How to meditate

It's free, easy, and might just change your life

Why meditation?

Meditation is related and complementary to so many other states of being that people often seek, like stillness, peace, mindfulness, inspiration, and flow. Famed movie director David Lynch meditates twice a day to tap into his deep sea of consciousness and mine its creative depths for “the big fish.”

Meditation has given me a sense of agency in a world filled with chaos, randomness, and conditions outside of my control. Through meditation, I harness the power of my mind and thoughts to help increase the probability of desirable outcomes. By focusing attention on what I want and intend rather than on what’s going wrong, I make room for my instinctual inner wisdom to be heard clearly.

I see meditation as the latest skill I’ve begun to master on the continuum of mindful, introspective practices. I started with yoga and journaling, learned about breathing and living with gratitude and intention, and found myself squarely knocking at the door of meditation as the next level of personal transcendance.

It’s hard to understand how good it feels until you try it and stick with it, but I’m positive that my mental health is better and my faculties are more robust. I’m slowly peeling back the layers of my closely-held fear-based habits and empowering myself toward inner and outer abundance.

Other forms of meditation

What I describe in the following sections is just one form of meditation, aimed specifically at self improvement. I like it because it has a clear structure and a clear intention. 

Transcendental meditation (TM) may be the more familiar form of meditation. It uses chants or mantras to settle the mind and may have a more general purpose: creating stillness, expanding consciousness, and improving mental fortitude. I’d like to find a TM teacher or group practice so that I could learn from others and mimic their best practices. I’m by no means finished with my meditation journey. 

I think everyone should experiment with meditation, as they might experiment with different forms of exercise. It’s a mental exercise of going within and creating a relationship with the unseen self and the unseen energetic world all around us.

If you need a little help getting started, I highly recommend reading Breaking The Habit, listening to Dr. Tara Brach on YouTube (she has guided meditations weekly), or using the Meditative Mind app for audio tracks of chanting or humming. I started with those and slowly graduated to sitting in silence.

Set the scene

To start, I recommend picking a spot that’s comfortable, quiet, and dark. I use the canvas director’s chair in my bedroom so that I’m upright with my feet flat on the floor. Don’t lie in bed, on the floor, or recline in an easy chair or on the couch. Pick a place that’s not in your normal rotation of spots for sleeping, watching TV, working at a computer, etc. Sitting cross-legged on the floor (the classic yogi position) doesn’t work for me, but that’s an option too if it’s comfortable to you.

I close any open windows, lower my window shades, and use an eye mask to block out as much audible and visual stimulation as possible. Once my environment is prepped, I initiate the stopwatch on my phone (so I can track my timing each session) and I sit. I breathe a few deep breaths in and out through my nose, releasing any tension in my head, neck, back, shoulders, and arms. 

Induction

Then, I silently follow a script that helps focus my thoughts on the present and my sensations on the body. This initial step is called induction, which lowers the frequency of brain waves to a more coherent, less frenetic state. One by one, I visualize each part of my body, starting from the head down to the toes, by counting to twenty and imagining it is pulsating, like a traffic light or the blinkers on a car.

Scalp…20 seconds. Forehead…20 seconds. Eyebrows…20 seconds. Eyes…20 seconds. Ears…20 seconds. Nose…20 seconds. Mustache…20 seconds. Jaw…20 seconds. Adam’s Apple…20 seconds. And so on…down to the feet. Which and how many body parts you decide to focus on is entirely up to you.

After I’ve reached my ten toes, I do two additional counts to 20. One where I imagine myself as a droplet of water—a nod to poet Rumi’s famous quote: “You are not just a drop in the ocean, but the entire ocean in one drop.” 

For the second, I imagine looking at myself from above, as if floating progressively higher toward the atmosphere and deep space, away from my room, my apartment, my city, my continent. I find that these two additional steps help me to dissociate from the immediate surroundings and reinforce a sense of awe at my smallness in the broader universe. I believe this helps “seal the deal” of induction.

Typically by the time I make it through these consecutive counts, I feel different from normal. There’s a sensation of stretching upward, like my body has actually grown taller and closer to the heavens, and I am ready for the next step.

With time and practice, induction can be relatively quick, but at first, it can take up to 20 minutes to focus your brain and genuinely feel settled, calm, and focused.

Active Reprogramming

Once induction is complete, I run relatively quickly through the following exercises:

(1) Recognizing. (2) Admitting. (3) Declaring. (4) Surrendering.

In the last few months, I’ve chosen to focus on “fear” as a habit that I’d like to improve upon. So I say to say to myself, softly but aloud: 

I recognize that fear (anxiety, lack, envy, self-doubt, and any other related emotions or behaviors that come to mind) has held too much power in my life up to now. I admit that I’ve let fear run the show and I’m declaring here and now that I’d like to demote fear and replace it with trust, abundance, joy, love, and bravery. I surrender my fear (and whatever else) to universal wisdom which knows better than I how to handle it.

I add my own flourish, which is to imagine fear as a bunny hopping away into the ether—the rabbit being my Chinese zodiac sign for my birth year of 1987. After completing steps 1-4, I add a moment of gratitude by simply thanking the universe for handling my fear for me and helping me lean into its antidotes.

Tuning Focus

Finally, before closing out my session, I spend a few minutes focusing on my desires, my best-case-scenario outcomes, and my hopes and dreams. I feel what they will feel like, I beam with joy and gratitude and elation. I tap into that feeling of lightness and exhilaration that everyone probably can relate to, when everything feels right and good and peaceful. That delicious magical space we all aim for.

In Breaking The Habit, Dr. Joe Dispenza adds a few additional steps after 1-4, which are (5) Observing, (6) Reminding, and (7) Redirecting. I consider them to be more active steps outside of meditation, once the day’s activities begin, so I don’t include them in my mediation per se.

As he explains it, one must observe his thoughts and actions throughout the day with a new attention (made possible by meditating). He should catch himself in the various automatic patterns of negative or unhelpful behavior and remind himself of his new chosen path—of say, being less fear-driven. Finally, he redirects himself to think and behave differently in the moment, reinforced by his daily meditation which puts him in faithful touch with universal wisdom and energy.

He recommends redirecting by shouting aloud “CHANGE!” when encountering a negative habit, to reinforce one’s desire to reprogram ingrained patterns. I do this if I remember to, but usually I just make a mental note of when I notice myself falling into old habits.

At some point in the future, fear will feel like a less pertinent sticking point to address, and I will move on to a different habitual emotion, thought, or behavior that I’d like to change to focus on in daily meditations.

I hope this explanation of what works well for me has been helpful to you. Meditation is highly personal, so I encourage you to try a few things, explore apps and guided tracks, and do whatever feels the best to you.