15 Meditation Techniques Anyone Can Learn

Useful tips

The famous Indian spiritual teacher, writer Amit Ray, who achieved perfection

in a meditation technique called Vipassana, he once said the following:

“If you want to cope with the worries of life, then live in the moment, live in the breath.”

Ray named one of the most important reasons why a modern person might want to learn some kind of meditative practice - anxiety. However, meditation will not only allow you to stop worrying about it and without it, but will also clear your mind, improve memory and attentiveness, and teach you to look at life with a more conscious and positive outlook.

We present to your attention 15 of the simplest

in mastering meditative practices.

Meditation for Beginners

Meditation for beginners refers to a wide range of practices that include techniques designed to promote relaxation, cultivate internal energy and life force (qi, prana, etc.), develop compassion and love, patience, generosity and forgiveness.

And all of these benefits are indeed a pleasant “side” effect from the practice of meditation. There are dozens of specific styles of meditation practice and many different types of meditation, many of which can be described on our resource.

Meditation is:

a relaxed state of mindfulness;
a technique that involves the mind exploring its reasons for achieving certain goals;
a practice aimed at making the mind aware of its contents without identifying itself with the content being studied.

Meditation technique with concentration on thoughts

Often people who begin to master meditation complain of an uncontrollable flow of distracting thoughts. It is difficult to concentrate on the object of meditation due to the mental confusion in the head.

In such a situation, the best way to meditate is to focus on your own thoughts. Instead of constantly switching between thoughts and the object of meditation, simply observe the flow of thought. At the same time, do not get involved in any thought, but observe as if from the outside. Notice how one thought follows another. Some thoughts appear and disappear instantly, while others constantly scroll through your head. Sometimes the flow of thoughts is very dense, and sometimes thoughts completely disappear for a while, or there are very few of them.

From today’s article, you probably already understood that during meditation you don’t need to try to influence anything. This also applies to thoughts. You are not trying to influence them. You just watch them carefully, without getting involved, as if from the outside. You will see how such observation will make the flow of thoughts much more controlled.

What's the point?

For centuries, people have been meditating in search of peace, happiness, transformation or control of their own consciousness.

If a person really feels satisfied with what he has and who he is, then more often he does not think about the need for self-knowledge.

But in most cases, people come to yoga and meditation when they feel inner hunger - a feeling that there is something bright inside, something vast and divine, but a person does not have access to it. This inner hunger comes from a spiritual need.

The purpose of meditation is to learn to control the most valuable tool of every person - the mind, attention. After all, the state of mind is the determining factor in the feeling of happiness and achievement of success in all spheres of life.

A person can have all the blessings and still feel unhappy, or, on the contrary, he can have very little, but feel in harmony with himself and the world around him.

Look around, observe yourself and your loved ones, media figures in the field of sports, politics, show business - no amount of material wealth, physical skills and resources will help a person become happy and peaceful if the way of thinking is negative and unconstructive.

Meditation will not solve your problems at home, at work, or in society. But it will give you much more - the ability to cope with any events (good and negative) occurring in your life, it will give you strength and teach you to let go of unnecessary emotions, feelings, thoughts.

Meditation helps you master your own mind by influencing one of its key aspects: attention. After all, everything that we pay our attention to exists for us.

Having mastered the ability to fix your attention only on what you need, you will be able to filter and not miss negative aspects, as well as everything that is not useful for you.

Thus, meditation for beginners is a powerful tool for working with consciousness, which will ultimately give you the opportunity to create and receive what you want.

Meditation for Health and Healing

I would like to briefly touch on the issue of the impact of meditation practice on our health. This issue has been well studied by scientists and researchers, and here are the main points that can be highlighted here:

Meditation can significantly reduce stress levels . The brains of people who practice neutral concentration are much less reactive to stressors than those who do not;
It has also been found through research on volunteers that meditation practices are very effective in treating symptoms of depression and excessive anxiety ;
Prevents respiratory diseases. Practicing concentration and attention undoubtedly helps improve immunity. With a significant reduction in the level of stress and depression, which suppress the body's protective functions, immunity can remain at a high level;
Eases pain. Scientists have concluded that just four days of meditation reduces pain by almost half. Focusing on painful sensations changes the way we perceive and respond to pain. Of course, this result requires practice;
Increases the number of nerve cells in the system (or gray matter). These cells are responsible for most of the functions of human higher nervous activity. And such cells are killed by alcohol, poor environment and stress. As they say, feel the difference and make the right choice in terms of helping your loved one.
But also such side effects as increased life expectancy, especially its active phase. Reducing blood pressure. Increasing clarity of thinking, which is especially important for older people. Increasing resistance to harmful factors.

It is clear that the above possibilities of meditation in terms of health in no way cancel physical exercise, healthy food, good sleep, normal rest, but harmoniously complement all these components of a healthy lifestyle.

Relaxation or self-hypnosis?

In fact, relaxation is just one of the main effects of meditation. On the other hand, this is one of the conditions for successful meditation.

If you are focused on practice and not tense, this will help you achieve deep realizations and allow you to work with consciousness. Therefore, when we talk about “guided meditation” (yoga nidra, body scanning for the purpose of relaxation, etc.) - this is not meditation in the proper sense of the word.

Of course, such practices are good, because... relax and help relieve stress. But meditation is a deeper practice, working with consciousness first and foremost.

Meditation is also not hypnosis (or self-hypnosis), which involves verbal suggestion to see and feel certain things. To do this, the creative capabilities of the brain are used - imagination and visualization are used.

Meditation also generally does not involve imagination or the cultivation of emotions (except in some types of practices, such as Loving-Kindness meditation).

What to do if it doesn't work?

Perhaps you can’t do it - it’s hard to concentrate, it’s hard to hold a pose? Or maybe you think that you are doing nonsense?

I can assure you that if you try to meditate and still remain in the pose for at least 10 minutes, then everything will work out for you.

Even if it’s not perfect and even if there’s no visible result yet. But it works. Knowing how to meditate is a skill. Kind of like riding a bike. It can be trained over time. The main thing is not to give up and continue.

The most effective way to learn meditation is to trust the Teacher. Friends, I want to recommend to you my mentor, with whom I once learned to meditate. This is Igor Budnikov, he himself studied meditation in monasteries in Thailand, Malaysia and Indonesia. Igor will teach you meditation with amazing simplicity and ease and help you avoid common mistakes. I invite you to take 10 short free lessons, during which you will meditate under the guidance of Igor. I'm sure you'll like it as much as I did.

However, it happens that beginners find it really difficult to meditate: they can’t sit for 10 minutes straight or it’s difficult to force themselves to practice every day. Without this, proper meditation will not work. In that case, here are some tips.

Arrange your meditation space with various attributes that will create the right mood. These could be candles, incense sticks, a special lamp or some accessories. The main thing is that you personally associate all this with meditation.
Change your practice time. If you usually practiced in the morning, then start doing it in the evening. And vice versa.
Try practicing after physical activity: fitness, yoga or jogging.
Well, the very last option, which is recommended to be used only as a last resort. Play meditative music while you practice. However, keep in mind that in this case you will not be meditating, but listening to music. But such listening will be the first successful step towards correct meditation.

Thus, it is not at all difficult for beginners to meditate at home. The meditation technique described above will help you experience the positive effects of this amazing ancient practice.

How to learn to meditate?

In modern sources you can find such a huge number of types of meditations and techniques, with descriptions of the process, effects and other things, that it is not at all necessary to look for a guru for this.

There are very serious techniques that have a great impact on the state of mind and even on physical well-being, so it is better to practice them in special centers or under the supervision of an experienced practitioner.

But most types of meditation are also suitable for beginners, which you can start practicing on your own - at home, in nature, even at work. To do this, you only need a little time and a convenient place.

You do not need to follow any strict rituals or wear special clothes to meditate. Some people prefer to prepare a place and space for meditation (using singing bowls, mantras and music, incense, images of deities and holy persons), because they see this as a necessity and help in preparing the mind for meditation - but all these actions are not essential for practices.

Of course, meditation was originally practiced to achieve spiritual enlightenment and was used in Eastern religious rites, which have certain attributes and adherence to strict rules. But, like most techniques that came from East to West, meditation today may essentially have nothing religious under it. You can practice meditation as a simple exercise for the sake of your health and well-being.

By the way, believers of absolutely any religion can practice without any conflict with their faith. In addition, today there are many methods and types of meditation, many of which were developed not by religious apologists, but, for example, by scientists and philosophers (some of these types of meditation are discussed by us in separate articles).

The benefits and harms of meditation

The benefits of meditation are obvious and seem to lie on the surface. This includes improved health, deeper self-knowledge, and the opportunity to live a conscious, long, active life. Possible understanding of your purpose and its fulfillment, which has a very beneficial effect on the psyche.

What harm can we talk about then if everything is so good. Yes, indeed, there are great benefits, and yet, there is harm that meditation can bring. It is not so obvious, and is hidden in the depths of the essence of such practices. Of course, for beginners, it is unlikely that much damage can be done if they use simple techniques and do not immediately try to do more complex ones themselves.

Let's take a little look at the other side of these practices.

According to some researchers, having initially experienced the bliss of unity with the higher “I,” a person can fall into some dependence on this process and the resulting sensations. Social life will seem empty, gray and completely insignificant to him. To him, any social phenomena and actions may seem completely meaningless. And he may behave inappropriately.

Author's experience : When I first experienced this condition, in general, everything was like that. I didn’t want to participate in social life at all, go to a monastery and continue meditating there, or anything else like that. But understanding why I am in this world, that I have certain tasks, responsibilities and meanings, it was possible, through reflection and developed will, to get out of such a perception of reality. True, not right away :) Then these sensations were not so strong, I deliberately muffled them, but the joy of communicating with higher levels really helps to move through life.

There are facts when meditation causes a range of negative experiences and it is even possible to develop full-blown psychosis. This may appear after many days of meditation retreats. Let's say, when they meditate for two or three days, several hours a day!

Then conditions can come out that would never appear in ordinary life. For example, a person’s imagination and reality will be as one. And people will seem to be his reflections, some kind of projections. Suicidal states, thoughts about the inferiority of one’s own “I”, and the illusory nature of all things may appear.

American psychologist Willoughby Britton from Brown University is researching the other side of meditation, its negative aspects. While doing an internship at a psychiatry clinic, she found two interesting people there who ended up in the clinic after many days of meditative practice.

She managed to get into a similar class, where she received similar negative experiences as those two clinic patients.

Here is a short excerpt from her memories of this: “….It seemed to me that this was not happening to me, I was delusional, or I was suffering from mental damage or a nervous breakdown. At the time, I had no understanding of why or how this happened to me—for example, why do I experience irrational fear? But then I managed to understand that all these were typical states that most people manifest at certain stages of meditation, which I managed to learn about in such an unusual way, one might say, through sad experience...”

Then, with her colleagues, the psychologist launched a useful project - “Diversity of Contemplative Experience” and then posted the first article on the website. Of the 130 study participants surveyed, almost everyone experienced “unwanted states” during meditation.

Such conditions may include: strong, almost uncontrollable emotions, a break with the physical plane, and complete loss of, for example, sensations in the body. Anxiety that grows spontaneously, a strong reaction to light, experiencing difficult events again, often strong thoughts about death. These meditation “side effects” can last for weeks or months.

By the way, practicing Buddhists are aware of these problems. They have well documented archives on these issues.

In conclusion, one thing can be said here is that moving to the deeper layers of this practice must be done slowly and, very preferably, with an experienced mentor!

“No time” to meditate?

We strongly recommend that you observe your everyday life: for one week, pay attention to all the time you spend in front of a screen (TV, phone, computer).

Write down the time you spend each day. Now set aside 20% of this time for meditation. Now do you have time? And, probably, this is at least 10 minutes a day?

In the modern pace of life, watching TV and reading social media feeds are a way for the majority of the active population to escape from everyday problems. But just try changing the way you relax a little. We are confident in the result.

You will definitely feel better after meditation sessions - more relaxed, more focused, more rested. And it's free! All this is worth a few minutes of your time.

Many people find that once they start meditating, they have even more free time. And all because attention begins to focus only on what is really necessary!

Suddenly and absolutely organically, you will discover that you have been spending a lot of time on actions, experiences, events that are not useful to you at all.

Relaxation for deep relaxation

Relaxation in meditation is complete muscle relaxation, which removes mental tension.

This technique is suitable if you are going to relieve stress with a cup of coffee, tea, alcohol or a cigarette, which does not relax your body, but, on the contrary, excites you.

Such habits cause insomnia, absent-mindedness, headaches and a constant feeling of fatigue. Give your body a break from stress by practicing intense relaxation.

Unlike morning and evening, this meditation takes place in the lying posture of Shavasana. This is self-hypnosis, with the repetition of a suggestive phrase, when we ask ourselves to feel and relax a specific part of the body.

Here are a few recommendations on how to relax as much as possible using relaxation:

Lie on your back so that you are comfortable and nothing is in the way. You can cover yourself with a blanket.
Raise your pelvis and extend your tailbone toward your feet to remove excess arching in your lower back. Straighten your legs. Raise your head. Stretch your neck and place your head on the floor. Straighten your shoulders and lower the area between your shoulder blades firmly to the floor. Extend your arms at a comfortable distance from your body. Palms look to the sky.
Close your eyes. Remain motionless throughout the entire practice, which can last as long as is convenient for you - at least 2 minutes, at least an hour.
Bring your attention to your breathing. Take a deep, slow breath in through your nose and a smooth, conscious exhalation through your mouth, imagining all the tension in your body dissolving with each exhalation.
With a subsequent exhalation, release all thoughts from your head. Allow yourself not to think about anything, not to relive the past and not to worry about the future.
Direct your attention to areas of the body. Feel your head, how the back of your head lies relaxed and motionless on the floor, your forehead, eyebrows, eyelids, eyes, nose, cheekbones, and cheeks are relaxed. The lips are slightly curved in a soft smile. From the face, move to the neck and sequentially to the rest of the limbs.

You can play this video guide and practice Savasana:

Take the correct posture

Learning to meditate for a beginner is not at all difficult. Take a stable position so that your back remains straight. The traditional option is the lotus position. Based on your physical capabilities, you can choose one of the following options:

Sitting on a chair. This is a simple pose. You can learn meditation from here. Choose a chair with a firm seat and back. Place your hands on your hips with your palms facing up.
Lotus pose. It is considered the most common. It has two varieties: half lotus - this option is easier. If your joints allow, you can take the classic lotus position.
On the feet. In yoga, this position is called vajrasana - diamond pose. It is quite complex, although good for meditation practices. To use it you will need experience and training.

You can also meditate by choosing any other comfortable sitting position or standing with your shoulders back. The main thing in the pose is its convenience for you, stability, and a straight back.

Select a location

One of the most important factors for success is choosing a suitable location.

How to meditate at home correctly? In a calm, cool place where there are no distractions. The ideal option is to organize a special space in the apartment for spiritual practices, which will immediately set you in the right mood. It is also very good to conduct meditation in the fresh air, in a park or on a lawn in the forest.

When you gain enough experience and learn to concentrate quickly, you can meditate anywhere where it is most convenient (even in transport or at work).

If possible, try to eliminate unnecessary sources of extraneous noise, turn off your phone and other devices that can make sounds.

Is it possible to prevent the very cause of stress?

Meditation is a great stress reliever.
But will you meditate every time something doesn't go as planned? So I don't. This could be the end of the story about meditation, but the effect of the decrement of vigilance has one more feature, noticed by D. Broadbent - it is not so much that attention decreases, but rather that its resistance to react increases

Meditation and the decrement of vigilance increase the resistance to react to new stress. For example, someone was rude to someone - a person trained in meditation is more likely to have a “window” with a choice: to be rude in response or to wish them health and longevity.

The point is not what exactly to choose, but that there is a choice, otherwise a person lights up like a match to any irritant.

Either you choose, or your boss or the salesperson at the checkout will make the choice.

The skill of noticing is called awareness
and is improved through meditation. In meditation, you notice that you are distracted and return to the object. It’s the same in life: if you notice that now you are being carried in the wrong direction, then half the battle is done. All that remains is to make the right choice.

See if you can notice and purposefully reverse your train of thought if something goes wrong. If you often regret acting in haste, then you should think about increasing your awareness through meditation.

How two types of meditation can change the way your mind works

The Tibetan term for "contemplation" ("gom") means "habituation" or "mastery." All these stages - from concentration on the tip of your nose to analytical meditation on the awareness of emptiness - are ultimately needed in order to, by controlling your consciousness, transform it, forcing it to absorb certain provisions of Buddhist philosophy. It is this transformation of consciousness and life that leads to liberation. Concentration itself does not fundamentally change anything (except the ability to concentrate).

In practice, this means that consciousness control allows us to react (with actions, thoughts, emotions) not randomly, as if life “happens to us,” but arbitrarily, in the way we consider correct.

By reacting in a new way, we change not only our lives, but we transform our body and brain - and therefore our consciousness. That is, it turns out to be such a cycle of spiritual work.

For example, thanks to developed concentration, we comprehend the wisdom of the prohibition against harming living beings, and in a stressful situation we learn to restrain aggression, consciously replacing it with compassion for the offender. By sweeping away evil thoughts, we are filled with understanding. Our body stops giving a stress response - cortisol releases and hyperactivation of the amygdala occur less frequently. This makes our body calmer and more stress-resistant in general, which makes it easier for us to continue practicing.

Experiment: 60 minutes of meditation (1 hour of meditation)

In the title video of the article, I conduct an interesting experiment - I meditate for exactly 1 hour, which I have never done before. My maximum is 20 minutes, and my comfortable time is 11 minutes. This time is enough for me to relax and maintain my calm state, and it is also a time limit after which I already want to get up and start moving.

Results of the experiment

With such a long meditation, the passage of time is completely lost, especially when you don’t have a watch, a phone, or a computer in front of you that would show how much time has already passed.

The feeling of not understanding how much time is left makes you even a little worried. I always want to get up and start moving, not doing anything specifically, but just moving, because it’s too calm.

If, for example, for 2 months I increased my meditation time by 1 minute every day, then most likely I would be comfortable, but such a jump of 49 minutes is quite unusual.

Outside thoughts, besides thoughts about breathing, still arose. I sometimes smiled because I was simply remembering pleasant events in my life. And this state is also useful, because you are simply thinking about some of your current affairs. You can not twitch, think calmly, carefully and for a long time about something, maybe decide something, but in order to balance your nerves, you need to focus only on your breathing, so that nothing distracts you from the current moment.

How does meditation affect sleep?

Meditation may be beneficial for people who have trouble sleeping, according to the results of a recent large study.

What kind of research?

American scientists subjected men and women over the age of 55 to a clinical trial. Moreover, half of the subjects complained of problems with sleep. The participants were divided into two groups.

The first group was asked to follow a well-known set of sleep hygiene rules, such as following a routine and avoiding caffeinated or alcoholic drinks before bed. Participants in the second group, in turn, completed a six-week training course in mindfulness meditation.

This technique is based on calmly, non-judgmentally considering your desires and thoughts and focusing on your breathing. A certified specialist was hired to conduct the course.

Get into the right position

To perform the technique correctly, it is very important to adopt a comfortable body position. To do this, you can sit on a comfortable sofa or chair, but it is best to do this on the floor in the lotus position or simply cross-legged.

For meditation, comfortable, loose clothing that does not restrict movement is considered the most successful. So that you can avoid being distracted by extraneous distracting objects.

Why is Meditation needed in the modern world?

In the modern world, it is certainly customary to run somewhere, rush and do something, but doing nothing at all is impossible. Something you want to do:

read a book,
watch news or TV series,
cook food,
spend time on social networks.

And so, to abstract from everything and not think about anything at all, it is simply not possible. Precisely because the modern world forces us to constantly be in tension, and to receive something from it, to react to external stimuli, the body is always in good shape:

muscle tension occurs,
somewhere something starts to hurt (psychosomatic phenomena),
mental deviations occur.

That is why there is a completely accessible, free and useful method called meditation.

A relaxed body is the key to successful meditation.

It is very important to learn to control not only your mind, but also your body so that meditation is as successful as possible. In a relaxed state, it is much easier to immerse yourself in the process, turn off your consciousness and forget about your problems.

Relaxed and calm breathing helps to relax the physical body. A good option would be to perform special breathing exercises called pranayamas. Their performance helps you quickly enter a meditative state and feel as relaxed as possible.

Why meditation reduces stress

There is an excellent article from Lifext that has a lot of evidence-based material about the benefits of meditation.
Let's also look for interesting things in attention research. So, in meditation, all attention is occupied by the object, and other thoughts weaken without support: stressful thoughts dissolve, and attention gradually collapses inside the object. Why does this happen, and is there a scientific basis?

The effect of reducing attention from monotonous actions is known to science. It's called the vigilance decrement

(Vigilance Decrement).

It was studied by the classics of psychology S.L. Rubinstein, G. Helmholtz, and their experiments confirm the appearance of the effect when performing monotonous tasks for a long time, for example, attention decreased when observing the clock hand for a long time, which sometimes made a double jump; the subjects often did not notice it.

One can notice a similarity between a decrease in the vigilance of attention and a decrease in the sensitivity of other senses under monotonous influences. For example, clothes cease to be felt after some time, and a piece of sugar loses its sweetness if it is not moved across the tongue. It turns out that the brain also loses sensitivity without new “food” in the form of thoughts and sensations.

The brain, as an object of the “organ” class, inherits the same properties as other sense organs. Its difference is that it not only “eats” thoughts, like language in the case of sugar, but also produces them itself, creating a semblance of recursion. Because of this, it can be difficult to fall asleep: the flow of thoughts will not subside, and then meditation with counting sheep comes to the rescue.

Meditation allows you to break the cycle of unpleasant thoughts, switch gears, and uses the scientifically proven effect of decrementing alertness.

What to do to start meditating

There are hundreds of types of practice, but we will look at the basics, understanding and mastery of which will help you practice any type of meditation. To do this, we need to understand: when and where to meditate, how to use our body for practice, what exactly to do, what can (and will) interfere with us and how to check our progress.

Time for Meditation

It can be said that any time is suitable for meditation - but it can also be said that any time is not suitable for it. The first is true because meditation is work on consciousness, and consciousness is always with us as long as we are alive, so it can be done at any time.

The second is true because in any most peaceful situation there will be something that will distract from practice, because distraction is the nature of the mind, its natural state.

When finding time to meditate, you need to keep both of these points in mind.

If you live an ordinary hectic city life, then it is better to allocate the most free and quiet time of the day for practice. This often happens to be early morning, which is a good time to practice; meditation can easily fit into your routine somewhere between your morning shower and breakfast. The main obstacle in the morning will be dullness and lethargy of mind if you do not wake up immediately.

Before bed is also a good time to meditate if you go to bed every day - which means it will be easier for you to meditate at around the same time every day. Before going to bed, the mind will, on the contrary, be overstimulated by the events of the day. And if you are not sober yet, then you will have to meditate for three to stop the racing of mental images.

Early morning and late evening are good because at this time it is easier to detach from all sorts of activities, and meditation tied to the time of waking up and going to bed more easily becomes a daily routine. But any time is suitable for her when you can be more or less alone with yourself, so that no one will bother you.

To make progress, it is better to meditate every day.

Place for meditation

Ideally, a room for meditation should be comfortable: not cold, not drafty and ventilated, not hot, clean, quiet, empty, and all that.

In reality, everything always turns out to be wrong, and you have to adapt: meditate in drafts, covered with a blanket, undress in the hellish heat and train endurance when, in the middle of practice, it turned out that the repellent not only does not repel mosquitoes, but seems to attract them.

Not everyone can wait for silence either, especially if you have animals, children or elderly people with poor hearing in the house who like to watch TV. In difficult circumstances, just know that the author of the article has meditated more than once to the sounds of scandalous talk shows on Russian television.

But it’s easy to track progress in difficult conditions: when you stop fuming, getting angry and irritated - and then hearing distracting noises, you’ll say thank you to grandma.

And in general, it is not the place that makes the meditator beautiful, but the meditator – the place. Many beginners have the desire to give up everything and “meditate until enlightenment,” because it seems that withdrawal from the world in itself is enough for enlightenment. But if a person lives in a perfectly quiet and clean place, he will still remain an irritable piece of uncontrollable flesh, and it will still be as difficult for him to practice mindfulness as in any other place. Numerous histories of classical or Zen Buddhism show that this nuance is often missed. As in the joke about a hermit who retired to a cave for 30 years to meditate, and a traveler who looks in on him and disturbs his concentration, to which the hermit shouts in anger: “Go to hell, you ruined my practice!”

In fact, situations where something goes wrong are also a means to achieve liberation. In addition to sitting meditation practices, there are many other things that can be easily integrated into life (for example, Aleister Crowley’s practice of refusal).

The ritual of preparing a place is a good way to get into the mood for meditation. You can spend five minutes tidying up a radius of a couple of meters from your rug or chair, and during this time try to calm your thoughts.

Body in meditation

The lotus position is truly the most comfortable meditation pose if your knees can handle it (if you are young, do yoga, or were born female, this will be easier for you). This is not due to the fact that it is easier to launch from it in levitation, but because of its special stability due to the area of the triangle on which you lean in this position.

But you can meditate in any position. The main thing is that it is not difficult for you to keep your back straight. In addition to the lotus, all sorts of half-lotus variations and the Japanese pose of sitting on the floor “butt on heels” are popular. The easiest option for a Westerner who is not used to such stress on the knees is to sit on a chair. The chair should be fairly firm, the angle between the knees should be straight, hands on the knees.

The main requirement for any pose is a straight spine. Check your neck, usually people lift their nose, bending their neck - but you need to lower your chin a little and move the back of your head back to straighten it. A straight spine ensures good blood flow during long periods of sitting.

The second requirement is to find a balance between relaxation and tone, because if you spread out in the chair, you will fall asleep, and if you sit strained in an unyielding lotus, then in a couple of minutes some unexpected muscles will cramp.

The biggest secret of meditation posture is that no position will be comfortable. Immediately or not immediately, but sitting still turns into torture, because our body is not accustomed to immobility, just like our mind.

The main task of the body during meditation is not to move, and it will seem impossible, because something will itch, you will need to adjust your foot, change the position of your hand, etc. Don’t give in. Pretty soon, having reached the peak of hellish discomfort, the body will submit to your control. If you itch, just return to static and continue to fight bodily impulses.

How long should you sit?

Experience shows that the average time suitable for starting practice is 20 minutes. Try to start with it, if you are more or less rushing, meditate for 20 minutes the whole time. If you want, you can add a second and third meditation of 20 minutes each to the day. After a few months, you can start adding minutes or sometimes temporarily extending the meditation to an hour to shake things up.

If something is wrong with 20 minutes, try 15 or 10. But remember that the shorter the meditation time, the more intense the concentration should be: if you set the timer for three minutes and try to gather your strength, you will not even have time to start. But three-minute ones are great for complex visualization of objects. But this is for the next levels of mastery.

How to choose an object to concentrate on

We start with fixed meditation to develop concentration, so we need an object to concentrate on.

One-pointed meditation can only have something simple as its object. The more material the object, the easier it is to concentrate; the more speculative it is, the more difficult it is.

Therefore, they begin to meditate with coarser, material objects.

We perceive an external object with the help of our senses. Since modern culture is visual, our most powerful sense of perception is usually vision. Therefore, it is better to choose something visual as the very first object for meditation.

This can be a symbol that is meaningful to you, pinned to the wall (or if you are extreme, then a small dot painted on the wall), and if it is dark outside, then it is good to use a candle flame: due to the fact that it is dynamic, it is easier to observe it , especially if you have difficulty concentrating.

However, if there are too many visual distractions around you, keeping your eyes open can only be distracting. In such a situation, it is better to close them and use sound.

Traditionally, meditation uses mantras - sacred phrases with deep meaning; a similar effect can be achieved from prayer of any religion, if it inspires you.

Technically, any slogan is suitable, even “don’t slow down - snickers”, but remember that meditation is the assimilation of a concept into the mind, and not just concentration, so choose the highest of available meanings.

If mental problems do not bother you, you can try listening to Bon mantras. If you are not that stable, try the sound of the waves, it has the rhythmicity necessary for concentration.

The rosary is made for those who are already trying to rely on a speculative object (saying the mantra “to themselves”), but still support themselves through the senses, in this case through touch. The trick of the rosary is not to miss the moment when you have completed the circle, and turn them over, going in the other direction. This trains mindfulness and vigilance.

The next most difficult object for fixed meditation is the sensations of our body itself. Concentrating on your breathing, the tip of your nose, and sensations throughout your whole body at once (called “body scanning”) is a little more difficult: it’s easier to lose concentration.

But your body is always with you: if you, for example, get used to monitoring your breathing, it will be very easy for you to enter a meditative state outside of sitting meditation.

A subtle object is an imaginary object that we realize within consciousness. For example, we imagine the same symbol, point, candle flame or mantra - without actually seeing or hearing it. Keeping a simple symmetrical circle in front of your eyes for 20 minutes is not an easy task, not to mention simple mandalas of two squares and a circle.

When concentration is more developed, you can direct it to consciousness itself, but this is the next step.

What does it mean to "concentrate"

Keep the object where you put it: in front of your eyes or in your mind's eye. Maximize the signal from the sense organ through which you perceive your object, and try not to notice others. Your main task for the first time is not to forget why you are sitting here (this happens all the time and more than once during one meditation). The second task is to continue to perceive the selected object. This is your effort of concentration.

Don’t study it, don’t think about it - just try to perceive it and not get carried away into the space of dialogue with yourself about the object. Probably, this feeling may be most similar to those times in childhood when you excitedly lit a fire. It got dark, you stared at the flames, unable to tear yourself away from their dance. You didn’t think about anything else then, but only tried to capture with your attention the appearing and disappearing forms. Even a real static object in front of your nose will also “dance” after some time of meditation (of course, it’s not him, but your brain that “dances”) - and you will have to make an effort so that it does not float away from your close attention. As soon as you shut up, return to the effort.

In addition to the chosen object, a lot of things will pop into your head: memories, plans, snatches of songs and conversations, obsessive thoughts, the desire to scratch or move, sensations of pain, burning, “left” emotions and in general a bunch of all sorts of garbage.

Your first task is if you are “carried away,” then notice it and come back. If you have learned to cope with this, learn not to be “carried away”: brush aside extraneous thoughts and return to the object, do not enter into bargaining and negotiations with mental garbage.

When you learn to brush it off, learn to simply not notice the thoughts - just you and the object of concentration. This is your effort to cut out noise.

Essentially, any type of fixed meditation consists of these two efforts. Your task is effort. The result is not in your direct control, but it will come as if by itself through regular practice.

I can't meditate

Usually they say this when they sit down in meditation, close their eyes and cannot “think about anything.” Keep in mind that this is how everyone “fails to meditate,” even the 14th Dalai Lama, because the nature of the mind is to think and jump, and our task is to calm it down.

That's why we meditate because we can't help but think. And the very effort of concentration and cutting off distractions is meditation. What you try to do when you “can’t meditate” is practice, and it leads you to progress.

There is another problem: “what to do, it’s boring!” Boredom is a natural reaction of the mind to your attempt to keep it in an unnatural state. He is used to perceiving something new all the time - we even produce dopamine specifically to search for something new. But constantly returning the mind to what it finds familiar and boring is a basic exercise in meditation. It is very useful in life: I have been meditating for almost 11 years - and over the past 10 years I don’t remember a single situation where I was bored: not on the train, not in line at the tax office, not with a single interlocutor, not completely alone.

How to check your progress

If you need evidence of progress, don't be afraid to keep a meditation journal and measure everything that can be measured so that you can compare results, for example, after a year. Write down how your meditation went, what difficulties you encountered, what emotions attacked you, etc.

If you are a complete pedant, meditate with a pen in your hand and a piece of paper on your knee: you can, without opening your eyes, put a dot or a stick there every time you find that you have “moved away” into automatic thoughts from the object of concentration.

Just keep in mind that at first this number will not decrease, but increase: not because you are distracted more often, but because your ability to notice distractions increases.

You can check your progress in meditation in everyday life. True, magical changes do not happen on their own, no matter what popular books say. Progress will only happen where you set goals for yourself. Various mind control experiments are perfect as additional practice for meditation: from giving up bad habits to giving up habitual gestures, from the practice of non-violence and compassionate attitude towards offenders to the practice of everyday mindfulness.

Simply put, if meditation counteracts anger and other passions, eliminates mental obscurations and reduces the amount of suffering in us and around us, then everything goes well.

If meditation makes you swaggering, arrogant, more critical of other people, or believes that you now have an excuse for “righteous” anger, something is wrong. Continue the practice and be carefully aware of your states, with the understanding that these erroneous impulses are the result of your ignorance.

Why it was great at first, but then it became difficult to meditate

When you just start practicing, everything can come easy and bring very bright results. When I first encountered the fact that with practice it becomes increasingly difficult and even unbearable, I thought that someone in the heavenly office was giving beginners a head start as a marketing ploy.

Now I understand that there are no superpowers at the first stage - it’s just that a beginner has so little experience that the slightest advancement seems like a huge step to him.

In addition, as concentration progresses, awareness grows - and we begin to notice problems that previously did not seem to exist, and pick up on distractions for which we were previously too dull and inattentive. This can lead to despair - don't give in.

In general, there are two basic obstacles to meditation: dullness of mind and agitation. Lethargy manifests itself in laziness, inertia, and drowsiness during practice. Excitement - in absent-mindedness, racing thoughts and emotionality.

As we progress, these obstacles do not go away, but take on subtle and even sophisticated forms.

Lethargy can turn into a feeling of happiness, calm and peace. Some people believe that this is the purpose of meditation, but this is not so - it is also an obstacle that often forces people to stop their practice and enjoy the results (which quickly, although partially, go away). Arousal manifests itself in powerful insights, vivid imagery, and heightened creativity, which also should not be confused with the purpose of the practice: it is a good by-product and can be used - but not taken as the end goal.

The main goal of practice is complete control of the mind.

Whatever happens to you is an obstacle to practice, and whatever it is, it can be overcome by continuing to meditate with unflagging intention.