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I have a feeling that some will look at today’s episode title and scoff. They’ll think, “I already know how to meditate.” I hope you’ll give this episode just a little time, though. I believe it’s worthwhile to review basics now and again, because over time, it’s easy to become rigid about how to practice correctly, and this rigidity can get in the way or practicing successfully.

Fundamentally, there are three steps to meditation:

* Focus your attention on your breath.

* Notice when your attention wanders away from the breath.

* Bring your attention back to the breath.

That’s it. If you’re doing those steps, you’re doing it right!

The problem with best practices, guidelines, and rules

Meditation is simple. But you know it’s not easy. And that’s where best practices and guidelines can help - as long as they don’t become rigid rules.

Look, Mindful15 is all about presenting you with tips, tricks, and guidelines to help you succeed in your meditation and mindfulness practices. For example, I open every guided meditation with instructions for adjusting your posture. Why? Because proper posture allows you to sit stably and comfortably, thus making it easier to focus on the breath. But the truth is, you can meditate in any posture!

And, it’s important to understand that good posture is a guideline, not a rule. Knowing this gives you permission to meditate lying down on a day when your back aches. It tells you it’s okay to meditate on a park bench that forces you into a slouchy position. In other words, it doesn’t ever prevent you from practicing.

 

Peaceful Moment of the Week

 

Here’s my opinion on meditation lessons of all kinds: You should be open to what they have to teach you. Try them out. See if they help. Discard them when they don’t. Trying new strategies can help you navigate around things that might cause difficulty in your practice. But never adopt them as rules.

If you ever wonder whether you’re practicing correctly, all you have to do is go back to the basics.

But what about steps 2 and 3, you ask? When you notice your mind wandering, you can experience disappointment, frustration, anger, and a whole host of other negative emotions. These can make it difficult to get back to the breath. That’s true.

It takes practice to learn to let go of these negative emotions and come back to the breath. Actually, it takes time to even notice that these emotions are coming up. Then, it takes even more time and practice to learn to let go of them.

But you see, that’s exactly what you learn when you follow the three basic steps over and over. These steps instruct you quite plainly to notice distractions then refocus attention on the breath. They don’t say anything about feeling negative emotions, do they? If you keep working at just coming back to the breath, like the steps tell you to, you’ll learn to let go of reactions. Yes it’s tough. Yes, it takes patient practice, but the steps don’t steer you wrong.

Just follow the steps. (And come back to Mindful15 for some trips and tricks to make this easier.)

Invitation to meditate

For a 10-minute Back to Basics meditation, forward the podcast or the video above to 3:04.

Next Week:

Next week, somewhat ironically I suppose, I’ll have a new tip for you. I’m going to show you how to use reflection to deal with an overly busy mind. If you want to know when the new lesson goes online,