I want to meditate, but HOW? (LA Yoga)

Lisa Gornall (layoga.com); Ananda (D Buddhist Meditation), Dhr. Seven (eds.), Wisdom Quarterly

What beauty would take time for meditation and yoga? Christy Turlington (sportforums.com)

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You know you want to meditate...Now you want to know how to meditate

One of the most popular New Year’s resolutions is to learn HOW to meditate and to do it every day. We’ve heard it’s good for us, and we want to feel more calm, connected, and balanced.

Why meditate?

The common reasons heard for this resolution include the following. Meditation has been recommended by doctors. We’ve been told to meditate to reduce our stress from family and work. We haven’t been able to meditate, so now it’s a goal. Other people who meditate swear by how helpful it is. We want to slow down and we’ve heard meditating will help us do that.

I spent years working at five-star spas leading meditation classes (some immediately coming after a meditation retreat). These classes were always the fullest throughout the month of January.

Every single person struggled meditating on his or her own. They all had apps they listened to, but even those weren’t helpful every day.

But they did find the meditation I’m going to share here to be very powerful.

There are billions of meditations out there. What I have found to be the most helpful and easy to do is what I call a Guided Energy Healing Meditation.

Why is this so helpful? It addresses the two areas everyone struggles with, the body relaxing and the mind wanting to think and not be quiet during meditation.

This meditation is also customized to the practitioner in that moment, so it’ll also be exactly what we need.

We know meditation is good for us. So why is it so hard for us to meditate? This is a really important question to ask ourselves. The follow up question is, Do we have a hard time relaxing?

If we do, this is where we want to focus. There is no way we’ll be able to sit down and meditate for two minutes if we already struggle with relaxing.

How to Meditate

Not all meditation is Buddhist meditation. There are lots of choices. The Buddha taught many.

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Step one in how to meditate is being comfortable sitting down and relaxing. We may have to let go of any resistance we have in giving ourselves permission to sit down and take care of ourselves.

We don’t have to always be busy, hustling, jumping from one thing to another. This mentality actually hurts us when we do finally sit down to meditate because our thoughts are, “I need to do ____” or “I can’t sit here in the middle of the day and do nothing!”

Author Lisa Gornall (LA Yoga)

Release whatever thoughts there are about sitting, relaxing, and taking care of me that keep us from being in the moment free of action.

Decondition what we were taught as children. Our body needs us to relax. It isn’t a machine, so stop treating it like one. More