How to Get the Most Out of Your Meditation
If your meditation practice is just another thing to cross off your to-do list, or if you’ve tried meditation but didn’t find it as calming as you hoped, it might be time to rethink how you approach awareness.
There are many benefits to making meditation a regular habit. But if you’re not in the right frame of mind when you unfold your yoga mat, sit on the couch, or open the Calm or Headspace apps, you won’t get all the potential benefits.
In other words, you may need to learn how to relax before meditation. And yes, I know it’s difficult. (Especially right now.)
In Wired, Matt Janser suggests creating a dedicated meditation space to help you build a mindfulness mindset. This can be tricky, especially if you’ve already pasted over one part of the house as a workspace and another as a classroom for your kids. (You followed our advice to use literal masking tape , right?)
But that doesn’t mean you still can’t find a way to create a unique meditation environment, even in a space that should serve multiple purposes. Jancer advises lighting a candle before starting a meditation practice, for example, or drinking a cup of tea – and the trick here is that you light the same candle every time (especially if it’s a scented candle, so you can associate the smell with mindfulness and relaxation) and drink the same tea.
You can also change your mindset by changing your clothes, whether it’s going from casual wear to pajamas, or simply swapping out your casual stretch pants for stretch pants designed just for meditation. All of these little rituals can help remind you that it’s time to relax: the feeling of soft tissue on your skin, the warmth and taste of tea, the scent of your newly lit candle, the light cast by its flickering flame. …
(You already feel more relaxed, don’t you?)
The essence of meditation is that you cannot go into it, thinking: “Okay, I need to launch this application right now, otherwise I will not be able to go to bed on time, and tomorrow I will get tired and I have this Zoom meeting, and the children should go to the street and identify five kinds of flowers for the school event and I can’t wait until the end of the school year, except I don’t know what I’m going to do with them all day but it doesn’t seem like anyone knows what they are doing at all these days, so I’ll just turn this meditation on and get it over with . “
(I’m sorry for ruining the sense of relaxation we created together.)
Meditation, like most other beneficial practices, takes longer than it takes, if it makes sense. Mindfulness is not something you can turn on and off when it fits into your schedule. You have to come to this ready to commit yourself to the process – and making the prep work a part of the process will make your meditation habit more relaxing and more meaningful.
Of course, many guided meditation videos and apps start the process by bringing you into a more mindful state. The people behind them know that most of us don’t come into meditation as relaxed as we could or should have been.
But if you take the extra steps to make your meditation practice unique and different from anything else on your to-do list, you may be surprised at how your practice deepens and grows – and you may find new ways to maintain that sense of calm, focus, and clarity in everyday life.