WHAT IS MEDITATION? WHY DO IT? 

Meditation can involve a wide variety of practices associated with mental health, religion, and spirituality—it is not just one thing, and there are only right and wrong ways to meditate within particular meditative schools. Here I am going to be talking about a simple and fundamental type of meditation: mindfulness of breathing. The why behind this meditation is “to be present.” Behind that, there are many reasons why you might want to be more capable of being present—reduce worry, reduce depressive rumination, improve focus, increase appreciation/enjoyment, improve observational skills, reduce stress, attain a spiritual state, etc.—but it is better to not worry about those outcomes and focus on the task of being present only, without any expectation of other outcomes. 

Throughout this article (and elsewhere on this website), when I refer to meditation, I am referring to being directly aware of the present moment, particularly but not necessarily through awareness of breathing. Any guidance about what works or doesn’t is relative to the goal of developing present-centered awareness.  

BASIC INSTRUCTIONS 

1. Choose a length of time to practice and set a timer. Try 5-10 minutes at first.

2. Sit or lie down in a comfortable position that you can hold for the length of the meditation. Place your hands on your lap or beside your legs. You can keep your eyes open or closed. If they are open, fixate your gaze on a single point in your field of vision. Once you have taken your position, try to hold it for the length of the meditation. 

3. Focus your attention on your breathing, noticing it at the nostrils, abdomen, or both. You don’t need to control your breath. Just let it flow naturally, noticing it rise and fall. Your goal is to be aware of the breath flowing in and out, from the beginning to the end of each inhalation, each exhalation—that is all.

4. When you notice the mind wandering, gently return your attention to the breathing. Repeat this process as many times as needed until the end of the session. 

That really is all there is to it, but don’t be confused by the simplicity of the instructions. Just sitting and breathing is not easy for the human mind. It is something very different from ordinary human thinking and behaving and takes practice. Below I address some of the issues people can encounter when they try to meditate. 

GUIDANCE AROUND SOME OF THE PITFALLS OF MEDITATION

The biggest pitfall in meditation is you are trying too hard for something that is not the point—concentration, calm, comfort, control of thinking, a superior state of consciousness. Achieving these outcomes is not the point. The point is to be present to this moment of sitting and breathing. This moment means this inhalation, this exhalation—and nothing more. If you are focused on achieving something outside of this moment, you are not focusing on sitting and breathing. Being “good” at meditation is outside of this moment, concentrating for the whole session is outside of this moment—being relaxed, peaceful, or content may also be outside of this moment. The only thing is: Is there presence now? If you are trying for more than that, you are trying too hard. 

Even in trying to be present, you may be trying too hard and making yourself frustrated or anxious because you aren’t “doing it right.” The only doing right or wrong is this: Are you trying to be present in this moment? Whenever the mind wanders off, once you notice it wandered off, you are in the present, and the wandering is in the past. You can’t control the wandering now. The only thing you can do is pay attention to the breath in this moment. Neither can you control the wandering in the future. If you could, you wouldn’t have to do anything to be present. You could just tell your brain, “No wandering for the next 30 minutes, thank you!,” and then meditate peacefully. It doesn’t work that way. There is only paying attention in the present. The mind will wander. If it distracts you from the breath, it distracts you. This is just the mind doing what it does. It’s not that you want to be distracted or don’t want to increase skill in paying attention to the breath—it’s just that you can’t force it. You pretty much need to let the breath do the work for you. Your attention is just settling into that rhythm of breathing. If you practice through force and frustration and anxiety, you fill learn to hate meditation and give it up sooner or later, even if you attain marginally better focus in the beginning. 

That being said, the second biggest pitfall is: You are not trying hard enough! This means you sit down and then just actively daydream, plan, ruminate. The key word here is actively—you are actively involved in these thought processs for the purpose of some kind of gratification, not just distracted because they popped into your head while you were meditating in good faith. For this kind of meditation to be meditation, you do need to be actively trying to be aware of the present, anchored in awareness of breathing. If you are doing that and get distracted, that is very well and to be expected. If you are actively engaging in daydreaming, you are not meditating. As you become experienced, you will know when you are genuinely distracted or actively goofing off. Actively goofing off suggests you are ambivalent about meditating in this moment or in general. 

Overall, to avoid the pitfalls of meditation, just sit and pay attention to the breathing—and do it consistently for a period of time. When you do this, you will notice you are more present in both meditation and at other times. If you are struggling to attain any level of focus, there are some tricks—or supportive techniques—I describe below, but I don’t recommend using the tricks right away. Try just sitting and breathing first, and if that really feels impossible after a month or so of regular practice, try some of the tricks. 

TRICKS TO HELP THE BRAIN FOCUS

First of all, let’s just say this about these supportive meditative techniques: These are tricks and tricks only—ways to force the brain to pay attention better. I offer them as little ways to help you improve focus if that is needed. If you are practicing meditation regularly and notice you are becoming more present on average, don’t worry about these tricks. Only try them if you are really struggling with attaining any kind of presence or focus in your meditation. In the end, you cannot get around the fundamental problems of being present without extensive and relaxed practice. Learning to relax into concentration is ten times more powerful than forcing your way into it. That being said, applying a little heavy pressure can help to get the brain used to what it feels like to be focused for a sustained period and support development of concentration. If all you want from meditation is power of concentration, these techniques may be relied on as primary techniques for achieving concentration. 

The Tricks 

The basic supportive techniques involve these factors: mental synchronization, grouping, awareness of the body, and refreshing focus.

Mental Synchronization

Mental synchronization means using mental verbalizations, imagery, or other forms of active mental activity to synchronize mental activity with the breathing. The classic examples from the early meditative tradition are mentally saying “in”on the inhalation and “out” on the exhalation or counting the breath (for instance, 1 on the inhalation, 1 on the exhalation, up to 10, and then repeating). Another technique is to use a meditation word or mantra to synchronize with the breath: for instance, saying the word a-na-pa-na-sa-ti (the Pali word for mindfulness of breathing) one syllable at a time for each inhalation and exhalation. Other techniques include imagining the sound of the breath or imagining the breath as an image. The commonality here is you are synchronizing active imaginative mental activity with the sensory observation of breathing. This technique is useful in helping highly verbal thinkers quiet down. 

Grouping

Grouping involves limiting your effort of focus to a small, achievable set of mental tasks. Instead of making the effort to sit and focus on breathing for twenty minutes straight, you break the task down into very small parts, typically 2-5 breaths. You can do this through counting or completely a mantra word synchronized with the respiration (anapanasati, for instance, is three respirations long). Once you finish the set, notice if you completed it with full awareness or got distracted, and then intentionally start another set, trying to achieve full focus. 

Awareness of the Body

Instead of using mental sychronization or grouping to focus attention, you can use the body. For instance, counting breaths by noticing the sensations in your fingers as you breath in and out, first noticing the pinky, ring finger, index, pointer, thumb—then going to the other hand, and so forth. You can also move attention through the body as you breath, imagining breathing into the head, neck, shoulders, arms, etc. and cycling through the different parts of the body. In this kind of practice, you are aware of both breath sensations and body sensations from the parts of the body you are focusing on. Finally, you can use physical movement of the body to synchronize attention with the breathing: e.g., raising hands with breathing in, lowering them with breathing out; raising the foot to step while breathing in, putting it down while breathing out (i.e., walking); rocking back and forth with each breath, etc. 

Refreshing Focus

One of the biggest problems of focusing is the mind tends to go into default mode (screensaver) after being exposed to a repetitive activity for any length of time. You can stop this default mode by making small shifts in attention, just like clicking on the mouse to prevent the computer from going to screensaver. Several methods are helpful for this: 

Alternate between mental synchronization and just noticing the breath: for instance, three breaths with counting, then three breaths without counting. 

Opening and closing the eyes: Do three sets of respirations with your eyes closed, then three with your eyes open. 

Changing visual focus: Focus on the left side of the room for three breaths, then the right side for three breaths. 

Focusing on different parts of the body: Focus on breathing while being aware of the left hand for three breaths, then the right hand for three breaths, etc. You can shift this to any parts in the body, but shifting between left and right side is very helpful in refreshing focus. 

To conclude on the special techniques: These techniques can help, but in the end you will always find that no matter how hard you try the mind is a mad monkey. Sometimes there will be the serenity of silence and total focus; sometimes an endless cascade of thought after thought. Whatever technique you are using, don’t worry about if you are in serenity or chaos. Just let thinking be thinking and breathing breathing. 

CONCLUSION 

If you've read this far, now is the time to meditate! In the end, it is just sitting and breathing and noticing the mind wandering—and doing it over and over. What do you get from it? Insight, calm, concentration, chaos—sometimes nothing. But the point is not for you to chase what I or someone else say you get from it; the point is to sit and know from your own experience what meditation is and if it makes sense to you as a practice. 

Please feel to be in touch with any questions or comments at mark@markchrisingercounseling.com.