Meditation for Beginners (Week 2) – Focused Meditation

This post is part of a series of posts on meditation for beginners. The Introduction contains links to the entire series. I recommend you read the series in order if you want to start meditating.

Last week, you selected a meditation location and posture. Then you practiced your posture a few times. Jay of Porsidan followed last week’s tutorial and wrote about his experiences on his blog.

This week, you’re going to meditate using focused meditation. The goal is to recognize and begin to slow down your Monkey Mind. You may be unaware of your constant stream of thoughts. Your mind never shuts up! When you start meditating, you’ll feel overwhelmed by your thoughts, but focused meditation helps you cope and train your mind.

Counting Your Breath

During focused meditation, you pay attention to your breath. You could use almost anything as the focus object, but breath is traditionally used because it’s always available.

There are two methods for focusing on your breath. First, you could sense the air moving in and out around the nostrils of your nose and the top of your lip. If you close your eyes and pay attention to your breath, you can feel the air moving now. Try it. Second, you can pay attention to your chest and stomach moving in and out. I use the first method, but choose whatever feels comfortable.

You count your breath from one to ten and then start over:

• in breath (feel your breath moving into your body and say the word “in” silently to yourself)…out breath (feel your breath moving out and say the word “out” silently to yourself)…one (say silently to yourself)
• in…out…two
• in…out…three
• in…out…four
• in…out…five
• in…out…six
• in…out…seven
• in…out…eight
• in…out…nine
• in…out…ten
• in…out…one (starting over)
• in…out…two
• and so on

This cycle continues during your entire meditation. Don’t try to alter your normal breathing pattern — your breathing should be as deep/shallow, and slow/fast as it normally is.

Your eyes can be open or closed. If your eyes are open, keep them about half open and focus on a point about one yard/meter in front of you. When your eyes wonder from your focus point, bring your focus gently back as you become aware. I’ve meditated with my eyes open and closed, but I prefer my eyes closed. If I’m drowsy, I meditate with my eyes open to prevent me from falling asleep.

Pay attention to how you come out of meditation. Do it slowly and deliberately. You may find that you’re more mindful for a short period of time.

But What About Your Thoughts?

The above counting cycle represents the ideal and, like many things in life, things are often less than ideal. While you try to count your breath, your Monkey Mind is going to jump all over the place. You may have thoughts about your backache, a barking dog, your boss’ mean comment, what it’s like to sleep with your favorite actor/actress, how good a donut would taste, and so on.

A typical counting sequence might go like this:

• in…out…one
• in…out…two [Thought: It’s hot in here!]
• in…out…three
• in…out…four [This meditation stuff feels stupid. Am I doing this right?]
• in…out…five [What did Lucy mean when she said “You did an OK job today.” Does that mean I just did an average job or a really good job? Maybe I can ask her tomorrow. Why doesn’t she just say what she means? She makes me crazy. That was a thought. What breath was I on?
• in…out…one (starting over)
• in…out…two [What should I have for lunch today?]
• in…out…three
• and so on

Whatever thought arises, release the thought and continue counting. Don’t fight or repress the thought. Just let the thought float by like a leaf floating on a slow moving river.

Some thoughts, like the thought in breath five above, you’ll grasp. The thought is just too juicy to let go so you grab the thought and run with it. When you inevitably do this and you lose count, just label what your were thinking as “thought”, and start counting from one again. No big deal.

Other thoughts will be unpleasant. You’ll want to push them away as fast as you can. Again, don’t react to the thought. Just let it go by at its own pace. It’ll be gone soon enough.

You may also feel physical discomfort while you meditate and you’ll want to move or squirm. Instead of immediately moving, pay attention to the pain for awhile. Lean into it. What does it feel like? Try to relax a little around the pain. A little pain can help you focus, but meditation is not a masochistic exercise. If your pain becomes too intense, feel free to squirm or move. Only you can judge when it’s time to move.

When I first started meditating, I experimented with many different postures to reduce pain. I eventually discovered three things:

1. Most meditation postures are balance poses. Your trying to find the place where your spine is balanced and the muscles have the least amount strain.
2. You make small adjustments to your posture forever. Your body evolves as you continue to meditate and better understand how to respond. It took me eight months to get good at this.
3. I had less pain when I surrendered myself to the pain. In other words, I stopped fighting the pain and just merged with it. This significantly reduced my pain experience. This is precisely how meditation is used in chronic pain management.

It’s important you don’t judge yourself about having thoughts or losing count. This happens no matter how long you practice meditation.  When you lose count, be kind to yourself and GENTLY bring your mind back to your breath. Lighten up and see a little humor in your Monkey Mind. It’s kind of funny seeing all this junk floating around in your head.

You’ll find some days are easier to meditate than others. If you’ve had a stressful day, your Monkey Mind will hop faster than a rabbit on speed. It doesn’t matter and you should just keep meditating. Don’t judge or worry about how “well” things are going. This isn’t a contest. There’s a saying in meditation – any sitting is a good sitting.

How Long Should You Meditate?

Don’t get hung up about how long to meditate. You can probably benefit in as little as ten minutes per day.

How long you meditate is not as important as consistency. You must meditate everyday to get the maximum benefits. If you normally meditate twenty minutes, but you don’t have the time for twenty minutes today, meditate for five or ten minutes. Always do something.

When I first started, there were times when I dragged myself to meditation. I really didn’t want to do it, but I forced myself anyway. After a few months, I usually looked forward to it. My attitude changed when I experienced some of the benefits I described last week.

The quality of your meditation is also important. You must make the right effort to get any benefit. Just sitting and daydreaming doesn’t help. Try to approach meditation very seriously – practice like your hair is on fire!

Think of meditation as exercise. You don’t get much benefit from doing physical exercise a few time per month or even a couple times per week. You benefit most if you exercise a little everyday. Also, you have to make a real effort in order to improve in exercise. Just going through the motions does no good.

Free Meditation Timers

You need a meditation timer so you know when to stop. A clock or watch doesn’t work because you must keep checking the time to see if you’re done. I used a mechanical kitchen timer when I started, but I often jumped when I heard the loud DING. This is not the best way to finish meditation.

Today, I utilize a couple of different free timers that use the traditional bells to begin (one bell) and end (three bells) meditation:

1. Equanimity Project meditation timer: This is an online timer that allows you to set a delay before your meditation begins so you have time to get into your posture and settle yourself.
2. MP3 timers: These are a set of MP3 files of various lengths. You can either play these timers online or download them to your MP3 player.

This Week’s Assignment

Your assignment this week is to do focused meditation everyday. Start out with five minutes of meditation per day and work up to ten minutes. If you want to, you can even try fifteen minutes. But remember, the time is less important than the consistency and quality of your meditation.

It’s important to me that you learn to meditate. Please leave a comment or send a confidential email (roger at acontentlife.com) with any questions, problems, or observations. I’m here to help.

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Tags: Habits, Meditation