Meditating: You Can’t Do This Wrong
I started meditating in a rehearsal room at an acting school in New York City. Other than being vaguely introduced to meditation in some yoga classes that same year, I had never attempted any formal practice. The acting class I was in, however, had the following requirement:
to take the 3-month class, students had to commit to sitting in meditation in our own homes every morning and evening for minimum 20 minutes each session.
That was in addition to the meditation we were going to do as part of our 5-hour classes, two days per week. This schedule seemed both weird and intriguing to me, so I was fine with the commitment.
I was a beginner then, and I still am now, 20 years later. There have been months when I didn’t sit to meditate at all, months when I practiced daily, and times when I consciously practiced every second in order to get through circumstances I thought almost unbearable. Today I have some similar feelings, and I’m obviously not alone. During the current crisis, there has been a collective turning toward this ancient practice as a source of steadiness and as an antidote to new levels of anxiety that, let’s face it, were already high even before the pandemic. Downloads of meditation apps have surged in the last 2 months, and schools that have never touched mindfulness before are incorporating meditation exercises into distance learning programs. World-renowned teachers are offering insight and guided instructions on YouTube for starting (or continuing) a meditation practice, and Thank God for them all.
I won’t be the 900th person to announce that meditation is good for us and we all should really be doing it. Let’s keep our to-do lists very short right now, please. But if you want to meditate, or have tried and given up before, maybe these thoughts from my experiences meditating can help.
Friends offer the following reasons for why they don’t continue any kind of meditation practice, even while simultaneously telling me they understand the benefits and *wish* they could. (And, for the record, I heard these same comments pre-pandemic):
“I’ve tried, but meditation doesn’t work for me. It doesn’t help me relax.”
“It’s too hard. I can’t meditate because I just can’t stop my mind from thinking.”
“I can’t get everyone in the house to be quiet enough for me to meditate, so there’s no point.”
Each of these comments tells me that there is a lot of misinformation about meditation - about how to do it and what it ‘does.’ The mass cultural shift toward and interest in meditation is potentially wonderful, for the beginning meditator and maybe even for the world, but I think some important principles have not translated well. The expectations seem all wrong, and when you’re set up to be disappointed, throwing in the towel is almost inevitable. So here’s how I dispel the myths I hear in those reasons.
#1. To better understand the practice of meditation, and to have more realistic expectations for it, think of meditation the way we think of working out and exercising.
You don’t wake up on Monday morning, decide to go running for the first time in 5 years, and judge whether that day’s run “worked” by whether immediately after it you emerge toned, strong, and in guaranteed health. Instead, what’s real is: you did some good work for your body on Monday. We know, from science, that exercise like running can be a good idea as a practice for your overall health, and benefits increase as you keep your exercise consistent. There are lots of styles of exercise and philosophies around those styles. And when you do exercise, you might feel good after, you might feel sore after, or both. Those immediate sensations change based on so many factors - the quality of your workout, how it meets the needs and abilities of your body at the moment, the weather, or what was on your mind.
So it is with meditation. There aren’t any sensations or feelings (like relaxation) that are guaranteed from sitting to meditate. We know, from science, that it can be good for our overall health - contributing to more facile brain function, greater capacity for compassion, better focus in daily life, deeper self-reflection, and reduced levels of stress hormones. And benefits increase as you keep your practice consistent. You might feel good after (including *maybe* more relaxed), but you might feel more tense, especially when first starting a practice, in the same way that your muscles feel most sore when you first start an exercise routine. The mind can take quite awhile to calm down. In addition, during meditation some people notice long-avoided thoughts and feelings coming up, and this can be uncomfortable. The experiences vary, so expecting a specific outcome after sitting for meditation is unrealistic, and not the point. The point, remember, is your overall emotional, psychological, spiritual, and physical health - just like when you take up an exercise program as part of your lifestyle. Any endorphin hits along the way are a bonus, not the goal.
#2. It is hard.
In my opinion, that it should be easy is the biggest fallacy about meditation in popular culture - sitting to meditate is very often not fun AT ALL, not necessarily peaceful, sometimes unpleasant, and is some of the hardest work I do. We are confused about expected bliss, I think, because we see images and cartoons of monks in robes sitting, smiling, and looking blissful. Don’t equate those images with ease and happy-clappy feelings about meditation…at least, not necessarily.
There is that cliché phrase: “It is a Practice.” But let’s look at what that really means, with an example in exercise. Lifting weights is a practice that we know, scientifically, is beneficial for the body in multiple ways. AND IT IS HARD. Not only is the physical act of lifting an appropriate weight difficult to do, evoking physical sensations of stress, weariness, exhaustion, even elements of pain, but also, what is happening on a cellular level is difficult and miraculous — when you are lifting a weight, if you are following a program and form properly, you are creating tiny micro tears in your own muscles. From this breakdown, the muscles have taught themselves to rebuild stronger. This is why we are encouraged to lift for the number of reps that brings us close to exhaustion, and then to rest a day in between — so that the muscles build back stronger. Of course many of us do a few reps one day, decide it’s hard, and then stop. For sure: not much benefit from that. Instead, to reap the benefits, we try to reach our edge, we rest, we go back and do more reps.
This is also what happens in meditation. We sit, we try to focus on our breath going in and out, we succeed for maybe 1.6 seconds until the brain is hijacked by some series of rapid-fire thoughts - sometimes mundane, often anxiety-producing - and then once we *notice* that the brain has been hijacked, we bring the attention back to noticing the breath. That is the rep. The hijacking is inevitable — thoughts are guaranteed to arise, because that is what the brain does. But that is not a problem. It is instead the opportunity, right there, to do the rep: bring the attention back to noticing the breath. There. You just did a rep. It was hard! And the next time (in about 0.4 seconds) your brain is hijacked, you will do another one. Doing those reps is building your muscle. Don’t expect it to be pleasant, expect it to be work - for a very valuable purpose.
#3. You don’t need quiet, or anything else, to meditate.
When I first learned to sit in meditation back in that Manhattan rehearsal room, we did have various bells and whistles, because my teacher liked them — she burned incense, the lights were lowered, and she had 24 adults remain quiet for the 20-50 minutes that we’d meditate each day. For awhile, I duplicated some of that at home. But a few years later I met another teacher who taught me something that felt right for me — whatever occurs during meditation is real and is to be included. A phone ringing, a shriek from outside, a bottle of strong-smelling soap falling off the counter in the next room, even an interruption of a small child shouting, “Mommy!…” This new teacher taught me that the practice is about the nakedness and honesty of each moment, whatever it happened to be - and not about how well we controlled the environment. Whatever comes up is to be used, to be integrated, and it becomes yet another opportunity to notice the sound or the distraction, to be in the immediate present, and then again bring the attention back to noticing the breath.
Similarly, I typically don’t use a mantra when I meditate. No crutches, just me and the breath. For me personally, the struggle of using only my breath is useful practice. It reminds me that I don’t need a perfect or beautiful environment in order to meditate - I need the practice to teach me that whatever the moment contains is perfect. Once in awhile I do enjoy a guided meditation with soft music and Oprah or Deepak’s voice, but I am conscious that those elements are, to an extent, distractions, even if they can be used as lovely tools. I want to be learning how to meditate so that the practice itself is the tool - anywhere, when I have nothing, because there will be times when I can’t access Oprah. (She does text me, though. For real. A story for another day.)
One other thing about those peaceful, relaxed feelings we’ve heard people have during meditation — I too have had moments of peace sometimes. I can tell you a little of what it’s like for me: in the middle of a sitting, there have been moments (maybe for 3 seconds?) when I am suddenly aware of everything feeling very quiet, and the me that is the true me is conscious that I am separate from what I am observing, from feelings, from thoughts — those things are all there too, but there is a quiet in the center of all of it, and I am that quiet. I’m not sure of the right adjectives to describe that place in the center — it’s…simple, steady, clear. I think my Heart actually lives there. Generally the peace doesn’t last long before my brain has jerked me onto another train of thought. And then I practice again, backing off of that train and returning to the platform.
I have a very active mind, and I think it’s important that I try to be kind to it, so I don’t give it flack for being a beginner for so many years — after all, my brain has helped me so much. We don’t have to get mad at our brains, or at our thoughts or feelings - that really wouldn’t be fair because we don’t choose those. Thoughts and feelings simply arise. Actions are different - we do choose our actions. What I want is to teach my brain, my thoughts, and my feelings that I am still the master of the mind. So the action that I choose, over and over, is to sit in meditation practice. I am a Beginner, again, today.
