Hi friends. I know the biggest issue with learning how to meditate is that we just can’t seem to stop our thoughts. The mind just wants to keep running. All the books, websites and courses tell us to quiet the mind, follow the breath and watch the miracles happen. The problem is that quieting the mind and following the breath feel completely impossible for most of us.
I was there. I know how it feels. You’ve set aside quiet time (maybe even arranged a babysitter!) and you sit in an uncomfortable posture and all you can do is think about everything other than your breath. Your to do list, the fact that the babysitter is leaving, the argument you had with your spouse, and everything else. It’s like the act of sitting down and being quiet actually makes the thoughts LOUDER. It can feel really frustrating and almost maddening.
Here is what I’ve learned. You don’t have to stop your thoughts to meditate. You don’t have to quiet your mind. All you have to do is direct your mind. You see, there’s something that almost nobody teaches: as you begin to relax, your brain actually produces more and more thoughts.
Here’s why: when you are falling asleep, your brain waves actually start to slow down and they pass through the frequencies of different meditative states before they actually fall into the frequency of deep sleep. As the brain lowers its frequency, it relieves stress by trimming and strengthening neural connections. To do this, it creates a lot of thoughts. And if you think about what it feels like to fall asleep, you’ll remember that you often have a lot of weird and crazy thoughts, like you’re starting to dream just as you begin to drift off. That’s meditation. It feels a bit like falling, like euphoric floating and …. you’re having thoughts!
They key to getting to that state of relaxation, where you brain starts to slow down, is to direct your thoughts. By directing your thoughts, you give yourself a bit of a script to follow. If your brain is busy enough, it leaves no space for the erratic stressful thoughts, like to do lists and replaying arguments.
This is why guided meditation can be so powerful in helping people to learn how to meditate. The guiding voice tells you exactly what to do so it keeps the mind busy, away from the usual negative chatter. Here I have included a guided meditation that only takes about 5 minutes. It is based on the work of the Heart Math Institute (I’ll talk about their work more in another post). This meditation is called a heart lock-in and it’s really easy to do. Also, by keeping your sessions short, you still reap the benefits, but it feels a lot easier to do and helps keep you motivated.
Try out the meditation and let me know your thoughts! I would love to hear from you so leave me a comment below!
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