The Beginners Guide to Meditation

What is meditation? Why does it matter?

Meditation can make your life better, but what is it exactly? People use the word “meditation” to mean many things. The essence of true meditation at the beginner level is to clear the mind of incessant thinking yet there are many pathways, practices and techniques that calm the mind. Most meditation techniques begin with focusing your attention on something like your breath, a candle flame, your heart, the stillness of your body etc. Where you focus attention matters. Because where attention goes, energy flows. Your attention becomes a creative force in your life, it plays a role in creating your reality. As you begin to develop higher self awareness and agency over your attention, you’ll be able to consciously choose to focus your attention throughout the day in ways that truly benefit your life.

Let’s say you choose to focus on your breath as a beginning meditation practice. What will likely happen is that you’ll be able to maintain focus on your breath for a few moments, and then your mind will get distracted and start having thoughts, this is what an the mind does. And then you simply bring your attention back to your breath. And you do this over and over again during your meditation. Many people feel like they aren’t “doing it right” or that they are “bad at meditation” but this IS the practice, this IS the pathway. A “successful” meditation is not necessarily free of a wandering mind, but its the consistent recognizing that your mind is wandering and then bringing it back to the present point of focus.

Simply recognizing that your attention has wandered and bringing it back to focus is the building of the mind muscle. If you do this over and over again in meditation practice, eventually you’ll develop awareness of what your mind does during the day. You’ll begin to have greater agency over your attention and focus. And because your thoughts create your reality, this is a key to creating a life you want to live.