Keeping Your Meditation Resolution

Is starting a regular meditation practice on your list of New Year’s resolutions? Congratulations! Making time for daily meditation is powerful act of self-compassion. As the Dhammapada tells us, not even one’s mother or father can be of greater help than one’s own well-cultivated mind.

However, if starting a daily practice were easy, we wouldn’t need to resolve to do it! Meditation may seem simple – after all, you’re just sitting there – and meditation instructions can be as simple as paying attention to your breath. But as anyone who has tried it knows, practice itself can be one of the hardest things you’ll ever do. Especially at first, the mind and body are likely to rebel at your attempts to slow them down and bring them together. Even very experienced meditators will occasionally find themselves struggling to remain present and aware. Add that to the usual challenges of cultivating a positive new habit, and it’s clear that starting a daily practice takes some determination.

Here are some tips that may make it a little easier to integrate the power of mindfulness into your daily life.

Examine your intention: Why do you want to meditate? What is it that you hope will change in your life? People can come to meditation for all kinds of reasons, from achieving inner peace to improving their golf swing. You are more likely to stay motivated if you connect your meditation practice to your deepest values. It’s not a bad idea to start every meditation session with a few moments of reflection on your intention for practicing.

Find a style that works for you: Simply being aware of the breath, wherever you feel it most vividly, and gently bringing your attention back to the breath when it wanders, is a good beginning practice for many people. But it’s not for everyone. You may prefer to focus on sounds or physical sensations. Using a mantra or music may help you stay present. If you can’t bear to sit still, a mindful movement practice like walking meditation or mindful yoga may be a good choice. Rick Heller’s new book, Secular Mediation: 32 Practices for Cultivating Inner Peace, Compassion and Joy, is a veritable encyclopedia of mindfulness techniques. It will help you find a practice you can stick with.

Do it every day: Once you choose your practice, make yourself a promise to do it every day for two weeks, whether you like it or not, whether you think you’re getting anything out of it or not. When you meditate, you’re rewiring the circuits of your brain that have been set by millions of years of evolution and a lifetime of habitual thoughts and emotions. It will take time for change to manifest itself. As with any habit, you have to make space in your life for the new behavior, and stick with it until it becomes part of your repertoire. Even five or ten minutes a day spent practicing will be more helpful than an hour’s sit every now and then. Choose a time when you can have some quiet space to yourself. I like to practice first thing upon getting out of bed, while the rest of the house is still asleep and before other activities distract me. Maybe your best time will be before bedtime at night, during a lunch break, or when you get home in the evening. If you can’t meditate at that time one day, no worries — just find another time to practice.

Try a guided practice: A quick internet search will reveal hundreds of audio guided meditations, many of which you can download for free. Here are some I recorded to support basic practices. My favorites include the Buddhist psychologist Tara Brach and Mary Maddux’s guided practices at her Meditation Oasis site. The reassuring voice of a meditation instructor can keep you grounded in the moment and help you feel you’re on the right track.

Find a teacher: You don’t need a teacher to meditate. Ultimately, your own experience of mindfulness practice will be your best teacher. But a good teacher can answer your questions, provide important guidance and insight, be a good role model, and share their inspiration and motivation. Your health care provider may offer a mindfulness class. An Insight Meditation group will offer Buddhist-inflected teaching that isn’t too heavy on the dogma. You might also choose to explore more traditional Buddhist teaching, if it’s available to you. I’ve been fortunate to encounter great mindfulness teachers who did much more than just share information – they became precious friends whose example lives in my heart.

Share your practice with others: Finding a teacher can also help you find other people who are also committed to learning to live more mindfully. It may seem that meditation is a solitary pursuit; but as you begin to integrate your insights on the cushion into your daily life, you may discover that we always practice with and for others. There is a beautiful energy in sharing your practice, an encounter with the humanity we all share. That energy can help keep your motivation strong. If there is no group near you, consider starting one of your own. You’ll find some tips for doing that here. You are also welcome to join us at the SBA Practice Circle, our online mindfulness group. Learn more here.

Learn to sit: You don’t need a fancy sitting posture to meditate, just one that allows your body to be upright and relaxed. I find if I slump or lean against a chair back, it’s harder to stay aware in the moment. And you don’t need to judge yourself harshly if you can’t sit in one of the lotus postures we see in popular media. Having said that, there are reasons why the various sitting postures have been handed down to us over the centuries. They help your body feel stable, upright and dignified, all of which can make you feel more comfortable and aware during longer periods of sitting. A mindfulness or yoga teacher can give you tips on how to sit for meditation.

Try Insight Timer: I don’t get anything for recommending this mediation timer for your mobile device. The basic ap is free and easy to use, and it’s been tremendously helpful to me in keeping up my daily practice. Along with giving you an assortment of pleasant chimes and bells to mark your practice period, Insight Timer awards you little stars for hitting milestones, such as number of days with a session or consecutive days of practice. It shows you pictures of others around the world who are meditating with you, and gives you the option of sending and receiving greetings. It may seem silly, but I know there are days when I made a point to meditate so I wouldn’t have a break in my consecutive days milestone!

Be compassionate toward yourself: Last, but by no means least, remember to show yourself compassion. It’s easy to beat up on ourselves when our mind keeps wandering or if we forget to meditate one day. Our inner voice may berate us that we’re not doing it right, or that we’ll never be any good at meditating. When that voice arises, offer yourself some kindness, and observe the thoughts as they dissipate. Remember that just the attempt to practice is a manifestation of your own natural wisdom. Take a moment at the end of your practice session to thank yourself for giving yourself this gift, and accept your own permission to use your meditation practice as an opportunity to be gentle with yourself.

If you have any tips for starting a meditation practice you’d like to share, please use the comments section below to do that. Best of luck as you begin your mindfulness adventure!