of our experience.
So in this case we want to put the breath in the center of our experience and try to be aware of it as much as possible.
But we still want to be aware of physical sensations,
Sounds,
Light,
Those kind of things.
To help you concentrate and center in the breath it's easier to pay attention to the nice qualities of the breath.
So with the in-breath you want to focus on all the nice qualities of the in-breath such as the niceness of breathing in,
The energetic quality,
The refreshing quality of the in-breath.
And you do a similar thing for the out-breath.
In this case you can pay attention to the relaxing qualities and with each out-breath you can feel your body getting more relaxed.
Paying attention to these qualities makes it so much easier to center and concentrate on the breath.
And when you try to center or concentrate on the breath you will get distracted.
But each time you get distracted just take a moment to do nothing and actually be kind to yourself in that moment because this is the practice.
Once you have done that just gently return back to the breath.
And we keep doing this over and over again.
Maybe at some point the mind gets more concentrated but that's not in our control.
Only this part is in our control and that is the whole practice.
So with all this in mind let's start off with a six minute guided meditation practice.
Start off in the posture of your preference.
So lay down,
Sit up or even stand up and close your eyes.
Before we start concentrating or centering on the breath just take a moment to center right here and now by feeling the body.
Feel what the body feels like when you're sitting right now.
Maybe you can feel your butt touching the chair or your feet touching the ground.
Maybe you can even hear sounds around you,
Noises outside,
Maybe even noises inside the house.
Just ground yourself in the experience.
And now that you've grounded yourself we start to put our focus gently on the breath.
By the breath i mean any sensations related to the breath.
This can be the physical sensations at the nose or the sensations of the breath in the body.
And as you concentrate and center in the breath pay attention to its positive qualities.
So pay attention to how nice it is to breathe in,
How refreshing it is or energetic.
And when you breathe out you can notice its calm qualities,
Its relaxing qualities.
And just enjoy these qualities of the breath.
This might help you center more easily in the breath.
Just try to focus and center yourself in the easiest sensations that you can find related to the breath.
You still want to be aware of other things happening around you such as sensations in the body or sounds.
So don't hyper focus.
And as you will notice you will get distracted.
But that is completely fine and that is part of the practice.
So when you notice that you start to think just take a moment to do nothing.
Be kind to yourself because this is the practice.
Once you've done that gently return back to the breath.
And we keep doing this practice of just gently returning back to the breath over and over again.
That is the whole practice of meditation.
When you try to concentrate on the breath also notice all the positive feelings associated with it.
Such as the relaxation that it might give or even the pleasure of breathing.
All these positive elements might help the mind to center it more easily on the breath.
Now you can slowly open your eyes again and come out of the meditation.
Give yourself some gratitude for doing this practice.
I hope you enjoyed this introduction to meditation and have a great rest of the day.
