How To Meditate Properly

There are really hundreds of ways of meditating coming from many different traditions but I am just going to give you a very quick beginner's way to get you going. It is very difficult to answer the question how to meditate properly primarily because there are hundreds of ways to meditate, so what I prefer to focus on is actually the setup for the meditation. That is about making the time and actually showing up on your cushion.

It is about creating a space, perhaps surrounding it with a ritual and then it is about posture. To meditate properly, you really don't want to be bugged by knee aches and back aches and so forth. This is where other practices like yoga or stretching or Pilates is really going to help you.

Then, in terms of the actual practice itself, whether you are sitting for ten minutes, twenty minutes, an hour or ten days, it really comes down to the setup and then you can actually go into the subtleties of the practice which may be an inquiry based practice, an insight practice or simply watching your breath. One of my favourite meditation styles is what I would call an insight meditation. Insight meditation is really a practice of watching what is, whatever is arising in you in the moment, it's what you watch.

The opportunity here in the middle of your sitting is simply to be with whatever is going on. And you can be sitting there for a while, suddenly notice, “Ah, what is this? What is this going on, in my knee?” Down here, little bit of pain, bit of tingling but not reacting to it, being in a state of real acceptance, just acknowledging to yourself, this is tingling quality down here because everything is changed. This tingling quality suddenly will go, will move on in no time, and then maybe you start to notice, “Hmm, what is this going on in my belly? Some sort of energy is trying to move down here”.

You are simply watching it, labelling it, maybe saying, “Ah, smoky sensation going on in my belly right now”. You are simply watching it from a state of stillness. If you do this for twenty minutes, just watching it, see what happens, meditation is always an experiment, it is always different every day.

Give it a try. You will see what happens. .