How To Improve Your Meditation

The simple secret to how to improve your meditation is..time. Meditation, or dhyana, is the uninterrupted flow of concentration. In our busy lives finding one thing to concentrate on and turning the mind inward can sometimes feel like a task or chore. So we focus on the physical body but asanas, or postures, are just one of the eight limbs of Yoga. When is it ever good to practice just 1/8th of something? We wouldn’t fill just 1/8th of an ice tray, or weed 1/8th of the garden. Meditation, turning the gaze inward, is an excellent addition to any asana practice, but it can seem very overwhelming to start. The first thing to remember is to be easy on yourself. Meditation is part of a 5,000 year old philosophy so don’t expect yourself to become a master overnight.

For many people, simply sitting down and telling the mind to concentrate on not thinking is counter productive. They call it the “monkey mind” because its natural tendency is to swing from subject subject. Think of all the random thoughts we have in one day. Next time you have a seemingly random thought that seems to come from nowhere,  stop and try to find the trail of thinking that led you there. Nothing is really unrelatedin terms of how our minds work. We can’t expect to rewire the millions of neural connections that have been building and solidifying over our lifetime in a short period of time. So instead of forcing the mind, ease the mind. I will lay out a few easy steps for you to add into your own lifestyle and hopefully help improve your meditation practice.

Preparing the body can be a great way to help begin to ease the mind into meditation. Sitting in stillness is extremely difficult so before you sit down move the body around. Maybe it’s jumping jacks, maybe you swing your arms or maybe you do 3-5 sun salutations.

Choose a specific spot. Don’t let the spot that you choose for meditation be your couch where last night you ate ice cream and watched an episode of Breaking Bad. New practice=new location. Your body remembers things that the mind sometimes forgets and you don’t want to be holding on stress or anxiety from anything else when you begin your practice. This space should feel comfortable and relaxing to you, a space that can be treated with respect without interruption. Don’t feel like you need to rent out the space next door to create a meditation room, but giving yourself a special corner of any room with a candle and a pillow can be a really comforting touch. We make space in our lives for the things that we give value and importance. If you want to improve your meditation, or begin meditating for that matter, treat it with the same respect that you treat other things in your life.

Now you have your have your time, you’ve moved your body and you’ve set aside a space. Now comes the hard part. If we add the word guided infront of meditation it can sometimes feel a little more accessible. Guided meditation can be a great way to ease yourself into practicing dhyana. And the great news about guided meditation? You don’t need someone else to guide you. A guided meditation practice could be either choosing an image to hold in the mind when the eyes are closed, staring at a fixed point, repeating a mantra or using a mala.  One of my personal favorites is staring at a candle flame or smoke rising from incense. If you prefer to keep the eyes closed find an image, color or shape that you can hold in the mind’s eye.

I started my own personal practice with giving myself just 5 minutes of stillness to start with. If it’s your first time meditating maybe you start with just 2 or 3. Creating unrealistic expectations or goals for yourself and your practice will just make it harder to follow through. Once you set the timer commit to your space for the entire time. Maybe it’s not the easiest day to continuously meditate but that doesn’t mean you should stop the timer and leave. Give yourself that time, even if it’s just to sit.

Finally remember there are good days and bad days. As Paulo Lugari says “there is nothing more unstable than trying to cling to stability”. The days where 5 minutes feels like an hour just means than sometime in the future 5 minutes will feel like 30 seconds. Be patient and enjoy the journey into your meditation practice!