Meditation for Beginners
Does the word meditation make you feel like a deer caught in headlights?
Do you feel like you could never sit quietly and observe your thoughts without going nuts or wriggling like a fish on a hook?
Imagine how great it would feel to start your day with a relaxed mind. Imagine yourself feeling a sense of clarity and improved focus.
Here's the good news. Everyone can meditate. All you need is a structure that sets you up for success.
If you picked this episode, it means you are the kind of person who wants a little something more out of life. You want that little bit of extra clarity, emotional balance, and focus.
So grab a notebook and take notes as we break down the very specific steps that you can follow to set up for success and follow to create your meditation routine. Let’s get to it!
Before you start a meditation practice, make sure you are set up for success. Here’s how:
Set up for Success:
1. Before you begin, set a mindset that will see you through any obstacle. To find your mindset, answer this question:
What is your why? Why are you meditating? Make your answer specific, like these:
I want to learn to manage my add/hd
I want to be more loving to my family
I want to sleep better
I want to be more positive
I want to lower my blood pressure
2. Write down your “why” and put it on a post-it note where you are going to meditate. This will help motivate you and keep you on track.
3. Set up your a space where you can practice.
It can be anywhere; a little corner of a room, a simple mat that you roll out, a little spot on the wall that you fill with inspiring imagery. Make it inviting and clean: place flowers, inspiring pictures, photos of loved ones, anything you feel inspired by.
Having a space set up will make it easier to practice and is also a mental trigger to remind you to practice. Win win!
Setting up this space will affirm the “why” of your motivation for meditating and support you!
4. Pick a specific time of day for your practice
Make this doable! Pick a time that feels inviting for you and that you know that you’ll have success with; morning is great because you can get it done before a million distractions happen. But pick a time and stick with it!
5. Pick a time goal
Set your daily minimum and measure it in minutes.. A minute count really works. If you're a beginner, pick two minutes. You can do two minutes every morning. If you're more advanced, advanced it a little bit. The most important thing is baby steps and momentum. You can climb Mt Everest one step at a time, and even a little bit of meditation goes a long way.
6. Choose how you’re going to sit. Floor? Lay down? Stand? Sit in a chair? Pick what is going to work for you and know how you are going to arrange your body. When your body position is set this will help your mind to concentrate during your meditation.
7. Pick a meditation technique you're going to do and stick with it. Give it a good month so that you can observe the benefits.
Don't go chasing a bunch bunch of techniques, pick something and stick with it.
Meditation Routine:
Having structure to follow during your meditation will keep your mind focused and make your practice easier to accomplish.
Align your posture
Take a few deep breaths
Set an intention
have a little sound cue: a little bell to ring or chant om a few times.This will help you focus by bringing your mind into the present moment
Start your timer and use your technique
Close by taking a few deep breaths
Full Transcript:
Welcome to the Gita Brown show, creating harmony in every day life. I love being creative and I love wellness and I've been teaching both for about 30 years. To be creative it helps if you have a lifestyle that's full of wellness because that's where your creativity starts. My philosophy is simple and based in yoga tradition, simple practices done daily over a long period of time will naturally lead you to a lifestyle full of wellness. And from there your creativity can flow. Today we are talking about one of my all time favorite topics and one that is so challenging for so many of my students, which is meditation for beginners. I want to demystify this process. My friends, so many people think that they can't do meditation, that it's not for them, that it's too hard or it's too mystical or they have to have no thoughts and they get all worked up about it before they've ever even tried to meditate.
So I want to take everything that I have learned in 30 minutes of success and a whole lot of failure on the meditation cushion and everything that my great teachers have taught me. Break it down for you into a system that you can start using today. Because my friend, I know if you hit play on this particular show, you've been always a little curious to try it and you've always wondered like, yeah, I feel like somehow that would be good for me. I can feel that my mind is maybe running away with me or I feel that my emotions are flaring or I feel that like, man, I just don't have the concentration I need. Or like some of my students, "everyone tells me that I should meditate, it'll be good for me and I'm really resistant." But part of me is still curious and maybe even you've been doing it for a long time and are just looking for like a little reboot, a little inspiration wherever you are in that cycle.
It's so perfect and this episode is really going to help you today to kind of demystify it a little bit. Break it down into a system, acutally, that all you have to do is just practice a few simple things and the benefits are boundless. So I think you would probably feel more awesome and picture for just a second what your days would be like if you had a little more clarity, if decisions were easier to make, you know, if you ever struggle with the decision this way or that way, this shirt or that shirt and I go to that thing or not go to that thing and it takes you a while to make a decision, what would it feel like if you had more clarity, what it would feel like for you if you have a tendency towards anxiety like I do and you didn't feel anxious all the time.
You felt more steady, more comfortable or what if you like some of my students, you have a lot of cravings for sugar or they have cravings for wine after work, like cravings that kind of get in the way of your life. What if you didn't have those cravings anymore? What could you do with all of that energy that you have? And wouldn't it be nice to be like a kinder, nicer person to your family? Do you ever snap at the people you love or find yourself lashing out or you get like pissed off in traffic and you're like, where is this coming from? Would it be nice to kind of let all that go and live a different way? Meditation can 100% do that for you? Absolutely. There has been so many studies done. My friends, so many, I won't mention them here. Now I go over them all in a separate podcast, which is a meditation for busy minds.
I cite like all these benefits and on that, um, particular episode on my website, you'll find the links to the specific studies that I mentioned there. But meditation has been proven to decrease anxiety, decrease depression, lower blood pressure, help with pain control, um, improve concentration, reduce cravings, help with addiction issues, on and on and on. There's a reason meditation has been around for thousands of years. Here's the good news. Everyone can meditate. I have taught people as young as, let's see, what's my youngest meditator, I think was the five-year-old, was when he started yet he was five. Now it looks very different than adult meditation, but that kid learn meditation. My oldest student right now is in his seventies and he meditates and is a brand new meditator and everything in between. I teach children with special needs. I've taught children with severe to profound autism who have a really hard time sometimes being in the room and in their bodies.
I've taught them how to meditate. I've taught people who have cancer and are going through active cancer treatment, radiation, worked with them on meditation. I've taught busy moms, I mean just you name it, fifth graders. Who else? I've taught middle aged people how to meditate, so guys, you can totally do this. If you hit play today, it tells me that you are the kind of person who wants a little something more out of life. You want that little bit of extra clarity, emotional balance focus. You want better health and you can absolutely do it. All you have to do is follow the steps. So grab a notebook for it today cause I'm going to break down the very specific steps. If you're in a place and you don't have a notebook, do not fear my friends cause I'm a teacher and I'm writing down all the steps for you.
It's all over on this show at gitabrown.com It'll all be there listed out for you. You can always just hit print on that and use that as your guide, but there's a couple of things you need. Got to teach you a mindset for success, first. Go through the steps to follow for each meditation session and then of course we're going to do a little meditation and don't worry if you've never meditated, it's literally going to be like three minutes long. You can totally do three minutes. I've got you. I'm right there with you. But first we're going to cover your mindset for success and here's why. Because if you don't know like why you're doing, if you don't know the mindset to bring to something, if you don't know your motivation for doing it, you are not going to stick with it, right? It's really hard to add a new healthy habit into your life unless you have like a larger motivation for it.
Unless you have this like thing that makes you go like, yeah, I want that. Within a week or two, that good intention to do it is just going to drop by the wayside. You gotta tie it to a higher purpose for yourself. So you feel that ambition and drive and then of course you need steps to follow because without the steps to follow is just, you're sitting there going, what should I be doing now? I have no idea. So here's some mindset stuff for ya. How to handle all of your negative thoughts before you even meditate. I'm gonna try hit them all really quick. I go over these again in more detail and a little more nuance in the other version of this podcast "meditation for busy minds"I go over this material in a slightly different way so you can listen to that one too, to can help you really get this sunk in.
But number one, when you're meditating, the number one thing is students say to me is, I feel like I can't do it because I can't quiet my mind. And I'm like, okay, well it'd be a miracle if you could quiet your mind. And that's a little bit to me, like a clarinet student coming to me as a beginner clarinet student and saying, well, I can't take a clarinet lesson because I don't know how to play the clarinet. And I'm like, but that's why you're at the clarinet lesson, right? So you're doing the meditation to learn how to observe your mind. Key difference there. You're not doing meditation to have your mind to be this big blank thing that nothing ever happens in. That would be kind of like the opposite of what a mind does for you in the world, right? You're doing meditation to learn how to observe your mind, even if it's a crazy hot, running, anxious, stressed out, neurotic driven mess the whole time you're meditating.
Fabulous. Bring all that right on into the meditation. Expect that, expect to have thoughts, expect to be challenged. That's totally normal. The process of meditation will teach you how to observe all of that happening instead of reacting to all of that happening, so it's a really good news. Feel free, free, let off the hook. You'll have thoughts during meditation. That's awesome. That's exactly how it should be. So expect distraction. When you're meditating today we're going to do a breath meditation. You'd be focusing on just kind of watching your breath come in and out. You're going to be thinking about other stuff. You're anything you'd like. I wonder if this is working. I wonder if this is happening. Am I doing it right? I wonder when this is going to be over. Do I have to have my eyes closed? I don't like the sound of her voice like you don't think of like a million different things. Expect that every single time you bring your mind back to the object of your meditation,
That is a success. You have just meditated in that moment. Every time you catch yourself and you bring yourself back, you're like, bang, there you are. You just had a success in meditation. That is actually the practice itself, which is really good news. It means if you've brought yourself back to your point of concentration a hundred times, your successful a hundred times, it's like gold star every time. I'm expect also to get stirred up. You'll get stirred up a little bit when you meditate. Some stuff will come up. Emotions, old angers, old hurts. Remember that anything that comes up in your meditation is stuff, gunk, garbage. You are carrying around all the time. You can either deal with it in a meditation or you can continue to tote all that crap around with you 24 seven and I don't know, but I feel so much better when I let the garbage go.
It's kind of like a system reboot. You know? Sometimes you need to shut down the smart phone, close all the apps and just close it, shut it down, and then restart it and then everything works smoothly again. It's the exact same thing as your brain. Let all those systems shut down, let the gunk that's in there gets stirred around and let it power down, and then you can power up with more clarity, but expect to get stirred up, right? The experience of meditation does not mean you have to be sitting on a Lotus with an empty mind feeling like you're one with the universe. That's just BS. Let that one go. All right, so also when looking for the benefits of meditation, it's not important. How you feel during the meditation is just to do the practice. It's like brushing your teeth. It's not always the most transcendent moment of your day.
It's not something you look forward to doing, or maybe you do, I don't know, but it's not like, wow, I can't wait for that sensation of brushing my teeth. It's just something you do. Meditation can be a lot like that. It's something you do, it's something you practice, but you get the benefits of that bright, shiny smile later on in the day. You'll feel the benefits throughout your week, so look for the benefits later and just let the experience be whatever. It's going to be. Good, bad, ugly, crazy mass. Doesn't matter. It's just the point is just to do it. Isn't this feel like a relief? I hope it feels like a relief. Like wow, I can just let my mind be. I can let the experience be and just do it and trust or not trust. Just observe what happens. All right, so set up for success.
Here is like the mindset that you need. You're going to get right down to the nitty gritty and my friends right now, I want you to start thinking for you. What is your why? Why are you meditating? What is the point? And don't say to me like some of my students, this is not something you can say because it's good for me. No, no, no. That's just too vague. Be specific, right? I want to learn how to manage my ADHD, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder. I want to be more loving to my family. I want to decrease my blood pressure. I want to sleep better at night, like be super, super specific and write it down. You have to have a reason and a motivation, right? It might be I want to perform better on my instrument. I'm a musician so I always come back to things like that.
Or for me it's like I want to have more clarity in my day. I'm an anxious person by nature, so I get very distracted and meditation helps me get a lot of clarity. But you got to have your why guys and you've got to write it down. If you go over to the website, you'll see this part is in capital letters bolded, why are you doing it? And I want you to write it down and put it on a post it note right where you're going to meditate because that way you see it and that motivation to meditate then will be locked in and baked into why you're doing it. You've got to know why and have a specific reason why you are going to commit to doing this every day. So setting up for success also involves figuring out where and when you're going to meditate.
It seems basic, but so many of my students forget this and when I really make them do, they're like, yeah, I'll just do it in the morning. I'm like, yeah, but where they're like, well, I don't know this a BA, they don't really have a plan and within a week they stopped doing it. So pick a place, a specific spot in your home, doesn't matter where it is. You can sit in a chair, you can sit up in bed in the morning, you can sit on the floor if that's your jam, it doesn't matter, but have a specific place that you maybe have made a little inviting for your practice. I like to just sometimes a lot of my beginner students, they just clean out like a tiny little like corner of a bedroom. Right? And they just put like a little table there or they just move like a footstool over and they put something lovely in that spot.
If they have a religious tradition, they put some images from their religious tradition there. If they love nature, they put some, some seashells or flowers or whatever their thing is, they put it there. Some of my students put, um, photos of loved ones on their little sort of mini meditation corner. Anything you look at my friends that makes you feel uplifted. It's just a little corner. It doesn't have to be complicated. Just a little spot you're going to go, or a little TV table that you're going to pull out when you meditate and you make it look pretty so that when you see that it's that mental trigger thing, time to meditate, it will really help cause it's like setting up that space is part of affirming your why of why you're meditating. So when you have, you know, you've got your why, you've got a little place, you've kind of neatened up just a little tiny little spot for you to meditate.
Choose how you're going to sit this. People miss this all the time. Are you going to sit on the floor? Do you have a back issue? And you just need to lay down or you going to stand and meditate? You can totally do that. You're going to sit in a chair, it doesn't matter. Pick what's gonna work for you. Pick one and stick with it. Whatever you're going to do. So you have that. You've got your why, you've got your little spot and you know how you're going to arrange your body. Cause here's why. When your body is arranged in a good position for meditation and yoga, we call that a seat and that seat is then like a cue to your body and mind that now the meditation begins. It's like a little way you can trick yourself to be successful. So it's really, really important to establish a good seat even if that standing, so pick a time of day, you got your spot, you've got like how you're going to position your body, city sitting, standing, laying down, whatever it is.
Pick a time of day and be consistent. I can tell you this, the students I have over 30 years who've been successful are the ones who do it first thing in the morning. I've had every student tell me every excuse of why they can't do it first thing in the morning. And I say go ahead and try doing it at another time and see what happens. This is, I got to really review this. Yeah, 100% of the time at some point doing at a different point in the day doesn't work. And I think here's why, because there's one thing we're guaranteed in this life if when are alive is that like you wake up in the morning, like you wake up and there you are. And if you do it first thing, then it's inflexible and it happens. You know how your day rolls as soon as the kids come in the room or as soon as you even like walk to the bathroom, like distraction occurs.
So having that first thing in the morning thing really sets it off. Right. My students who stick with that are the ones that are successful. I had one student once who said she could do it before bed and that worked for about three months and then that fell to pieces too. You can imagine why. But I don't know. Maybe you'll be the outlier. Pick a time that's going to work for you, especially to start out. If you have kids. This is a tough one because they will find you, especially if they're little, as soon as you open your eyes. There's been some times when I literally like wake up, especially when I have dogs, so especially when they're puppies. It's kind of the same thing like you're awake. It's time to go. I like wake up and open my eyes and really quietly. I'd just sit up in bed and sit right in bed and meditate for five minutes because I knew as soon as I moved, people would know I was awake.
You can figure out a way to do it. Come on. So morning really is great. Set your daily minimum. A minute count really works. If you're a beginner, pick two minutes. You can do two minutes every morning. If you're more advanced, advanced it a little bit. Advance your time, but pick a time limit and then how do you pick a technique? I'm going to give you a technique today. I taught another technique in meditation for busy minds. I have another podcast on meditation for boosting your creativity. There's also a really great app out there that I think is the best app for teaching meditation. Not just guiding you through something, but teaching you. Headspace. Headspace app will actually teach you how to meditate. Highly recommend that one. So pick whatever technique you're going to do and stick with it. Give it a good month so that you can observe the benefits.
Don't go running around chasing a bunch bunch of techniques, pick something and stick with it. Okay, let's get to meditation. So you set yourself up for success. That was a lot. I threw it at you. It's all written down for you so you can go review it and kind of get yourself all set and ready. Meditation routine. I have written this all out for you over at Gita, brown.com so when you get ready to meditate, you can have it written right there in a little journal and you can follow it along really quickly. I'm going to list it and then we're going to do it together. First thing you're always going to do in a meditation number one is align your posture. Then you're going to take a few cleansing breaths. Make sense, right? Get the body ready. You're going to get the breath ready.
Third thing you're going to do in every meditation is you're going to set just a little intention. Don't worry, I'm going to guide you through all this. I just want you to have heard it once. The fourth thing is is to have a little sound cue. I like to use a little bell. Sometimes I chant ohm, a little sound cue cause that really gets all of the brain activated sound and music helps to activate all areas of the brain. So a little sound cue as you're getting ready to meditate really helps you to focus and then your meditation routine. And the fifth step is to actually implement the technique. Today we're going to do a little breath awareness and then your closing is to open your eyes and take a few deep breaths in your meditations over so you have those five steps, aligning posture, taking a few breaths, setting an intention, a little sound, a little OAM, a little bell.
Do the technique, couple breaths to close and you're done. I like having that little routine cause it keeps my mind busy. I got something to do. Then I got something else to do and I keep shifting little things to do and then I slowly settle into the silence and I know at the end of the silence then I have something to look forward to. Does that help to know like you have like a little structure. It's not just like sit there and be Zen somehow. Magically. It's not magic. It's system. So let's do one. This is going to take probably, I'm going to try and time it maybe three minutes. I don't know. Don't hold me to that. It's not going to be super long. So wherever you are, let's do a little meditation. Hey, yo, if you're listening to this on podcast and you're driving, turn it down.
Turn the sound back up in about three minutes. Don't try and power through and drive. I don't want to be responsible for you getting too relaxed and going off in a management there. So hang on there with me and do it when you get to your destination. Okay guys, so wherever you are, let's begin our meditation. Align your posture. You might be standing, sitting, or laying down. Doesn't matter wherever you are, just make sure that you're aligned. That means that your legs are coming out from your hips at sort of a nice, even pace, right? They're not crossed, they're not hitched. Just nice, and even. Make sure that your spine is long and free. You can always think of the crown of your head as sort of being relaxed. And if you're standing or upright, floating up, if you're laying down, let the whole body relax into the floor. Let your arms find an intentional position. If you're laying down, just bring them a little ways away from the body with the palms up to open the chest. If you're seated, let the hands just rest in the lap palms down. And just sort of align yourself for a moment. Let the shoulders relax and just start to drop any tension from the body. And then here you're just going to take three deep breaths in and out. Just a breath in through the nose and out of the mouth.
Just drop any tension. Just inhale and exhale. Shift from doing into being by taking another inhale through the nose and exhale out of the mouth or the nose. Whatever feels good. Just relaxing there. And then set an intention to allow your body to be still and quiet for the next few moments. Set that intention. I allow my body to be still and quiet during the next few moments. I allow my body to be still and quiet during the next few moments. And then a gentle ring of the bell. We turn the corner to the meditation gently letting your awareness move over to watching your breath and just first notice what your breath is doing. Is it coming in and out fast or slow?
Is it shallow or deep? No need to change it. You're just observing what your breath is doing right now. And if your mind is thinking about lots of other things, just direct the mind's energy towards observing the breath. You can even label every inhale, say silently to yourself, breathing in and every time you exhale you can just repeat silently breathing out. You can just say to yourself in and out. So you're just silently watching the breath, labeling it in and out. You can even then bring that awareness to your nose. Becoming aware of the breath as it comes in and out. Seeing if you can sense even a change of how the breath feels on the inhale versus the exhale. Just quietly watching the breath, labeling in and out. Noticing the breath through the nostrils in and out. Anytime the mind gets distracted and just bringing it back to watching the breath. In and out, quietly watching the breath. Just a moment in time here, quietly observin., Very gently, allowing the breath to become a little deeper. Taking a breath in and a nice exhale. Take a full complete breath. Think of bringing in fresh oxygen into the body.
Exhale, you can move your shoulders, gently move your head and your fingers and slowly come back to the body. And know that you can always return to this place of quiet by just simply taking a deep breath. Closing the meditationwith one last inhale and exhale, and just for a moment, notice how you feel. Be patient with this practice. Follow the steps. Think of how a flower grows. By the time you see that beautiful rose or dahlia blooming, think of all the work that plant needed to do to first push up out of the ground and grow the foliage. Then have the bud then open to the sun. It took a long time. Meditation practices like that. You slowly cultivate the mindset and you slowly cultivate your routine and then over time you get that beautiful fragrance of the meditation that does carry throughout your day. Remember, practice, practice, practice, so to help you in practicing, take a little action now. Hop over to gitabrown.com and just leave me a little comment about how it went for you. Let me know about your challenges and let me know when you're going to meditate so I can help you.
I love to teach you guys and I would love to give you a little tips and go back a little bit forth and help you develop this practice for yourself. So hop on over to gitabrown.com let me know how it's going, any challenges, and we can all share in it together. So let's close this lovely meditation for beginners. Oh, hang on for a second. Let's celebrate. You just meditated. Was it your first time ever time meditating today? Let's give you a round of applause. I'm so super proud of you. And if you've meditated a million times way to go, because that means you just kept going. You can totally do this. You are the kind of person who wants that health and wellness in your life, so do it. You can totally do it. You just proved that you can and I totally believe in you. Let's close with a little chant for peace. I'll give you it to you in Sanskrit first, which is the original language from the integral yoga tradition. And then I'll give you the English translation afterwards. Let's build a little peace in our lives.
Lokah samastah sukhino bhavantu
May the entire universe, and you, my brand new meditator be filled with peace and health and joy and love and light. I hope you have a very peaceful day. Oh guys, if you like this, check out. The winter wellness challenge starts Groundhog day, 2020. 7 days to refresh your body, mind, and spirit. We do this kind of stuff and way, way, way more. So check that out over gitabrown.com take good care of my guys. Om Shanti. See you soon.