Meditation Amsterdam - What is a good meditation to start with?
In today's Amsterdam Meditation blog we'll discuss good methods to start your meditation practice.
There is a very diverse number of meditation techniques out there today and it's easy to get a bit confused among all the choices. It's also easy to pick one that might not be right for you at the start of your exploration on the topic, and to get stuck in trying to make it work when a different method might be more handy for you.
One point to clarify before going further is that in principle, anything can be a meditation, when performed with a meditative attitude and following the principles of meditation. However, for most of us, the mind is not clear enough to sustain attention and mindfulness while performing daily chores, so it might be better to follow the more traditional meditation methods to start with.
Another thing to understand is that no method is superior to other. Any meditation method can produce excellent progress and can go very deep in when practiced by a seasoned meditator. There's been for example a great deal of hype around transcendental meditation (TM), but this is just a method.
Just as with art and relationships, in meditation you have to try different palettes and experiment. See what fits to your lifestyle, the way your mind works. You want to find a method that not only facilitates going into meditative states, but which also encourages you to keep practicing as much and as frequently as possible.
An example of this last point is something I've started to do lately, which is to meditate, sometimes up to one hour before I get out of bed. I noticed that my body appreciates staying in bed longer between the sheets and there's ZERO resistance in me against doing so.
I then use that zero resistance to freely meditate for long periods of time. Very often resistance to sitting and meditating is the biggest obstacle, and this is one way I've discovered to get around it.
So let go of stereotypical images of what meditation should look like, and find ways to start, and stay in the practice.
Now as to the best methods to start with I thought it would be good to just mention a couple, based on my experience and also based on the typical challenges that you face when you start.
One great method I've been practicing as I go to sleep is the body scan. This one works well for a few reasons. One of them is that it feels pleasant, you can start by scanning your big toes and work your way up to the crown of your head.
When we begin meditating we're not very well aware of our thoughts and they tend to distract us tremendously. With the body scan we come back to awareness and to the now. In general it is good at the start, to stick to methods that deal with gross physical sensations rather than subtle experiences of the mind.
Another great advantage of this method is that it begins to ground us in our body, which is in principle something we should preserve throughout the day. The more you meditate on body awareness, the more present and grounded you will start to feel on your daily life.
The second method I wanted to share was the walking meditation. In this method you go out for a walk, either early morning or in the evening when things have quite down. But this is not your regular walk when you ponder on life and your current worries. You will focus on the feelings in your body, your surroundings and the movements of your breath.
One of the reasons I find this method interesting is that it mixes a meditative attitude, with a daily activity. This is what you want to develop in the end, which is to live in meditation. Very often people make a distinction between their attitude on the cushion versus daily life. But in this method you are mixing the two. You are teaching yourself that when you're going for a walk, the meaning and the objective of your life in that moment is to walk, nothing else.
It teaches you to act in this manner: right now I'm walking so that's what I do. I'm not thinking of something else, or being somewhere else. I'm here, I'm now, I'm waking and that is all there is to it. You experience it fully.
The other great advantage of walking meditations is that they get around the problem of dullness and falling asleep on the cushion, which happen very often at the start. The mind is so used to being stimulated to stay awake, that when you sit with no (mental) objective, the mind shuts down and you start to fight long and arduous battles to avoid falling asleep.
The walking meditation gives you vitality, fresh air and when you come back you may even find that you can sit and meditate for a few extra minutes with lots of clarity.
Finally, we cannot miss the all time classic method, which is meditating on the breath. This is a kind of body scan and it consists of monitoring the inward and outward movements of the breath in the body. It gives the mind a place to rest and has been used as the quintessential method of meditation by countless traditions.
The breath is the only bodily function that is both automatic but can also be controlled. It is a two way communication highway between our conscious self and our primitive mind. As you will find, meditating on the breath is both helpful and challenging since it is very hard to observe the breath without controlling it.
We might go deeper into these methods in future articles, but for now, hope this gives you some inspiration to start.
Namaste
Pablo
www.meditationamsterdam.com
There is a very diverse number of meditation techniques out there today and it's easy to get a bit confused among all the choices. It's also easy to pick one that might not be right for you at the start of your exploration on the topic, and to get stuck in trying to make it work when a different method might be more handy for you.
One point to clarify before going further is that in principle, anything can be a meditation, when performed with a meditative attitude and following the principles of meditation. However, for most of us, the mind is not clear enough to sustain attention and mindfulness while performing daily chores, so it might be better to follow the more traditional meditation methods to start with.
Another thing to understand is that no method is superior to other. Any meditation method can produce excellent progress and can go very deep in when practiced by a seasoned meditator. There's been for example a great deal of hype around transcendental meditation (TM), but this is just a method.
Just as with art and relationships, in meditation you have to try different palettes and experiment. See what fits to your lifestyle, the way your mind works. You want to find a method that not only facilitates going into meditative states, but which also encourages you to keep practicing as much and as frequently as possible.
An example of this last point is something I've started to do lately, which is to meditate, sometimes up to one hour before I get out of bed. I noticed that my body appreciates staying in bed longer between the sheets and there's ZERO resistance in me against doing so.
I then use that zero resistance to freely meditate for long periods of time. Very often resistance to sitting and meditating is the biggest obstacle, and this is one way I've discovered to get around it.
So let go of stereotypical images of what meditation should look like, and find ways to start, and stay in the practice.
Now as to the best methods to start with I thought it would be good to just mention a couple, based on my experience and also based on the typical challenges that you face when you start.
One great method I've been practicing as I go to sleep is the body scan. This one works well for a few reasons. One of them is that it feels pleasant, you can start by scanning your big toes and work your way up to the crown of your head.
When we begin meditating we're not very well aware of our thoughts and they tend to distract us tremendously. With the body scan we come back to awareness and to the now. In general it is good at the start, to stick to methods that deal with gross physical sensations rather than subtle experiences of the mind.
Another great advantage of this method is that it begins to ground us in our body, which is in principle something we should preserve throughout the day. The more you meditate on body awareness, the more present and grounded you will start to feel on your daily life.
The second method I wanted to share was the walking meditation. In this method you go out for a walk, either early morning or in the evening when things have quite down. But this is not your regular walk when you ponder on life and your current worries. You will focus on the feelings in your body, your surroundings and the movements of your breath.
One of the reasons I find this method interesting is that it mixes a meditative attitude, with a daily activity. This is what you want to develop in the end, which is to live in meditation. Very often people make a distinction between their attitude on the cushion versus daily life. But in this method you are mixing the two. You are teaching yourself that when you're going for a walk, the meaning and the objective of your life in that moment is to walk, nothing else.
It teaches you to act in this manner: right now I'm walking so that's what I do. I'm not thinking of something else, or being somewhere else. I'm here, I'm now, I'm waking and that is all there is to it. You experience it fully.
The other great advantage of walking meditations is that they get around the problem of dullness and falling asleep on the cushion, which happen very often at the start. The mind is so used to being stimulated to stay awake, that when you sit with no (mental) objective, the mind shuts down and you start to fight long and arduous battles to avoid falling asleep.
The walking meditation gives you vitality, fresh air and when you come back you may even find that you can sit and meditate for a few extra minutes with lots of clarity.
Finally, we cannot miss the all time classic method, which is meditating on the breath. This is a kind of body scan and it consists of monitoring the inward and outward movements of the breath in the body. It gives the mind a place to rest and has been used as the quintessential method of meditation by countless traditions.
The breath is the only bodily function that is both automatic but can also be controlled. It is a two way communication highway between our conscious self and our primitive mind. As you will find, meditating on the breath is both helpful and challenging since it is very hard to observe the breath without controlling it.
We might go deeper into these methods in future articles, but for now, hope this gives you some inspiration to start.
Namaste
Pablo
www.meditationamsterdam.com
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