Meditation

Meditation. Isn’t that something Buddhist monks do? They sit at the tops of mountains and harness the energy of the universe, right? Sounds cool.

***

Today, I’m keeping up on the theme of mental well-being. In this post, I’ll be focusing on the habit of meditation.

What is meditation?

Let’s leave the mental images of Shaolin monks aside for now. (I’ll teach you how to harness the energy of the universe in another article.)

Try this with me. Find somewhere that you won’t be distracted and take a seat. Close your eyes and focus on your breathing.

…

And that’s it, you’re meditating. It’s a bit anti-climactic isn’t it?

You’ll find that it might be difficult to focus on one thing for a long time. Thoughts will come into your mind and that’s okay. When you realize that you’ve been distracted, bring the attention back to the breathe.

There was a video that I would put in place of this paragraph that explains this topic really well but unfortunately it’s been taken off of YouTube. I’ll try my best to explain it’s message:

This video was guided meditation explaining the concept of the ‘lion mind’.

Picture this: You’re in an empty room, you’re sitting in a chair and opposite you there is a dog. Now, the dog is very interested in you because you have a bone in your hand. You wave the bone around and the dog’s eyes follow. You throw the bone into the corner of the room and what do you think the dog does? The dog goes chasing after it.

Now, picture another scenario: Instead of a dog, there is great big lion, lying down. He’s also looking at you. He sees the bone in your hand but he’s focused on you, because you’re a big bag of bones! You throw the bone into the corner of the room. What do you think the lion does? The lion looks at the bone, and then brings his attention back onto you.

Now, let’s come back to reality. That bone is like all the distracting thoughts in our mind. Meditation is all about being like that lion rather than that dog - a practice of keeping focused and present to the moment.

I want to mention: this is only one way to meditate. There are many other ways to go about it but this is the one I have the most experience with. Do some research and see what suits you.

Why meditate?

In the words of Laurie Santos: “A wandering mind is an unhappy mind. Through the process of meditation, we can curb our mind wandering. We can just be in the present moment. Meditation also has a host of other positive benefits. It can increase our mood, and it can do so in just a couple of weeks. It also decreases our stress, and it can even boost our grey matter.”

In my experience, the main benefit to meditation is you’re ability to remain present to the moment. That may seem like an arbitrary skill to try and build but for me it has definitely increased the happiness that I can squeeze out of my day to day. It can change a dull moment into a golden memory.

Advice

There are many apps that will provide a guided meditation. ‘Headspace’ is one that I’ve used and it is an excellent app. You can find guided meditation videos on YouTube. Many people just set a timer for how long they want to meditate for.

Personally, I like to take a chair and face a blank wall. Eyes open or closed and focusing on my breathe. I find guided meditation easier but I find better results when I just set a timer.

Take baby-steps with this. If you can do 30 seconds of meditation every day, that is a tremendous amount better than zero. Try to build it from there.

The longest I ever go for on a regular basis is 10 minutes. I find meditation quite difficult to fit in, I always would rather do something else. But when I do meditate, I never regret it. I hope to build up to 20 mins some day.

Notes

A lot of the information in this article is from an online course by Laurie R. Santos at Yale University. It’s called “The Science of Well-Being” and if you’re interested in what I’m talking about I would highly recommend you go check it out. It’s entirely free and full of value. Link here. If you’ve never taken an online course before and you’re doubting its efficacy, I’d compare it to reading a book except you have someone asking you questions along the way so that you actually remember what you’re reading. Give it a go, you won’t regret it!