Don't wait, just meditate
On starting a daily meditation practice (Part 1)
In 2008, I made a new year’s commitment to start a daily meditation practice. It was one of the pesky new year’s intentions (that I wrote about last week) that I had been trying to make for several years before it finally stuck. Since then, daily meditation practice has become one of the most transformative and foundational elements of my life, and it is hard for me to imagine my life without it. It is in that spirit - of making that change in the New Year, and of its deep impact in my life since - that I felt inspired to offer this little guide (which will likely have a few more parts, coming soon).
While I am writing with beginning meditators in mind, I hope it will also serve you if you already have a regular practice, or if you are a seasoned practitioner but have fallen out of the daily rhythm of it. Meditation is a practice of beginning again (more on that below), and I find that taking a beginner’s mind approach can be a really helpful refresher for my practice. I will be sharing what has helped me, in the hopes that it might support you in finding what works for you (even if that is different from what works for me!). Please take what works for you and leave what doesn’t.
My relationship with meditation
On the OnBeing podcast, Krista Tippett begins every interview with the question, “What was the religious or spiritual background of your childhood?” This feels like an important question to briefly answer as I share with you about my own meditation journey and practice.
I grew up in a Presbyterian church, so meditation was not something I experienced in my childhood, and is not a part of the Christian lineage I come from (although is a part of some Christian lineages). I was taught to pray, which can be similar to meditation though is also a distinct practice. I was introduced to meditation in college through taking campus yoga classes and also through reading Thich Nhat Hanh’s book Peace Is Every Step, among others.
It took some years for the practice to become a daily habit, but more than a habit, a way of life. My practice has been influenced by a lot of different teachers, methods, and books, including Thich Nhat Hanh and the Plum Village tradition1, the yogic tradition2, and the insight meditation tradition3.
Preface: You already have everything you need
You don’t need new clothes or supplies. You don’t need to get certified. As teacher Sharon Salzberg says, “If you can breathe, you can meditate.”
In modern capitalist culture, we are taught to believe we can’t begin to do something that is beneficial to us until, until, until. Until we find the right teacher. Until we have a special cushion. Until we have more space in our life. Until we buy the thing.
Don’t wait for the perfect conditions to arise to begin meditating. Life - just as it is in this moment - is the only condition you need. Just start. Right now. With this breath, right here, you can start. You already have everything you need.
Commit to sit*
*It doesn’t always have to look like sitting, but we’ll talk about that below.
My first suggestion, which may seem obvious but is worth stating, is to make a commitment to practice daily. I really recommend making it daily.
It helps to commit to a regular amount of time, and it doesn’t have to be long. You can start with five minutes and see how it goes, and slowly expand over time. My daily meditation practice right now usually ranges between 20-30 minutes. At different stages of life it has been longer (pre-motherhood), and at other times shorter (early motherhood). Find an amount of time that will work for you and that you can reasonably commit to. In terms of regular practice, 5 minutes daily is generally more beneficial than meditating for an hour once a week.
Very importantly: When you miss a day, just begin again. Don’t beat yourself up, don’t give up. Just begin again (more on that below).
When I finally got going with a daily practice through the winter Feast for the Soul program, I committed to 40 minutes of daily practice for forty days. While this definitely worked well for me, in hindsight, I am amazed that I could do it! Forty minutes is not easy for a beginning meditator (or even a long-time meditator). Five to ten minutes is a great starting point for a beginning meditator! Even one mindful breath is a start.
It can help a lot to have an accountability buddy (maybe a friend who is also starting a daily practice), and it helps a lot to have a community (more on that in a future post). Think about what might help you keep the commitment to yourself, and put some things in place to support that.
It can also help to dedicate your practice to someone -perhaps a teacher, perhaps to your partner or children, or the Earth, or your ancestors. Your practice benefits you, but it will also benefit the people and world around you when you can show up in your life with greater presence and compassion. Reminding ourselves that our practice is not just for us, but for those around us, can also help us with our motivation and consistency.
Remember your why
Relatedly, it can be really helpful to remember why you want to meditate and to remind yourself of this as a motivating factor and intention. Is it to cultivate greater peace and calm in your life? To foster greater spiritual connection? To better understand your mind? To become less reactive? There are many reasons, and at the beginning, reminding yourself of your why can help get you to the cushion or chair. There are many benefits to a meditation practice, and over time these will become apparent.
Finding a regular time
With any new habit or practice, it can really help to find a regular time of day that you can dedicate to the practice. I would strongly suggest deciding what time of day you want to meditate and that works best for you - first thing in the morning, on your lunch break, right before bed, etc. What is the time of day when you are most likely to do it? It can help to tie it to another activity that you already do regularly.
First thing in the morning is the best time for me. I am a morning person and I love waking up early. I have found after years of practice that if I don’t meditate first thing, the day will get away from me and I might not find time later. I know I want to do it and prioritize it, so I make sure I do it first. My morning routine looks like this: I wake up, make coffee, write down my dreams while drinking coffee, then meditate. After that, I often write again (if I have time), and then start my day with Daphne (getting ready for school and work, etc.). Find the time of day that works for you! Put it in your calendar or set a reminder if that helps.
Find a regular spot
It really helps to have a regular spot in (or outside of) your dwelling that becomes your meditation spot, that you come back to again and again. It doesn’t need to be a spot that is solely dedicated to meditation. I have lived in very small spaces over the years, and rarely have I had the space to dedicate to a meditation room or anything like that. But I have always had a spot, whether in front of a bookshelf, on a balcony, or in a corner. Having a dedicated spot will help with building the habit, and will also build energy in that space that will support you in your practice.
This isn’t to say you can’t meditate anywhere! By all means, you can, and everything can be meditation. But having a regular spot to come back to can really help set the habit and support your practice of stillness.
Find your seat (or posture)
Meditation guidance often begins with the instruction, “Please find a comfortable seat.” It is worth taking the time to really do this and find a posture that works for you.
There are four traditional meditation postures: sitting, lying down, standing, and walking. While what I am talking about here is mostly sitting meditation, sitting is not accessible to all bodies, so please find the posture that works for you. There is no “better” - you don’t need to be in lotus position to meditate. The important thing is to find a position that will allow you to be steady and stable, and will allow your body to be as comfortable as possible so that you can focus.
There is an energetic difference between meditation done in stillness and in movement - we will talk about the latter in a future post. For now, I am talking about meditating in relative stillness (though as you sit, you will also realize that the body is never still! To breathe in a body, there is movement). And again, there’s no better - they’re just different (though I do think that, in living in a society that is constantly asking us to go go go, stopping in stillness is a radical act).
It is worth your time and experimentation to find a posture that works for you. Sitting in a chair is a great option for many. If you want to sit on the ground, for most people, sitting on a cushion to elevate the hips above the knees will help the spine be long and allow for less pain in the knees and joints. If you are sitting on the floor, make sure you have something (blanket, carpet, etc) under your ankles; otherwise they will likely become painful on the floor.
Take your time to find the position that works for your body, that allows you to focus. Find a comfortable seat.
Find your breath (or other point of focus)
As one of my favorite meditation teachers, Sharon Salzberg, says, “If you can breathe, you can meditate.” That is really all there is to it!
Meditation usually involves an anchor, a point of focus for the mind. This could be the breath, sensations in the body, a mantra - there are many possibilities. The most common anchor is the breath, and that is what I am primarily referring to here.
As my friend, artist, and author Yumi Sakugawa, says (and I highly recommend the book - all her books, in fact!), “There’s no right way to meditate.” There are thousands of ways to meditate, and I highly recommend finding a way that resonates with you and works for you. I truly believe there is a path for everyone. Here, I am primarily focusing on breath awareness, as the breath is available and accessible to everyone and is always with us, and is the main focus in my own practice. But this is also to say that there are many ways, and to find a way that works for you.
Once you find a path and practice that resonates with you, stick to it. I received this wisdom from my friend, mentor, and teacher Dr. Michael Nagler, who is a student of Eknath Easwaran, the originator of passage meditation. Michael likened the constant dabbling in different practices to looking for water by digging many shallow holes, rather than digging one deep hole.
My primary teacher is Zen Master Thich Nhat Hanh (referred to as Thay by his students), and the Plum Village web site has some very helpful guidance on basic sitting meditation practice, which you can find here. The most basic guidance that Thay offers is the following phrase:
Breathing in, I am aware that I am breathing in.
Breathing out, I am aware that I am breathing out.
In, out.
To stabilize your mind, you can repeat in on your in-breath, and out on your out-breath, just noting the flow of the breath.
Enjoy your breathing
Another key guidance that Thay offers is to enjoy your breathing. He says we should sit in such a way that we feel relaxed, at ease, at peace, and free. This is worth repeating and remembering. Sometimes we can have the idea that meditation needs to be more complicated than it actually is, or that if we are not suffering, we are not doing it right. Thich Nhat Hanh actually says the opposite: if we are suffering in the practice, we might not be doing it right.
To be alive and breathing is a condition for happiness. When we breathe, we can know that we are alive, and that we are fortunate to have the conditions to be breathing in this moment. That alone is a miracle, and is enough!
At first, paying attention to the breath might seem boring, but the more you pay attention to it, the more it reveals. If we attend to it with curiosity and openness, it can be exhilarating, interesting, inspiring, exciting - magical, even.
One of my favorite ways to connect with my breath is to remember and realize that it is connecting me to everything around me, and that I am breathing very directly with the trees and plants around me. Paying attention to the breath is a direct pathway to experience our interbeing with everything.
Begin again (and again and again and again)
A meditation practice is a practice of beginning again, over and over and over again. The mind will wander - it is the nature of the mind to get distracted (it is also the nature of the mind to be spacious and still! Ah, the paradox!). When the mind wanders, we simply, gently guide it back to our breath (or other point of focus).
A common stumbling block for beginning meditators is to beat themselves up for the mind wandering (this was my experience for a long time). A few things helped me around this:
Remembering that it is the nature of the mind to wander. The mind will wander! The practice is just to keep waking up, to keep bringing it back. There is nothing wrong with you if your mind is wandering, and you are not doing it wrong. This is the practice.
When you realize the mind has wandered, you are awake and aware! This is a moment of celebration. Try not to get caught up in a story of celebration, (“Yay, look at me! I am awake!…” - the more you meditate, the more you become aware of our great storytelling capacities :), but just note that is a moment of wakefulness and awareness.
Relatedly, self-compassion is key. The antidote for beating ourselves up is to practice being compassionate towards ourselves. Developing self-compassion “on the cushion” will also help with self-compassion in the rest of life.
Don’t wait, just meditate!
If you have been wanting to start a daily meditation practice, don’t wait for the perfect conditions to arise and align to begin. You will be waiting forever. Don’t wait for New Year’s or the perfect day to begin. We need to practice with the beautiful, imperfect chaos that is life, and to begin again, and again and again and again.
And that’s the point - to help us live. A sitting practice gives us a foundation from which we can live the rest of our lives with greater awareness, presence, compassion, and solidity. Meditation helps us to be awake to the gift of being alive, aware of the mundane, exquisite beauty that is available in each moment (yes, even this one, right here!).
Send your questions
Do you have questions about meditation practice? Please share them in the comments or reply to this email, and I might use them for a future FAQ post.
With love, care, and support and encouragement for your practice,
Stephanie
Recommended Resources
How fortunate are we that we live in an age where we have access to so many resources for meditation! Here are a few of my favorites teachers and apps:
Thich Nhat Hanh - as noted above, the Plum Village web site and app have a wealth of helpful resources. I recommend all of Thay’s books, and How to Sit is a great one for beginning a meditation practice.
Sharon Salzberg - I have found Sharon’s writing and teaching incredibly helpful in learning to meditate. In addition to her many wonderful books, she offers a meditation challenge in the month of February, the Real Happiness Challenge, which can be a great way to jump-start your practice (or refresh it!).
My favorite apps that support my practice:
Insight Timer - meditation timer and library of guided meditations across many traditions and styles
Plum Village app - all things Thich Nhat Hanh and Plum Village; a huge library of resources including a timer and guided meditations
CHANI app - an astrology app that has an extensive library of beautiful ten-minute guided meditations
I am an ordained member of the Order of Interbeing since 2017.
I’ve been a student of yoga since around 1998 and completed the Kripalu yoga teacher training in 2006.
I have never studied directly with any insight meditation teachers in person or on retreats, but have experienced the teachings extensively through books, recordings, and videos.
Thank you so much Stephanie- so much generous sharing. So helpful 🙏🦋🌍🕊️