People meditate for countless reasons. In fact, you don’t have to look far to find the myriad of benefits that can result from having a meditation schedule. In fact, everyone from personal wellness coaches to therapists and even the Anxiety And Depression Association of America suggests that meditation can be an excellent way to help bring your life into focus. The only thing that stands in your way is learning how to start meditating.
If you are like the majority of other individuals interested in meditation, then you may be wondering how to start meditating. While people will list all of the benefits, they will rarely provide guidance on how you can begin a meditative practice that you can stick with.
Figuring out how to start meditation is as much about making tiny changes over time as it is about big, long-term positive results. With the following guide, you can learn how to start meditating and affect real change in your life moving forward.
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How To Start Meditating: Develop The Habit
When people imagine what meditation is like, they imagine the end result of a room fully decked out, and a large block of time put aside for the meditative exercise. The downside to this approach is that we assume an extreme is normal.
How to start meditating does not begin with an hour a day dedicated to centering yourself. Rather, it begins with taking between 1 to 5 minutes every day to put aside towards building mindfulness. Long before you expand your meditation time, you must first get the habit down.
Even though it is short, 1 to 5 minutes of meditation a day can provide a great benefit. Aim to schedule learning how to meditate around the same time every day. The short time commitment will make it easy to stick to.
Whereas most people aim for a half hour or an hour and then stop the practice when they can’t put aside the time, you will have the benefit of developing the skill set first.
In the weeks and months ahead, you can gradually expand the amount of time you spend meditating. If you find yourself with only a few minutes to meditate in the future, then you will still have the skill set necessary to make the most out of your time.
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Organize Your Time
Once you establish a habit, then next thing to consider when learning how to start meditating is the meditation itself.
Will you be meditating by yourself, considering a guided meditation, or even a specialized meditation like Heart Math Meditation?
What are the goals of your meditation?
For many, a primary goal of meditation is stress and anxiety reduction. Stress is one of the leading causes of inflammation in the body which contributes to arthritis pain.
To this end, even with only a few minutes, you learn how to start meditating in such a way as to reduce your overall symptoms.
Begin by being in a quiet place, closing your eyes, and focusing on your breathing. Take long inhales and exhales. Track each breath, and focus your attention entirely on the action. Block everything out. After a minute or two of this, allow your thoughts to flood back. Address them individually with the time you have.
Learning meditation requires playing around with different meditative tricks. For example, some people have great success imagining a safe and tranquil place while others benefit from vocal meditative exercises. Others still enjoy meaningful music that helps stimulate personal growth.
Regardless, understand that figuring out how to start meditating will require you take some chances and try new things. With the possible result being so beneficial, at least trying to learn how to meditate is well worth your time.