How to Meditate: A Beginner’s Guide From a Meditation Teacher

If you are new to meditation, I want you to do something before you even begin:

Drop the idea that you need to be good at it.

You do not need the right cushion. You do not need to meditate at 5:00 in the morning. You do not need twenty uninterrupted minutes, a perfectly quiet room, incense, special music, or the ability to sit cross-legged without your foot falling asleep. You absolutely do not need to clear your mind.

Meditation is not supposed to become one more thing in your life that you are trying to perform correctly. It is a skill. And like any skill, it will probably be a little messy while you are learning it. That is not a problem.

Messy is a sign of engagement, not failure.

How do you meditate if you're a beginner?

At its most basic, meditation is the practice of intentionally placing your attention somewhere, noticing when your attention has wandered, and gently bringing it back. That's it.

Choose something obvious enough that you can find it again when your mind inevitably takes off without you. Your breath is a wonderful place to start. You might notice the feeling of air moving through your nose, the rise and fall of your chest, or the expansion of your belly.

If the breath doesn't work, choose something else. You can repeat a mantra or affirmation; you can listen to sound; you can notice sensations in your body.

There isn't one magical focal point that makes meditation work.

There is only the one you can actually return to.

What should I do when my mind wanders during meditation?

Bring it back. Gently.

This may be the most important thing I can teach a beginning meditator.

Your mind will wander and you will suddenly realize that instead of feeling your breath, you have spent the last three minutes thinking about an email, something somebody said yesterday, what you're making for dinner, whether you remembered to make an appointment, or an imaginary argument that has not happened and probably never will. Welcome to having a human brain!

Research on focused-attention meditation actually describes meditation as a repeating cycle: attention rests on an object such as the breath, the mind wanders, we become aware that it wandered, and then we shift our attention back.

In other words, the wandering does not mean meditation stopped working.

Noticing that you wandered is part of meditation and returning is part of meditation. You might return fifty times in ten minutes. That means you practiced returning fifty times.

You are not trying to stop thinking

This is probably the misconception I hear most often:

"I tried meditation, but I couldn't stop thinking."

Of course you couldn't because thinking is what minds do.

Somewhere along the way, many people "learned" that a successful meditation should involve a completely empty mind. That is not a reasonable expectation for a beginner.

Meditation teaches us to have a different relationship with our thinking.

A thought appears: You notice it; and rather than grabbing it and following it for the next ten minutes, you practice letting it move through and returning your attention to whatever you chose as your focus.

The goal isn't no thoughts. The practice is not having to follow every thought.

Don't scold yourself

There is another layer to this that matters enormously.

You notice you've wandered and immediately think:

Come on. Focus.

I'm terrible at this.

Why can't I do this?

Everyone else must be better at meditation than I am.

Now you aren't only distracted but you're also criticizing yourself for being distracted. We don't need that extra step. When you realize you've wandered, there doesn't need to be a courtroom proceeding. No little internal lecture.

Just return.

Breath.

Breath.

Thinking.

Notice.

Return.

Breath.

That's the practice.

You are not being graded and there are no gold stars or trophies to be won.

What if the same thought keeps coming back?

Sometimes thoughts are persistent.

You remember the same conversation again and again or you begin planning your afternoon to do list. Your brain may produce a problem it desperately wants you to solve right now.

When that happens, you don't have to wrestle the thought into submission.

I like something much simpler. Say to yourself, internally "Not right now." Gently, the way an adult would to a small child. Not angrily and not as though the thought shouldn't be there.

"I see you. Not right now." And back to the breath. If it comes back thirty seconds later? "Not right now." Back to the breath.

We are practicing the ability to decide where our attention goes rather than allowing every thought that appears to automatically decide for us.

How long should a beginner meditate?

Please don't start by deciding you are going to meditate for thirty minutes every single day for the rest of your life.

This is another place where perfectionism sneaks in wearing workout clothes.

Start with an amount of time you can actually do: Three minutes counts. And give minutes counts also counts. Ten minutes is wonderful.

A short meditation that you actually practice is far more useful than the elaborate meditation routine you abandon after four days.

Meditation is a process, not an event. We are teaching the brain and nervous system something through repetition.

You don't need to start strong; you need to just start.

What time of day should I meditate?

The beginner answer is always the same: whenever you will actually meditate.

Morning works beautifully for some people. Maybe lunchtime works.

Maybe you sit for five minutes in your parked car before walking into work.

Maybe you meditate after the kids go to bed. Maybe you practice with a teacher once a week and slowly discover where meditation naturally fits into the rest of your life.

The "best" meditation practice is not the theoretically perfect practice.

It's the one that becomes yours. I give you permission to be unconventional and messy when you start.

What should meditation feel like?

Sometimes peaceful or boring or restless or emotional or deep relief.

Sometimes your mind settles surprisingly quickly and other days it behaves like someone dumped a box of ping-pong balls down a staircase.

You are learning to notice what is here without immediately needing it to become something else or judging how you have arrived today.

Meditation is best understood as a life skill rather than simply a relaxation technique.

We are also practicing attention, awareness, non-reactivity and the ability to notice what is happening internally before automatically responding to it.

How do I know if I'm meditating correctly?

If you are intentionally practicing awareness and returning your attention when it wanders, you are practicing meditation.

It might not feel elegant yet and that's okay.

When someone learns to play the piano, we don't expect the first song to sound like the hundredth. When someone learns another language, we expect pauses and mistakes and awkward sentences.

But somehow people walk into meditation believing they should immediately know how to inhabit their own minds perfectly and the truth is that you don't. That's why we practice.

Sometimes having a teacher really matters here. A good teacher can help you understand what you're experiencing, troubleshoot what isn't working, introduce different techniques, and remind you when necessary that hard doesn't mean wrong. That's why we created Higher State Meditations.

Higher State Meditations is not simply a library of recordings telling you to close your eyes and relax. It is a place to learn how to meditate.

Real teachers. Live online meditation classes. Different techniques. Opportunities to practice, ask questions, get stuck, come back, and gradually build a meditation practice that makes sense in your actual life.