How to start meditating

Thinking on how to start meditating is easy to do and can help you make your meditations easier and certainly help you go deeper. Preparing to meditate can help you to unwind  and clear out your body and mind for deep meditation.

These are not rules, they are just recommendations. You do not need to prepare for meditation. 

You can meditate any time, any place you like. For instance you could be walking on the beach and just sit down for a few minutes and find yourself going within.

But if you have the time to prepare yourself, and you like to go as deep as possible in your meditations, the 7 steps to Best Prepare Yourself for Meditation might be invaluable.

7 Steps to best prepare yourself for meditation

1. What is Your Focus?

What you focus on is what you create. So the time before you start meditation, spend time bringing your focus to think about your meditation time.

• What do you want for your meditation today?
• Is there a prayer in your heart for your meditation?
• Is there an issue in your life that needs attention, clarity, resolve?
  
• What do you want from meditating today?
  

Focusing in like this is preparing your mind on how to start meditating in a powerful way. You are not wondering whereabouts unknown. You have an intention, a purpose, you are moving through your day with your eyes on your inner compass. Your focus is a big key on how to start meditating well prepared.

2. Create a space conducive for going within

It can support your meditation practice greatly to create a place that offers you inspiration, calm and peace the moment you enter it to start meditation. You can dedicate a room to this purpose or a nice corner somewhere in your house. The more simple the decorations are the more it invites a feeling of calm and peace. Bring something to this space that gives you inspiration to go within. It can be a beautiful picture of nature, a picture of a saint or a master, anything that reminds you of the love and truth you are cherishing.

Tend also to the practical things you need. I always meditate with a box of tissues, water bottle, hand towel and my journal. You can play music if you like and dimmed lighting or a candle really works nicely.

People that have created a space specifically for meditation tend to hold to their commitment to meditate 80% more of the time  then people who do not have a dedicated space available.

If you like to be inspired on how to create such a space you can read How to Create Your Own Meditation Room.

3. Prepare your body

It is nice to be clean and free of any odors before you start meditation. They actually can be a distraction for yourself or others if you meditate in a group. Brush your teeth, put on fresh and loose fitting clothes. It is nice to have a clean feeling about you. Cleaning yourself in preparation can be like a cleansing, you cleanse yourself of all the 'muck' of the day. What a great way how to start meditating.

4. Sitting Down versus Laying Down

Research has proven that laying down promotes us to go to sleep and thus not really be present in our meditation anymore. Meditation is about being awake, being clear. I recommend you sit up straight and comfortable enough so your body will not distract you during your meditations.

The most asked question is if one needs to sit in the lotus position to get the most benefits from meditation. My answer is this; Yes it is proven that when we sit up dead straight and have our legs crossed and our fingers in the mudrah position the kundalini energy in our spine can move about more freely and helps us to reach deeper states of consciousness when going within. But my experience is that many people have this happen by meditating in many different other positions too. I suggest it is better to sit up comfortably and be able to go deep then to try to sit in a lotus position and be distracted by discomfort of the body. So I suggest you find your own way how to start meditating.

5. Empty Your Mind

Meditation is NOT a way of making your mind quiet. It is a way of entering into the quiet that is already there — buried under the 50,000 thoughts the average person thinks every day.

A way to prepare yourself to have the mind be relatively 'empty' so you can focus within is to write down all the present thoughts you have, things you are trying to remember, things unresolved from the day perhaps. If you like to learn how to start meditating with a relative empty mind, there is an exercise here you can practice.

Trying to stop your mind from thinking is like trying to stop a river from flowing with your bare hands...it's exhausting and almost impossible to accomplish!

When you learn how to meditate, you learn to step out of the river, and let your thoughts flow past you effortlessly. When you learn to do this, you will find that your river of thoughts slows down all by itself. No effort is required.

 Meditation is an act of letting go - not an act of shutting down. 

6. Let Go of Expectations

It is important for you to let go of any expectation you might have about your meditation when you start meditation. Sometimes we desire to have an experience we had before again because it was so wonderful. This desire can stop the flow and be in the way of what wants to happen in meditation right now and we might not get the experience we needed to take our next step forward. Letting go of expectation help us to be more open to what is happening and that what wants to happen in response to our desire. The best way to how to start meditating is by letting go of any expectations and being open.

7. Focus On Your Reason to Meditate

Spiritual desire is to meditation what the sun is to human life: we need the sun to keep our life forces going, and we need spiritual desire to sustain our focus and endeavors in each second of meditation. Everything stems from your spiritual desire. You do not have to see it as “spiritual desire” if that does not resonate with you. You can see it as your motivation, your intention, or your drive to improve and evolve. Whatever you call it, this kind of desire is a feeling within, and is what sustains your focus as you meditate.

So take some moment at the beginning of your meditation and reflect on your intent, the very reason why you are sitting down and going within. Focus on it and let yourself connect to feeling of it. Let this feeling of spiritual desire carry you all the way in. If you like more guidance in this area go to "Why do you meditate".

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