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Mindfulness & Meditation Training

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Beginning meditation instructions

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Beginner Meditation Instructions

One of the best things about mindfulness meditation is that it is incredibly easy to learn.  It is an extremely simple process that anyone (and I mean anyone) can do.  The first and most important instruction is to remember that…..

You don’t have to stop your thoughts:

You don’t have to stop your thoughts!

Yes!  That’s right. It is absolutely fine for your mind to be going haywire, thinking, planning, dreaming, agonising whilst you are meditating.  Of course it is nice if our mind does quieten down for a bit and if it doesn’t it really is no problem.

Having a busy mind does not mean you are not meditating.  It just means you have a busy mind.  Welcome to your head!  Mine is like that often as is most human beings.  It’s just normally when we are distracted by our environment so we don’t notice it.

Many people think they can’t meditate simply because they think meditating means stopping their thoughts.  It doesn’t.  I have been meditating for over 10 years and I have never had a teacher EVER define meditation as stopping one’s thoughts.  What’s more I don’t know anyone who ever has had a meditation session without any thoughts (teachers included).  Having thoughts does not in any way prevent meditation taking place or lessen the benefits of meditation.

Right, having got that out of the way.  Here are the simple meditation instructions!

How to meditate:

1. Find a place in your house where you will be undisturbed for at least 20 minutes

2. In that room find a chair or sit on a meditation stool or cushion if you have one.

A chair is just as effective and good as sitting on the floor.  Don’t believe anyone who says otherwise.  Meditation is meditation and it really doesn’t matter whether you are sitting, standing or flying an aeroplane.  Simply choose whatever is most comfortable for you.

3. Adopt a posture that is comfortable, easy with your back erect.

4. Close your eyes or soften your gaze with your eyes open.

5. Draw your attention to feel your physical body.  Focus your attention on the physical sensation of sitting.  It can be particularly useful to focus on an area of your body where there is pressure (such as your feet on the ground or your bottom on the chair/cushion)

6. Notice what happens.  Notice the physical sensations of sitting.  Notice if you feel relaxed, uptight, tense, open, warm, hot etc.  Notice how the sensations may change and what the new sensations feel like.

7. After a period of time, move your attention to focus on your breath.  Notice the sensation of breathing in and breathing out.  Follow the process of breathing with your attention.  Follow each in breath and each out breath.  This is your ‘meditation object’.  Your meditation object is the point that you return to with your awareness.  The point that you intend to focus on.

If you find it difficult to focus on your breath, simply widen your awareness to feel the physical sensations of the body again and use that as your mediation object

7. If you want something to do with your mind, you might want to start softly counting with each in breath and outbreath.  So count from 1 to 9 and then from 9 to 1 with each breath

8. If you start to get distracted – you start planning, worrying, remembering things that have happened, just notice this and bring your attention back to your body or your breathing.  Return to your meditation object.

9. Rinse and repeat!  Carry on being aware, noticing what is happening and returning to either your physical body or your breath if you get distracted.

10.  Finally notice, notice, notice!  Notice how you feel, how your body feels.  When you get distracted notice that.  When you are undistracted notice that.  If you get frustrated notice that!  If you are finding it difficult…notice that.  If you are finding it easy…notice that!

Meditation is an awareness practice.  Your job is to simply be aware, to notice what is going on in your body, in your mind, in your state.  That is all.

How long to sit for:

I recommend sitting for a period of at least 20 minutes.

More information and helpful stuff

Meditation Improves the Immune System Research Shows

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There is already plenty of well researched, scientific evidence showing significant physical and psychological benefits of meditation.  UK newspaper, The Telegraph reports on one of the latest…

Meditation improves the immune system, reduces blood pressure and even sharpens the mind, according to research.

Now scientists have discovered that regular meditation appears to actually increase the size of the brain Photo: GETTY

The practice – an essential part of Buddhist and Indian Yoga traditions – has entered the mainstream as people try to find ways to combat stress and improve their quality of life.

Now new research suggests that mindfulness meditation can have benefits for health and performance, including improved immune function, reduced blood pressure and enhanced cognitive function.

The study, published in the latest issue of the journal Perspectives on Psychological Science, draws on existing scientific literature to attempt to explain the positive effects.

The goal of this work, according to author Britta Hazel, of Justus Liebig University and Harvard Medical School, is to “unveil the conceptual and mechanistic complexity of mindfulness, providing the big picture by arranging many findings like the pieces of a mosaic.”

The authors specifically identify four key components of “mindfulness” – the state of meditation – that may account for its effects: attention regulation, body awareness, emotion regulation, and sense of self. Together, these help us deal with the effects of stress. Read More…

 

What is Mindfulness?

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Mindfulness means awareness

Mindfulness is “paying attention in a particular way; On purpose, in the present moment, and non-judgementally.” – Jon Kabat Zinn (Professor of Medicine Emeritus Stress Reduction Clinic and the Centre for Mindfulness in Medicine).

Instead of being caught up in worrying about the past or the future, mindfulness enables you to have a greater focus on the here and now.     Mindfulness practices increase our awareness of our moment to moment experience.  We learn to pay attention to our thoughts, feelings, physical sensations, emotional state as well as our environment.

Mindfulness is becoming mainstream and popular

Because of it’s effectiveness, scientific credibility and simplicity mindfulness is becoming more and more popular as a practice.  This is both in the personal world and in the business world.

Who uses mindfulness?

  • Everyday people:
    • wanting to de-stress
    • wanting to increase their self awareness
    • wanting to sleep better
    • wanting to feel better
    • wanting to relieve symptoms of depression
    • wanting to know themselves better and more deeply
  • Coaches, therapists, mental health workers:
    • wanting to develop more practices to assist their own work
    • wanting to be able to share mindfulness practices to assist their clients
  • Business people, leaders and those in larger organisations:
    • Wanting to become more effective leaders
    • Wanting to increase their emotional intelligence
    • Wanting to enhance their creativity
    • Wanting to learn more effective ways to coach and support staff

More information and articles on the benefits of meditation