I am reasonably skilled in various forms of meditation, but I am no expert meditator, nor a meditation teacher. The below primer provides plenty of information to begin a meditation practice and develop yourself to comfortably do 20-30 minute sessions. But if you become serious enough to regularly do 20-30 minutes of meditation, I encourage you to seek other viewpoints and read additional authors. Several good sources are listed at the bottom of this essay.
Before moving on to the primer itself, you may want to check out this blog post:
Why Meditate? Pull-Ups for the Mind
Sitting Meditation
What I detail below is a simplified, secularized form of Vipassana meditation, also often called “insight meditation.” I am familiar with other forms of meditation, such as Taoist qi cultivation, guided meditation, mindfulness practices, lovingkindness, breathwork, etc.
But I think insight meditation is the best starting point and that it should always remain a core practice. It is truly fundamental to all other forms of practice, as well as theoretically simple. All you do is sit down and focus on your breath.
Attitude
In the next sections I will provide some instructions, but first let me mention the attitude you want to take. The proper attitude is essential to both following through with your intent to meditate and making the fastest progress.
As I mentioned in the blog post “Pull-Ups for the Mind”, this should be considered first and foremost a focusing exercise. The deeper benefits associated with meditation will paradoxically come only if you aren’t fixated on them: you must let them arise naturally. This means simply focusing on the breath, and allowing what may happen to happen. Consider your meditation session to be an exercise in developing the self-discipline to simply sit still and focus, and remove all other thoughts and intentions from your mind.
Focus
There are three main aspects to the type of focus you want to cultivate: (1) Concentration, (2) Clarity, and (3) Acceptance. I have taken this three-aspect framework from Michael Taft (see the resources section at the end), and while many meditation guides will discuss them in one form or another, his breakdown and wording is easy to remember:
(1) Concentration means being able to train your attention on whatever object you choose, and sustain it there over time…
(2) Sensory Clarity means having a lot of resolution of the details of whatever object you’re focusing on…
(3) Acceptance means having an attitude of openness, curiosity, and nonjudgment with whatever is happening in the moment.
A more functionally-oriented way to think about these aspects is that (1) concentration is the actual focusing, (2) obtaining clarity is a means of helping to deepen your focus, and (3) acceptance is the attitude that lets you avoid distractions and maintain your focus.
So you will start a session by concentrating on your breath (which is harder than it sounds).
Once you are somewhat concentrated, you can try to obtain more and more clarity on various characteristics of the breath (how does it feel on the tip of the nostril, what is the temperature like coming in and going out, what are the muscles around the diaphragm doing, etc).
You will find in short order that thoughts and sensations arise (remembering chores, feeling an itch, a foot getting numb, a noise in the distance, etc). And the only way to maintain focus on the breath is to let the sensation or thought come and go. Accept it. Any attempt to stop the thoughts, address the physical discomfort, or otherwise try to change or judge what is happening will break your concentration.
Posture
More esoterically-inclined practitioners than myself often have very precise instructions regarding posture: how to cross your legs, where you put your hands, position of the tongue, etc. But if those those things matter, it is only at fairly advanced stages.
For a beginning or even intermediate meditator, I think it is really just important that you are in a position that makes you comfortable but still alert. The need to remain alert is why trying to meditate laying down is difficult – unless you are already very well-rested, it is very easy to simply fall asleep. (Side note: learning to meditate is also great for insomnia.)
Sitting cross-legged is the most common posture, and it becomes quite comfortable once you get used to it, but even sitting in a straight-backed chair is fine. It is important to keep your back vertical and straight, raising your head ever so slightly to give the feeling of elongating your back and neck (as opposed to allowing yourself to slump into your spine). This helps keep you alert, and also makes it easier to take full diaphragmatic breaths (see next section).
Your hands can go wherever you want; I personally find the most natural positions to be either folded in the lap or placed on the knees. You may also find it easier to sit cross-legged if you raise your butt a bit from your legs and feet. Special meditation cushions are made for this, but pretty much any thick pillow (or two stacked thin pillows) will do. If you have a janky back like me, you may also find it easier to have a wall behind you to (slightly) rest your back against, especially as sessions get longer.
Once you have settled into your “comfortable but alert” posture for a while, you may start to notice that you are holding tensions in various body parts (shoulders, jaw, and brow are all common). You’ll want to relax as much of your body as possible while still maintaining that straight, slightly elongated back and neck.
Often the first minute or so of my meditation sessions involve scanning the body and getting myself relaxed. Later in the session, I often notice that my shoulders or other body parts are holding tension again. If this happens, that’s fine: just relax them and refocus on your breathing.
Generally you will want to keep your eyes closed, if only because it helps avoid visual distractions. When I happen to be in a place that especially noisy, I will often put headphones on and listen to a drone or recording of white noise.
Breathing
In Vipassna-style meditation, you are simply breathing naturally and observing this process. There is no need to try and change your breath in any way or do specific breathwork exercises.
However, unless you’ve worked on your breathing as an adult, “breathing naturally” probably does not mean “just breathe like you normally do.”
Firstly, you should be breathing through your nose (mouths are for eating and talking), unless you’ve got a cold or allergies preventing you from doing so.
More importantly, you should be breathing with your diaphragm, as opposed to the shallow breathing that many of us slowly acquire as we get older and develop bad postures and acquire various stresses in life. (Watch a baby breathe to see diaphragmatic breathing in action, or do an internet search for the term to get more specific instructions.)
You’ll feel good diaphragmatic breathing go all the way down to your navel. These might feel especially “deep” and forceful at first if you are not used to natural breathing, but as you become more accustomed to it and learn to relax into this style of breathing, you will realize that you don’t actually have to use any muscles to take the breath in – that’s when your diaphragm relaxes; and it only contracts to expel the breath.
So, while I said in the first paragraph of this section that you are simply observing your breaths and not trying to do anything special or change it, this is only true once you have mastered diaphragmatic breathing.
If you find that your breaths are only going down to your chest, then you need to practice diaphragmatic breathing. You can still do this practice as part of your first meditation sessions, it just means that rather than simply observing the breath you will want to adjust your breathing as well. But after a few short sessions, diaphragmatic breathing should come naturally.
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Before you scroll down to read the next section, why don’t you try a 5-minute meditation session or two?
The rest of this primer provides several helpful pointers, but these will make much more sense after you have spent a little time practicing on your own. In theory this is very simple. Just sit down and observe your breathing, keeping in mind the three aspects of concentration, clarity, and acceptance. Easy-peasy!
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So Flipping Hard
Holy cow, that was excruciating, huh? It’s very deceptive: the practice is extremely easy to comprehend intellectually, and maintaining focus seems like it shouldn’t be too difficult, even if you don’t expect to be able to do it for a whole session. But almost no one expects it to be as incredibly hard as turns out to be.
If you managed to truly maintain focus on your breath for more than 10 or 15 seconds at a time on your first session then you are naturally gifted. And if you couldn’t do it for more than five seconds before your mind was off racing, then welcome to the 99%.
What’s even more unexpected, and I suspect more discouraging, is that your mind was probably screaming at you during several moments to get up and do something more productive. It was also likely finding all sorts of things to disturb your focus: things you should add to your to-do list, things you should have said in your last conversation, the excess pressure on your foot, the itch behind your ear, etc. And etc, etc, etc.
Don’t get discouraged, though. It does get easier, you will learn to maintain focus for longer stretches, and you can overcome your mind’s insistence on bothering you. Believe it or not, the process will even become enjoyable if you keep at it.
As with physical exercise, this practice is about a type of training rather than intellectual understanding. This means that it takes time and practice, and there are no shortcuts. I think one of the reasons most people who try meditation a time or two and give up is that, since it intellectually seems so easy, they decide they aren’t “good at it” and use that as an excuse to not bother trying.
While there are no shortcuts, they are a few key pointers I’ve learned over time which can make the training process easier and more enjoyable — and maybe even a little faster.
Happy to Refocus
One trick to making things less painful is to treat your mind like a pet or small child. Buddhists often call the untamed mind that is hopping all over the place and won’t settle down, the “monkey mind.” And just like with the training of an animal, it is very important to give yourself positive reinforcement: this changes to process from a chore to a pleasure.
It’s very common that, after your mind has been wandering for an entire minute or more and you suddenly remember that you were supposed to be focused on the breath, you may get mad at yourself. How could you be such a jack-ass that you let your mind wander for so long?
Don’t do that, not even a little — it creates a negative reinforcement that will subconsciously make your mind not want to step out of future daydreams. It also makes the whole process of meditation a sequence of decidedly un-enjoyable events.
Instead, do what you would do with a dog or child you cared about, and give your mind positive reinforcement. Give yourself a figurative pat on the head and feel proud that you remembered to refocus.
This stepping out of your constant stream of thoughts is the whole point, after all, and the fact that you were able to do so — regardless of how long you were lost in thought — means you had a little success.
Set a Time in Advance
As I’ve mentioned, this should be considered a willpower and focusing exercise. Accordingly, one of the most important things you can do is to decide in advance how long the session will be and then stick to it, no matter what. Unless you smell smoke, stick the session out. Even if your mind races the whole time, it is better to complete a “bad session” than to cut your meditations short.
Early in your training, your mind will likely look for all kinds of reasons to convince you that you need to cut the session short: remembering minor chores, thinking of important work, deciding you are just too itchy, etc.
On the other hand, once you become a more adept and start experiencing longer stretches of focus, you may start to get attached to the subtle bliss associated with a truly still mind. You may have a “great” session, or maybe even several in a row. And then the next time that your mind isn’t as readily settling down, you may say to yourself, “this just isn’t going to be a good session, so I’ll stop.”
But it’s important to follow through the whole session. There will be ups and downs in your progress, and there is as much to learn about your mind during the times it refuses to settle as there is during the more pleasant sessions. As I said, consider this about self-control, not self-awareness or pleasant feelings – allow those to come as side effects and just practice the “acceptance” side of meditation.
A Training Habit
As with any other form of exercise in which you want to progress to higher levels, you should consider your meditation sessions a form of training. This has two important implications: it needs to become a habit and you need to progressively go further over time.
Like anything you want to make a habit, it’s ideal to do this every single day for a month or two, barring true emergencies. It’s good to try and set the same time each day for this. I personally consider it easiest to do it first thing in the morning, and most people would agree: not only is the morning when you have the most willpower to do something your impulses are against, but if you do it before doing anything in the “real world”, your mind will already be relatively calm (as opposed to trying to do it after a long day of work or other stressful activities).
In order to make it easier to ingrain the habit, I would also start “small” – commit to just five minutes, or maybe even only three. Do that for a week or two; then try a session that’s about 30-50% longer and see if you feel you can commit to that longer sessions for a week.
Following this method, you could get to regular 20-30 minute sessions in a couple of months, even assuming a few hiccups and lapses. I personally aim for 20 minute sessions as a minimum: it can often take 10 minutes just for to start getting into the groove, and usually achieving deeper levels of focus requires sessions over 20 minutes.
Counting Breaths
Counting breaths is a good way to begin focusing the mind on the breath. Count from one to ten, and then count backwards from ten to one, and then go forwards again. Of course, early on, you are unlikely to ever get back to one (or maybe even to ten) before you are lost in thought. But once you remember to focus on the breath again, do your little mental pat on the head, and then start counting again.
My personal sequence of meditation is generally to settle my body down and then start counting breaths until I am in the groove of good focus (you will get a feel for this “groove” after a few weeks of meditation). And then after awhile my focus is broken, and then I get lost in thoughts, and then I recall what I was supposed to be doing and I go back to counting breaths until I am in the zone again.
On a good day I can get in the “groove” or “focus zone” in 2-4 breaths, but when I was first starting, it would take way more than 10 breaths, and I usually wouldn’t even get into the zone before I was lost in thoughts again.
Letting Thoughts Go
One thing you quickly learn from just a few meditation sessions is that thoughts will arise. That’s just what they do: they are automatic, and there isn’t really any “stopping” them. What you want to learn to stop instead is running along with them, getting lost in them, and identifying with them.
It’s not really a process of “stopping thoughts” but “letting them go,” and learning to let them go earlier and earlier in their formation process. Becoming expert at this will take a long time (and I suspect it never fully ends, which is why there are people still practicing meditation after many thousands of hours).
One method for helping you to let go of a thought sequence and get back to focusing on your breath is to quickly name the thought when you realize you are caught up in it. So for example, you could say “planning,” “dreaming,” “remembering,” “thinking,” and so on. It’s not important that you give the thoughts the most accurate possible names; rather, the process of naming something often lets you dismiss it more easily.
Another, more visual, method is to imagine the thought written down on a piece of paper and then blowing away. Vipassana meditation isn’t really about “visualization” per se, but this sort of quick visualization to help you dismiss a thought seems appropriate to me.
Take Five Breaths Before Moving
You are likely to feel the need to move several times in your meditation session, especially if you are a naturally antsy person like me. Itches are my most common problem, but niggling pains, the way your pants feel on your leg, and other things can capture your mind and prevent you from focusing on your breath.
This is another moment – like visualizing a piece of paper floating away – when it is appropriate to momentarily take your focus off the breath, or perhaps split it between your breath and the physical annoyance.
Instead of fighting the urge to scratch an itch, for example, tell yourself that you will go ahead and scratch it after five more breaths and then explore how the itch actually feels during that time. This will often make the annoyance actually lessen and you may be able to then ignore it. But even if not, scratching an itch after exerting some level of self-control and acceptance will disturb your mind less than fighting the urge until it becomes overwhelming and then scratching it.
Outside Resources
Here are a handful of books that those seriously interested in meditation may enjoy. Rather than being exhaustive, I’ve selected a set of books that approach meditation from different angles.
Insight Meditation, by Joseph Goldstein: This relatively short book provides lots of good tips and thoughts from the foremost teacher of insight meditation in modern times.
The Mindful Geek, by Michael Taft: A secularized description of meditation with lots of good instruction and information. It has a bit too much of a “this will help your productivity so the corporate overlords are letting me talk to you about it” vibe for my taste, but it’s highly readable and it’s instructions are good.
The Mind Illuminated, by John Yates: This is a super detailed instruction book for meditation, a massive handbook that is meant to be used over a lifetime of training. I personally have only read a third of it, because it gets quite advanced.
10% Happier, by Dan Harris: A memoir-style account of meditation. I don’t recall if it has instructions in the book itself, but if not, he has a website (and app) that does.
Why Buddhism is True, by Robert Wright: This is more of a philosophical exploration of meditation that discusses some of the psychological and philosophical issues associated with meditation-oriented insights.