How to meditate

November 28, 2013 by Martin Pelletier 4 Comments

Many people ask me how to meditate. Most people are usually frustrated that they cannot stop the flow of thoughts that comes to their mind. Actually, what you need to do is the opposite: let your thoughts flow completely! At first, you will feel flooded by them, but with time, the flow will calm down and ultimately cease completely. When you get upset about your mind not staying still, you actually increase your mind’s activity and worsen the problem! So here’s how to do it:

1. Sit still in a quiet place.
2. Set your timer to 5 minutes so that you know how long you meditated for. You can increase that time progressively when you feel the desire to.
3. Close your eyes and acknowledge the first thought that comes to your mind.
4. Here’s the important step: DO NOT link this first thought with any other thought. For example, if your thought was “I need to get some milk”, don’t think about when you’ll do it or feel bad because you forgot about it. Simply ACKNOWLEDGE the thought and let it go.
5. Sit quietly until the next thought comes up.
6. Repeat step 4 and 5 until your timer rings.

As you can see, the important part is to BREAK THE CHAIN of thoughts. NOT suppress them. It’s a little bit like breaking a dam that’s holding water. When you break the dam, water (or thoughts) will rush like crazy. You might even feel overwhelmed or uncomfortable by all this activity in your mind. But once you acknowledge your thoughts, one by one, the river will gradually recede to its normal flow and you will regain your stability. Over time, you will actually ground yourself even more, stay calmer in stressful situations and become more aware of what is moving you away from your steady and comfortable flow of thoughts.

Enjoy!

And as always, let me know if you need more guidance with this!

Martin