If you have landed on this page, you probably already know what miracles mindfulness meditation can bring into your life. Perhaps you have even witnessed the rapid transformation of your friends when they began to be conscious of what was happening. Therefore, I will not delay the introductory part and will immediately move on to a practical guide on how to practice mindfulness meditation.
At the end of this article you will find a bonus: audio meditation for independent practice!
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There I show you the fastest and safest way to learn to meditate from scratch and bring a state of mindfulness into everyday life.
How not to meditate
There is a common misconception that meditation is about controlling thoughts and feelings.
According to this misconception, you can choose what thoughts you want to think and what you don’t, what you want to feel and what you don’t. And then make something of an internal revolution, overthrowing the old evil regime of bad thoughts and establishing the rule of goodness and positivity.
Of course, we can influence our thoughts and feelings and develop the mind in a healthy, positive direction. Otherwise, why would we even want to meditate? Error in the idea of a separate controlling self, or ego.
Believing that you can control and choose your thoughts and feelings reinforces this internal split between thoughts, sensations and the ego, which seeks to control everything. It's best to avoid this trap.
Right now, spend two minutes observing your inner screen, on which images and thoughts appear. Just pay attention to the thoughts and images that arise. Does it make sense to say that you choose these thoughts? Not really. It is clear. For the most part, thoughts appear much like the weather. They just appear out of nowhere.
But if you don't choose these thoughts, then who chooses? The answer is: no one. No one chooses what thoughts appear in your mind, but it can also be said that the entire universe is involved. This may be too deep an idea to begin learning meditation, but try to accept this: every thought is a wave emerging from the ocean of reality, the cause and conditions of which are limitless.
In this particular space-time arrangement, the universe manifests as thought. The ocean is a natural element, as is our thought process. When you actually see it, it will be a moment of insight that will bring a feeling of deep liberation. But for now, take this as just a hypothesis. The only meaning of “you” choosing thoughts is that you are part of the universe after all.
Of course, there are thoughts that are consciously chosen. If someone tells you: think of a pink elephant, you can project the image of a pink elephant on your inner screen. If someone asks you where the light switch is in your kitchen, you can picture the layout of your kitchen in your head. If you write a book, you intentionally create certain images and thoughts in your head.
But all these thoughts do not apply to the practice of meditation. Our area of study is disordered self-talk. These are the thoughts that create all sorts of problems. As a rule, these are the thoughts that are the most upsetting, the most annoying, the most embarrassing, the most blaming. So it's actually good news to know that you're not choosing them. They just appear, like the weather.
The even better news is that we can develop communication with spontaneous thoughts, minimizing their negative impact on us. At this point, it is important to understand that the problem is not in the thoughts and feelings themselves, but in how you relate to them. If you believe that thoughts and feelings define who you are, then you will be drawn into their game and thoughts will control you.
Having uncontrollable thoughts is not a problem. The problem begins when we cling to thoughts. Instead of rejecting or clinging to thoughts, imagine that the thought is a train that arrives at the station as you stand on the platform. The train stops and opens its doors. You have a choice: get on it or say “no thanks” and just stay on the platform, watching the train go by. The same thing happens with thoughts: you can latch on to a thought, give it importance, or you can simply let it go and watch it go away.
Skillful experience of pain
SY : I have described these traditional practice poses as stable, rooted, and comfortable. It is quite possible that it will take you years to stop feeling discomfort in them. This may look like moving in the opposite direction from the goal.
When you sit in one of these poses, there may be some discomfort in the background. But you will notice that the feeling of suffering from this discomfort goes through ups and downs. Occasionally, a significant experience will arise: the degree of discomfort remains the same, but your attitude towards it spontaneously changes. This is because the grip and resistance curve also fluctuates from moment to moment. Psychological clinging is the main cause of suffering, not the physical sensations in the legs themselves. In other words, the main source of suffering is how much you cringe about these sensations.
You will probably spend most of your time in the usual tension and resistance to the flow of sensations, but if you sit long enough, sometimes, simply because everything changes, your resistance itself weakens, even if only for a moment. In such moments, you will be able to discover the connection: a decrease in resistance causes a decrease in suffering. You are literally training yourself to break the habit of suffering.
You will further discover that this same insight into physical pain can be extended to psychological pain. Suffering is a function of two variables: the degree of discomfort and the degree of resistance to that discomfort.
Suffering is a function of two variables: the degree of discomfort and the degree of resistance to that discomfort.
CT : I wonder what to do with “extra” pain? For example, you don't force us to wear a hair shirt during meditation? Shirts made of harsh wool, such as those used by medieval Christian mystics, would definitely add to our pain. Also, you are not asking us to move 10 degrees to the side, which would cause us to strain our muscles more and again lead to more physical pain.
ShYa : Pain works in two planes. When experienced skillfully, the “energy” of pain breaks apart the knotty, hard parts of our being. This is true for both physiological and psychological pain. On the other hand, if pain is experienced ineptly, it works in exactly the opposite way, creating more of these “knots”, making a person more rigid and fragile.
It turns out that pain in itself has no advantage for meditators. She can also create new blocks and clamps as well as destroy old ones. Everything depends on your ability to experience it, and very little on the intensity of the discomfort. A little discomfort that you face with great skill can break down old blocks. And the same goes for severe pain. The trick is not to endure huge doses of pain, but to develop the skills that will allow you to take the most out of any situation for your own growth.
For example, sometimes I do a practice where I lie in bed absolutely still for several hours. During this practice, I begin to feel the desire to move this or that part of the body. There are slight tensions here and there. And if I manage to discover them and open up to them completely and completely, then this helps me advance in my practice. These little tensions and irritations can arise at any time, and if you can meet each one with great skill, it all becomes an opportunity for growth.
"Skill" in relation to sensations means the ability to be a little more clearly aware of them and a little more fully to accept them than would normally be the case. When you face a little pain with great awareness and acceptance, it works much better for you than if you endure a lot of pain with irritable rejection. Thomas Merton, a Christian monk who liked Eastern contemplative traditions, said this beautifully (by the way, this is not so uncommon in our time). I will formulate this in my own words, but somewhere I came across his phrase that he “became a monk not in order to suffer more than other people, but in order to suffer in a more effective way.”
Common Mistakes
Once you have become familiar with the antics of the restless mind, you are at an important stage. There are several wrong turns along the path of mindfulness meditation that beginning meditators often take. You will benefit from avoiding these mistakes. These errors are based on the myth that a person has control over his thoughts, as stated earlier.
Mistake number 1
When you see a chaotic stream of thoughts in your head, some of which are aggressive, stupid, restless, destructive, you may decide: since this is my mind and my thoughts, and I can’t stop thinking them, then I am bad, flawed, etc. You feel guilty about the thoughts that appear in your mind.
How to do it right
You need to understand that you do not choose the thoughts that appear in your mind. Thoughts appear just like the weather. It won’t occur to you to blame yourself for watching a thunderstorm through your window. You only have the power to choose your attitude towards your thoughts.
Mistake number 2
As you watch wild, uncontrollable thoughts jumping around like monkeys, you may try to suppress or change them with force. By doing this you will increase the internal conflict between different parts of your being.
You will give one part, your “I”, the mission to suppress the other part of you, which you will begin to perceive as something separate from you. In fact, it will likely make the problem worse. Don't try to forcefully change what arises in the monkey mind. Remember, it's just the weather. But understand that you have the freedom to choose to relate to monkey thoughts.
When you simply accept these thoughts without resisting them or allowing them to overwhelm your attention, you embody the wisdom of an aikido master who, without resisting the energy of the opponent, fully accepts it and then turns it to his advantage.
Mindfulness is your inner Aikido master. Over time, with this approach, you will turn thoughts in your favor, but they cannot be changed by force. So, how exactly are you going to cultivate these seeds of awareness that will serve as your “inner Aikido master”. The first step is to understand the difference between the logical mind and the wise mind. The next step is to begin tuning in and appreciating the “magic moments”—when the energy of awareness comes into play. As these moments occur more frequently and the energy of mindfulness flows more and more continuously, you will be able to enjoy its benefits in all areas of your life.
Ending a session
Meditation is a process that cannot be rushed. Often, having studied the basics of meditation for beginners, people completely forget about the correct completion of the process, which is an inseparable component of the entire practice as a whole. Careful and leisurely preparation for the start of the session requires a similar completion of practice. After finishing classes, you should not open your eyes faster and begin active actions.
A person has the opportunity to enjoy the achieved result for some time: clarity of consciousness and tranquility. A few minutes after finishing the practice, a person’s consciousness will be filled with familiar thoughts, and soon the mind will become active. It is undesirable to make sudden movements. Change your body position slowly. After meditation, it makes sense not to watch action-packed videos or listen to loud music for a while. The correct end of the session will allow you to smoothly complete the practice and achieve the desired effect from meditation.
Thinking Mind and Wise Mind
I took these terms, as well as most of the ideas for this article, from the book “Meditation Now” by Elizabeth Reninger.
The thinking mind is the mind that uses words, images and logic. This is the intelligence that has information about things by understanding them intellectually. The thinking mind includes practical logical thoughts, creative thoughts, and monkey mind thoughts.
The wise mind is the source of intuition, immediate, direct and non-verbal knowledge. He is not limited by the rules of logic and does not speak any particular language. The wise mind manifests itself in moments of insight, intuitive insights or a sense of admiration for inexpressible beauty, moments of kindness and gratitude. It may be similar to the feeling of falling in love, but not to anything specific. Sweetly expansive, deeply relaxing and constantly eluding description.
Activating the wise mind is very simple - you just need to pay attention to the conscious presence associated with the words “I am”.
The difference between the thinking mind and the wise mind is like the difference between electricity and a light bulb. Electricity is the energy that allows a light bulb to produce light. A light bulb is an instrument through which electricity becomes visible. While light bulbs are visible and located in specific locations, electricity is invisible and has no specific location.
Although there are many light bulbs burning in your home, there is only one electrical network that provides energy to them all. In this example, electricity is akin to the wise mind, and light bulbs are the thinking mind. The brightness of a lamp, how powerfully and completely it conducts electricity to illuminate a room, can be compared to the degree of awareness of a person. Mindfulness is a function of a person's wise mind.
As I said, mindfulness is a function of the wise mind, it is the brightness of the lamp of your consciousness.
Mindfulness can be contrasted with distracted attention. To be distracted is to be caught up in the drama of the monkey mind. This means that you “took the train” of your thoughts, images and emotions and it took your mind away from the moment “here and now”. Ten minutes, an hour, two hours later, you may wake up and only then realize that all this time you have been drawn into a fantasy, a fictional world. Don't worry about what you have in your mind. Inner dialogue is not an obstacle if you don't cling to thoughts. This moment of realizing that you have been involved in thoughts is a magical moment. It is magical because the moment you realize that you are being carried away by thoughts, you are aware. So this moment should be celebrated!
General recommendations
If you decide to take up meditation, you shouldn’t perceive it as just another newfangled hobby or daily obligation . Such an attitude will not allow you to achieve an effective result, and can only create a negative experience. Practicing Eastern practices should become a time for a person to relax from the inexhaustible problems of the modern world and the endless flow of unfiltered information. Meditation does not tolerate clearly developed schedules, so you should not focus your attention on secondary aspects of practice. When performing relaxation and cleansing activities, you need to enjoy the process and enjoy the results achieved.
If meditation takes place in a state of tension and discomfort, then after the end of the session these negative feelings will only increase. Meditation is often compared to tuning a stringed musical instrument, in which tension and excessive loosening of the strings is unacceptable, since both of these actions will not lead to a harmonious sound.
The basics of meditation are awareness of your own feelings, so before starting a session you should listen to your feelings.
When experiencing tension, you should prepare your body and mind before meditation with deep relaxation, and if you are drowsy, tuning by concentrating on a specific subject is suitable.
Sitting meditation
As the name suggests, sitting meditation is practiced while sitting. A specific posture is not as important as the general principle of remaining motionless for some time.
When you sit quietly even for 10 minutes, the mind becomes refreshed. During longer meditations, the physical body goes into rest and recovery mode and benefits from a good night's sleep. When the physical body is still, you may notice subtle movements of energy and mind. Ideas become more clearly understood.
In a room with an air conditioner running, our ears are filled with its hum. But when we turn it off, we are suddenly aware of the ticking of the clock, which was lost in the hum of the air conditioner all this time. Stop the clock and now you are aware of the sound of your breathing.
Sitting meditation works similarly. You position the physical body in such a way as to facilitate the cessation of gross levels of movement. This allows you to notice other things: the rhythm of breathing, the beating of the heart, the movement of subtle energies and thoughts. Then you begin to notice the one who notices. Who is this?
A stationary body position for meditation can also be taken while standing or lying down. If you have difficulty sitting due to an injury, there is no problem. Find a pose that works for you. It is good to alternate the practice of still meditation with dynamic meditation techniques: qigong, yoga or walking. Over time, contemplative techniques in movement will help you experience sitting meditation more deeply.
As you explore sitting meditation, you will find the position that is most comfortable for you. If you have enough flexibility, you can sit directly on the floor. There are several best positions for sitting meditation. These are easy pose (sukhasana), hero pose (virasana), perfect pose (siddhasana), half lotus pose (ardha padmasana), lotus pose (padmasana).
It is also good to sit with a straight back on a stool or chair, without leaning against the back, so that the spine is stretched upward. Alternatively, you can place pillows between your back and the back of the chair. The main thing is to choose a position in which the body will feel relaxed. Sitting is a very good technique for beginners because an upright back keeps you mentally active. But you can practice meditation in any position. Find what works for you. The initial setup for the meditation process is the same, regardless of whether you are sitting on the floor, on a pillow or on a chair.
Accessibility for everyone
Many people often associate meditation with a very complex process that is beyond the control of ordinary people. Many people associate Eastern practices with escaping reality. This opinion is wrong.
In essence, practices for clearing consciousness and complete relaxation are available to everyone and are not particularly difficult, since the concept of “meditation” implies, first of all, focusing attention on some object, action, phrase or breathing.
During meditation, a person literally narrows his perception, relaxing the mind. The journey into the world of Eastern practices of purifying consciousness is amazing and exciting. Although the exciting path of learning theory and practice will not always be easy, the reward for your efforts will be wisdom, happiness and self-awareness. For a long time, meditation has been a proven tool that allows us to develop a protective barrier to external influences.
Step-by-step instruction
- Release the tension. Take a few deep breaths. As you exhale, release tension in your face, neck, jaw, or shoulders. The “ah” sigh helps relax the small muscles of the face. Let your whole head be relaxed and light, like a helium balloon.
- Press the tip of your tongue against the upper palate. The position of the tongue should be such that the tip lightly touches the upper palate just behind the upper front teeth.
- Focus your attention on your lower abdomen. Direct your attention to your lower abdomen, two finger widths below your navel. This space is known as hara (Japanese) or dantian (Chinese). This is a subtle energy field that will help you feel grounded and stable in your meditation practice. Lightly illuminate this space within the body with the light of your consciousness. Vincent for several breathing cycles, imagine that the air is directed down the abdomen when you inhale and comes out from there when you exhale.
- Rooting. Feel how the floor, meditation bench or chair supports you. Feel this support completely. Now imagine that you are a tree and your roots go deep into the ground. Feel your sit bones or the soles of your feet if you are sitting in a chair and continue this feeling further and further down. Think of your spine as a tree trunk, stretching upward as your pelvis and soles of your feet pull down.
In this meditation you will develop awareness. This is the part of you that can simply observe thoughts and images without getting caught up in them. Think of thoughts and images as waves on the surface of the ocean, and the part of yourself observing them as the deepest part of the ocean. Even in the midst of a raging storm with huge roaring waves on the surface, the depth remains calm and quiet.
You can also think of thoughts and images as characters in a movie, and awareness as a movie screen on which they appear and disappear. The plot of the film can be extremely emotional, highlighting intellectual or political issues. Characters in a film can love or hate each other. But does the screen hate or love the characters? No, the screen remains a completely impartial observer, while at the same time being the true essence of the characters in the film.
A few facts
Research has confirmed the following effects of meditation practices:
- in the tissues of the brain, the proportion of gray matter increases, which has a positive effect on memory, awareness of perception, readiness for learning, and self-analysis;
- the aging process of the brain slows down, the development of some degenerative diseases is slowed down;
- without the use of antidepressants, the ability of the psyche to resist depression, panic attacks, and stress is strengthened;
- the ability to concentrate and process a large amount of information increases;
- Creative potential is more actively manifested, creative ideas are visited more often, and non-standard solutions arise.
Learning to Relax
CT : From my meditation reports, I have noticed that when I sit down to practice and consciously direct my attention to the body, one of the first things I find there are tension patterns there. Sometimes the very awareness of these patterns allows you to relax and automatically let go of tension, and sometimes not. Depends on many conditions. If you feel tension that is apparently meaningless—for example, you find yourself sitting and clenching your fist for no apparent reason—should you intentionally release that tension, or should you examine it? You've already said that it seems like you need to be mindful no matter what you're doing.
SHYA : You asked a very interesting question. I believe that there are two ways to learn to relax, because there are two qualitatively different levels of how a person can relax. I'm talking about the difference between bottom-up relaxation and top-down relaxation. "Top" means the superficial conscious mind, "down" means the deep unconscious mind. Relaxation from top to bottom is what most people mean by relaxation. This is intentional relaxation, such as in a body scan where you make an effort to relax. When you sit down to meditate, it's a good idea, I think, to do your best to relax your entire body as much as possible. Most often, I try to achieve a feeling of peace throughout the whole body. I call this the rooted state. For example, during meditation I notice that my shoulders have gone up, and I deliberately consciously allow them to fall back.
However, this type of relaxation is limited, albeit very useful, since there are many sensations in the body that cannot be intentionally relaxed. For example, intense pain when you stub your big toe. You cannot perform a progressive relaxation exercise on this bruise and intentionally calm the sensations in your leg. What to do if you have bruised your own ego? For this type of experience, it is useful to learn the second type of relaxation, which comes from the bottom up.
Such relaxation deals with the cause of tension, which lies deep in the unconscious mind, far beyond conscious control. How can you let go of tensions that are beyond conscious effort? Watching them skillfully. Skill, as I said above, is a combination of increased clarity of awareness and complete acceptance of tension as it is. Relaxing from the bottom up is an attitude. You watch the tension very, very carefully. You clearly define its location, shape, taste, rate of change, and so on. You continue to bathe this feeling in clarity and acceptance, clarity and acceptance.
Any pattern of tension is a conduit to the unconscious mind. By flooding the area of tension with the "adult" qualities of witnessing awareness, you help the unconscious levels of the infant and animal mind untie their "knots." Tension patterns will begin to collapse on their own. Paradoxically, the fastest way for them to collapse is to stop wanting it. The relationship of resistance, when you want to get rid of them, creates its own hidden “knots” of tension. For truly deep relaxation, you need to learn to skillfully observe tension without wanting to dissolve it.
Notes
- Young S., Tart CT Meditation and Consciousness: A Dialogue Between a Meditation Teacher and a Psychologist // Noetic Sciences Review, 1988. (Original in English in PDF format.)
- Tart Ch. Altered states of consciousness. - M.: Eksmo, 2003.
- Tart Ch. Awakening. Overcoming obstacles to realizing human potential. - M.: AST, 2007
- Young S. The Science of Enlightenment: How Meditation Works. — Boulder: Sounds True, 2020.
- Yang S. Natural relief from pain. How to relieve and dissolve physical pain through the practice of meditation / trans. from English V. Shiryaeva. - M.: Orientalia, 2020.
- The interview was recorded in 1988. Author biographies are as of today, thirty years later (2018).
Am I doing this right?
CT : When I fall asleep or my attention wanders, I will get more results if I put more effort into focusing. Not always, but often it works this way. And sometimes this leads to conflict. I tell myself: “Gentleness towards working with attention is simply a rationalization of laziness, a lack of effort in meditation. It’s clear why I’m not progressing in practice! I really should focus better.” I remember reading about the Japanese practice of zazen meditation, that if you really practice seriously, you will sweat in streams even in the middle of winter! Is it right to be gentle and allowing, or should you pull yourself together and try to focus?
SHY : I think it’s important to move away from conflict and understand that there are no absolutely right things in meditation. Everyone just feels something differently.
I know that questions like these confuse people a lot. “Am I doing this right?” Most people learn to meditate the same way a baby learns to walk. The baby falls to the right, falls to the left, but gradually gains a sense of balance. You just gradually begin to feel what will be “right.” Arguments can be made for both a gentle approach and effort in practice.
Buddha was once asked a similar question. His answer was that meditation should be done like tuning a stringed instrument. You can't over-tighten the strings, but you also can't make them sag. Only something in between will give the right sound. So one possible answer to your question would be: find the combination between “press” and “release” that works for you.
There is also a strategy that I learned about from one of the Tibetan traditions. You might be interested in trying it out: consciously alternating both approaches. You practice with intense concentration for ten minutes to half an hour, and then a similar period of time with gentle, relaxed observation. Then again with force, then gently observing, and so on.
Finally, another way of working with this polarity has already been mentioned in your question. If you feel sleepy, it's time to press on. When we fall asleep, we feel like we are falling through somewhere. This concept is broader than just falling asleep. Any blurring of awareness, a decrease in the brightness of the picture, can be called that. If you find yourself starting to fall through, then it's time to push. If you find yourself becoming very tense, then it is time to let go and hold the focus in a gentle and relaxed manner. What exactly you do will depend on the situation. You can call this an “allopathic” approach - we simply consistently find a solution to each subsequent problem.
Stop the world
CT : In formal practice, you sit in a safe place and therefore can direct all your attention to internal processes and explore aspects of the fundamental nature of the mind. I suppose there are advanced levels of Vipassana practice where you are walking down the street, aware of the transitory nature of existence, and yet managing not to get hit by a truck. Can you comment on this somehow?
SHY : When we are born, we form a “self” in order to somehow cope with different life situations. Babies have a weak sense of self, and accordingly, they are poorly able to navigate everything that life throws at them. Gradually our self-awareness grows, but at the same time the habit of “hardening” this self develops. And the habit of “hardening” the self blocks the flow of nature and leads to suffering.
Thus, the process of growing from infancy to adulthood can be called the process of developing a “hardened” sense of self. Some adults decide to start growing again, moving from adult to super-adult. To do this, you need to begin to “unfreeze” your sense of self.
This “unhardened self” (it can also be called “not-me” or “Big Self”) gradually begins to mature in a super-adult person. She must learn to cope with increasingly difficult aspects of life in exactly the same way as the “hardening self” did from childhood.
At the very beginning she can't do anything except sit, or perhaps sing. Gradually she learns to perform more complex tasks, such as sweeping the yard. In the end, she learns to speak, drive a car, conduct business negotiations, and so on. Just like the original self, this new self takes time to learn to live. Ultimately, the new activity of the "unhardened self" takes over most of the ego's processes. And she knows perfectly well how to avoid getting hit by a truck.
People can deceive themselves in two ways. It could be: “I have to sit in a certain position with a perfectly aligned body position in order to meditate.” And it could be: “I don’t need to sit in a meditation pose at all, because I practice in the process of ordinary life.”
How to know your meditation skill in action? Check to see how much you can stop at any time at will. If you truly “meditate as you live,” you can easily enter an absolutely stable, motionless state at any time.
