Meditation is a simple practice available to all, which can reduce stress, increase calmness and clarity and promote happiness. Learning how to meditate is straightforward, and the benefits can come quickly. Here, we offer basic tips to get you started on a path toward greater equanimity, acceptance, and joy. Take a deep breath, and get ready to relax.

Unless you’ve been living under a rock for the last 10 years or therefore, you’ve most likely noticed that ‘deep breathing’ can be helpful.

We’ll proceed into some of those crucial benefits in a moment, but first let’s acknowledge the robe-wearing, omm chanting, incense burning elephant in the room. Meditation has a long history and has acquired some weird cultural baggage. If you’d like to avoid all that (while still getting the benefits), you are in the right place. Think of meditation as a mental exercise. We all recognize that training the body with physical exercise has massive benefits, the same is true for the mind.

In this how-to meditate guide, we’ll give you a simple, clear, no-BS guide to meditation techniques for beginners.

How to Meditate
Here are the basics of mindfulness meditation in 3 simple steps:

Sit comfortably and close your eyes.

Focus your full attention on the feeling of your breath coming in and going out. Choose a place – nasal area, upper body, stomach – and simply experience the inhale and exhale.

The 1 / 3 stage is usually the biggie. Mainly because quickly as you try to perform this, Your brain is usually probably going to go nuts. You’re going to start thinking: What’s for lunch? Do I need a haircut? Why do celebrities marry other celebrities?

This is totally normal. All of our minds are a bit crazy. No big deal. As soon as you notice your mind has wandered, just return your attention to the breath.

That’s it. That’s how to meditate. No matter how many times you get lost, no matter how long you get lost for, as long as your are returning to the breath again and again – you are meditating.

Every time you catch yourself wandering and haul your attention back to the breath, it’s like a bicep curl for the brain. Not for nothing, it’s also a radical act; you’re breaking a lifetime’s habit of walking around in a fog of rumination and projection, and you’re in fact concentrating on what’s occurring best right now. You are building a mental muscle tissue known as ‘mindfulness’ – a structure and historic term that we’ll provide a basic, functional description for in a second.

I’ve noticed from therefore many many people who believe that they could by no means figure out how to meditate because they can’t “crystal clear the brain.” I can’t state this loudly or regularly plenty of: the objective is usually not really to like magic, clear your brain; it’s to concentrate your brain — for a few nanoseconds at a period — and each time you obtain dropped, simply begin again. [Read more…] about How to Meditate 2020