Congratulations on having landed on this page. It’s proof that you have finally decided to give mindfulness meditation a chance. It is more than likely that the term in itself or the idea is not novel for you per se. But perhaps you don’t understand the concept in its true essence. Sure, the idea of enhancing your mental clarity, being more aware, improving your focus, finding peace, and optimizing your personal and professional life sounds enticing. But such superficial information is barely ever sufficient to invite a new practice into your life. And hence, you are probably here looking for a more in-depth understanding of what mindfulness entails, how to start the journey, and have your questions and queries satisfactorily answered before you can get on with it.

Adopting a new practice is a three-step process that starts with the decision-making and ends with implementation with a pile of information in between that facilitates the transformation from a decision to realization. Now that you have taken the decision, it is time for us to help you collect all the information that can pave the way for you to start practicing mindfulness in your everyday life. And that’s exactly what we aim to achieve with this comprehensive guide.

We have crafted this guide primarily for the beginners of the league of meditation and mindfulness. We understand that such an adventurous new journey can sometimes present with impediments. The aim of this guide is to blend mindful practices in your routine life in a fashion that derives greater peace and leads to a conscientious life. It will put an end to your everlasting yet futile attempt of finding happiness somewhere else; a delusion of what life could have been or what it should be; and bring contentment to you with what it is.

Once you are brought back to the here and now with an amplified ability to remove judgments, deeper and lasting fulfillment will become your destination. But that’s quite enough for a glimpse into the value that this guide holds. Let’s not keep you waiting and dive straight into the guide itself.

 

An Introduction to Mindfulness Meditation

 

Many would tell you that a human mind is one of the most complicated yet efficient tools at our disposal. Unfortunately, just as many of us forget to highlight a disclaimer that it is also one of the loudest. Remember the time when it felt like you were no longer the master of your thoughts? Of course, you do, considering that it’s pretty much an everyday occurrence for the majority of us. In times like these, certain thoughts will continue to pop in your mind by no deliberate effort of your own. The harder you try to shake them off, the more they would seem to consume you until you end up helplessly looking for a switch to turn them off and regain your mental peace and clarity.

A simple cure to the horrific picture painted above is known as mindfulness meditation. But wait, “sit comfortably and focus on your breath for thirty minutes” isn’t really a statement that reeks of conviction for a beginner looking forward to starting with mindfulness. If anything, it is likely to further stretch the underlying confusion. If such is all the information that you are relying on to start with mindfulness, it is only a matter of time before you lose faith in it. Don’t believe us? Go ahead and try it out. Spare a few minutes of your time, sit on your favorite couch and start focusing on your breath. Then come back and whine about how your brain got even louder than normal the moment you started.

It is because mindfulness is not just about paying attention. It has four components of equal significance.

• Paying attention
• On the “here and now”
• In a specific way
• With no judgments whatsoever

In other words, mindfulness meditation can be defined as your innate ability to not only be present but also be completely aware of yourself and your surroundings. It is mindfulness that prevents overreactions to whatever it is that is happening around us. Remember that we have used the word “innate” with mindfulness here since it’s an ability that is inbuilt for all humankind. You can think of it as dormant. The ones who invest their time and effort into practicing it are able to finally activate it and get the most out of it on a day-to-day basis.

Let’s make it even simpler. The moment you try to blend awareness with your everyday experiences involving your senses, feelings, and emotions, you are practicing mindfulness. As per the research, there has been substantial evidence that mindfulness meditation can help a great deal in optimizing the mental as well as the physical processes of your body.

 

What You Need To Know About Mindfulness Meditation

Now that you have been briefly introduced about mindfulness meditation and a concept has been developed in your mind, here are a few things that you must know about it before you start practicing. [restrict]

1. You Will Need Time

The first and the foremost thing that’s worth mentioning about mindfulness meditation is that it is going to take a bit of your time. More often than not, people would tell you that it’s a seamless practice that blends right in with your routine life with no additional amount of time to be taken out of your schedule. However, in all honesty, you are going to have to arrange for around 30 minutes every day in order to practice it properly with maximum effectiveness.

The practice itself may only take as little as 10 to 15 minutes of your precious time. But isn’t it in human nature to procrastinate a little and call it mentally preparing one’s self for a task? Keeping an additional 10 to 15 minutes, therefore, can only be thought of as being practical. So, there are multiple benefits for your mental and physical health associated with mindfulness meditation. However, you are going to have to invest thirty minutes of your time every day to realize these benefits.

2. You Will Need The Right Environment

Depending on the type of mindfulness meditation practice that you choose to adopt, you are going to have to need the right kind of environment in order to experience its benefits. Especially in the beginning when things don’t really come naturally to you. By the “right kind”, we simply mean an environment that is calm and cozy. As a beginner, it is recommended for you to practice mindfulness in an environment that is away from the noise and related distractions which may make it harder for you to quiet your mind.

Your goal should be to find a silent corner away from people. A place that is marked with peace and serenity. As long as such features are being satisfied, it doesn’t matter whether you are practicing mindfulness meditation at your home or perhaps even in your office.

3. You, Will, Need A Center Of Awareness

Remember that mindfulness meditation is not about removing all thoughts from your mind. It is about bringing your entire focus to one single event that is happening in the present moment. You have to invest a conscious effort into deliberately choosing something to focus your attention on. The beauty of mindfulness meditation is that it comes with a standard as to what events could be chosen as the point of awareness. As long as it is happening in the here and now, you are good to go. As such, you can choose to fixate your focus on the sound of falling rain, birds chirping outside, the rhythm of your own breathing, the movements of your muscles, even your own thoughts, or anything at all that you deem suitable.

4. You Will Need To Remove Judgment

Let’s recall the definition of mindfulness highlighted above. Try to understand that removing all associated judgments is an imperative part of mindfulness meditation. Once you start to practice mindfulness, you will surely find your mind wandering and trying to deviate from the selected center of awareness. Instead of being upset about it, you need to learn to accept that it is what a mind does. It’s natural for a human mind to wander. There is no need to judge yourself and call it a failed experience for the mere reason that your mind still wandered a little while practicing mindfulness meditation. If the center of attention is your own thought, try to be as non-judgmental about it as you can. It’s the only way you can use mindfulness to understand your thoughts better and put yourself on a track to eternal calm and peace.

5. You Will Need To Be Gentle

As mentioned earlier, when the mind wanders, the worst thing that you can do is rage a war against it to try and bring it back to the point of awareness. In a way, your mind is synonymous with a stubborn kid who takes pride in doing everything that he is told not to. Therefore, the harder you try to get rid of these thoughts, the more they’ll return with greater intensity. The only option at your disposal is to be gentle in slowly pushing the unnecessary thoughts aside and leading the way for your mind to get back to whatever it is that you have chosen to be focused on.

6. You Will Need To Be Patient

An important thing to understand about mindfulness meditation is that it works differently for different people. Michael, at work, may have told you that he was able to experience instant relief with mindfulness meditation last week when he chose to give it a go, but that doesn’t guarantee the same result for you as well. For some people, it may take a bit of time and practice before the effects start to present. Therefore, it would be a commendable idea to brace yourself for patience and consistency before you start practicing mindfulness. Instead of giving up, remind yourself constantly that you will eventually start to see the difference. The benefits of mindfulness meditation, as you will see in the latter part of this guide, are plenty. So, in the long run, being patient and consistent will surely turn out to be worth your while.

 

Simple Ways To Practice Mindfulness Meditation

This brings us to the most important part of our guide; the simple ways to practice mindfulness meditation. As highlighted above, the guide is meant to inform the beginners and so, we would like to elaborate on the three basic strategies as to not overwhelm you with all the information. Once you have mastered the skills of practicing these strategies, we can then move forward with the more advanced types of mindfulness meditation in a separate guide. For now, let’s take a closer at these basic practices and get you started right away.

1. Mindful Breathing

The good news is that mindfulness meditation practices can easily be blended with tasks and activities that you commonly undertake in your routine life. Say, breathing for example. Remember the last time when you spent a day without breathing? Thankfully for you, you can’t. So here you are having taken breathes through all of your life, but did you know that you can conveniently merge mindfulness with an activity as innate as breathing?

All you have to do is follow the steps given above in order to practice mindful breathing to restore the balance in your mind, take control of your thoughts, find peace, and achieve mental clarity.

• As with the majority of meditation techniques, try to find a silent, peaceful corner to practice mindful breathing. Make sure that you are away from all the noise and distractions of the outside world for the next few minutes when you will be meditating.
• Lie down straight on the floor. Ease all of your muscles. Straighten your back but don’t try to overcome the natural curvature of your spine with force. Keep it relaxed.
• Spread your legs straight on the floor and put your arms aligned to your body.
• You can choose to close your eyes if that works for you for better concentration. Or else, you can soften your gaze.
• Now take a deep breath. Try to inhale as much of the air in your surroundings as you can. Make sure that you are not rushing and be slow in taking a deep breath. For better rhythm, you can count to three in your mind while inhaling.
• Hold your breath for two to three seconds, then slowly start to exhale out of your body. Your aim should be to push as much of it out of your body as you can. As mentioned earlier, you can again count to three in your mind while exhaling.
• Continue to breathe in such a pattern or rhythm and try to bring your entire focus to the sensation of breathing. Concentrate on what it feels like when your body is filled with air. Focus on your belly rising and then flattening back with each of your breaths. Try to imagine the air moving through your nostrils to the mouth and into your lungs.
• Try to concentrate on the air being pushed to all parts of your body. You can also focus on what your arms, hands, and legs feel like through the process. How are they responding while you continue with the rhythmic breathing?

Trying to converge your entire focus to rhythmic breathing is likely to remove all unnecessary thoughts from your mind and bring some perspective instead. Follow mindful breathing for a few minutes for enhanced effectiveness in terms of bringing peace and mental clarity. Remember the rules of being gentle with your mind and politely bringing it back to focus on breathing as it tries to wander away.

2. Progressive Muscle Contraction

Progressive muscle contraction is another commonly used technique for mindfulness meditation that can be practiced with or without blending it with mindful breathing. It relies on focusing on the sensation of rhythmic contraction and relaxation of the muscles instead. You can follow these steps to practice progressive muscle contraction for mindfulness meditation to experience the many benefits that it has to offer:

• Start with finding a silent, peaceful corner; an environment away from all distractions just as you did in case of mindful breathing.
• You can decide on the posture that you would like to take for progressive muscle contraction as long as it is something comfortable. For beginners, it is recommended to lie straight on the floor, but you can choose to sit in a comfortable chair as well.
• Once you have taken the posture and are ready to meditate, start with the breathing exercise.
• Now start to clench both of your fists slowly until you have a tight grip. Hold the grip for a few seconds. Then slowly relax both of your palms until they are fully open.
• Repeat the process for a few minutes while focusing on the sensation of what is happening to your muscles. Bring your entire concentration to what it feels like when your fists are clenched. How are your muscles responding? And then do the same as you begin to relieve the fists. Focus on the progressive contraction and relaxation of the muscles that will help you remove all of the unnecessary thoughts from your mind and replace them with peace and mental clarity.

Remember that the same practice can be used with any set of muscles that you choose. You don’t necessarily have to stick to your hands. For versatility, you can use your feet instead and try to bring your attention to the movement of your feet. For instance, you can start by lifting your right leg and move your foot in a clockwise circle. Then put it down, raise your left leg, and do the same with the foot all the while focusing entirely on what it means for your body to have one set of its muscles moving in a pattern. Such techniques of mindfulness meditation are generally known as “Body Scan”.

3. Mindful Walking

Another simple technique that you can use for mindfulness meditation is that of mindful walking. As the name suggests, the activity includes merging mindfulness with a common activity of walking. Here are the steps that you can follow to practice mindful walking:

• Start by standing straight. Make sure that your back is straight but avoid making it stiffer than natural. Now try to feel the ground underneath your feet and imagine your weight distributing evenly throughout your body.
• Now lift your left hand. The thumb of your left hand should be curled with the fingers of the left hand wrapped around the curled thumb.
• Place your left hand somewhere close to the belly button. Now bring your right hand and wrap its fingers around the left hand. You will find a crevice between the index finger and the thumb of your left hand. Make sure to put your right thumb at this crevice. Remember that this posture is of extreme importance since it helps you maintain balance while walking and avoid unnecessary distractions such as that of swinging arms as you begin to walk.
• By this point, you are already familiar with the importance of keeping the focus while practicing mindfulness meditation. In order to help you with it, it is recommended to slightly lower your gaze as to not be distracted by the scenery or people around you as you go for a walk. Although make sure on the other hand that you are not looking straight down at your feet. This will potentially disturb the natural balance of your body.
• Now start moving while keeping your entire focus on the movement. Lift your left foot and swing it forward to take your first step. Keep your entire concentration on the way your leg feels as it swings forward. Then try to feel the way that the ground feels underneath your foot once you have taken the step. Repeat the same process with the right foot and take the next step while focusing on the sensations and the muscle movements.
• Maintain a steady pace and continue to take successive steps all the while keeping your focus on the process. As a rule of thumb, your aim should be to keep a pace that is slower than the one you use while walking around as part of your routine. But it shouldn’t be too slow either that it starts to feel like a funeral.

As you continue to walk with a steady pace with your entire focus on the movement of your legs, what it feels like when your feet touch the ground, etc., you will slowly be able to remove the disturbing and troubling thoughts out of your mind. You will soon be able to experience stress-relief and a surge of mental peace and serenity will ultimately find you.

Remember that there is a wide range of practices that you can use for mindfulness meditation. As stated earlier, however, we have only highlighted the three basic ones in order to help the beginners in our audience start with mindfulness meditation. Another important thing to remember is that like any other practice, it will probably take some time for you to master the art of mindfulness meditation and begin to experience its benefits. It’s imperative, therefore, that you don’t let the potential complications or initial failures get in your way and make you quit. Keep with it and you will eventually start to see the difference for sure.

For beginners, it is recommended to practice mindfulness meditation techniques in the same pattern in which they are mentioned in this guide. Begin with mindful breathing. Once you start to get hold of it, slowly incorporate progressive muscle contraction to your routine. After a while, you can then also use body scan to maximize the benefits of mindfulness meditation.

 

Blending Mindfulness Meditation With Routine Tasks

By this point, you must be thinking that the practices highlighted above are more specialized forms of mindfulness meditation. And rightly so. Be it breathing exercise or the progressive muscle contraction, such practices are highly focused and particular in terms of what they aim to accomplish. An implication of that is you finding it harder or taking more time before you can master them. Don’t lose hope, though. The best part of mindfulness meditation is that it can conveniently be blended with your routine tasks. In other words, you can start by being as mindful while doing the daily chores as you can.

Here’s the thing. You can brag about your drool-inspiring entertaining life all you want on social media, but the fact remains that almost all of us spend a significant part of our days indulged in mundane activities like eating and driving. Wouldn’t it be amazing if you could learn to be mindful while performing these everyday tasks?

Let’s take an example of showering and see how you can learn to be mindful of such an ordinary task. You can start by invoking your senses in an attempt to sharpen your awareness. Bring your entire attention to the way the soap feels against your skin. Perhaps focus on the shape of the soap or the kind of fragrance that it is giving off. Try to be aware of the water running through your body and the sound it makes as it touches the floor. Try to hold your attention at the selected event for as long as you can. If your mind wanders, keep the judgments at bay and be polite in turning it back to being more aware of what is happening around you.

In the beginning, if you can’t seem to be mindful of the entire experience, try to adapt it for as little as just five minutes while you are performing the daily chore. Such practices may not be as effective in deploying the specialized mindfulness meditation techniques highlighted above, however, these will surely add up to making it even easier for yourself to find peace and get the control of your mind back. With regular practice, it will also help you master the specialized mindfulness meditation techniques mentioned above. Simply put, blending mindfulness with routine tasks can be thought of as a prerequisite that prepares your mind well for the more specialized techniques with maximum effectiveness.

 

Many Benefits Of Mindfulness Meditation

Alright, so now you have a fair understanding of what mindfulness meditation is along with a few of the techniques to practice it. We have also tried to familiarize you with how you can blend mindfulness with your routine tasks. So let’s move forward with this guide and elaborate on the many benefits that mindfulness meditation has to offer. After all, it is only going to be the benefits that will eventually persuade you to give it a go and potentially make it a habit for the rest of your life. In all honesty, the benefits associated with mindfulness meditation are plenty. We have highlighted, however, a few of the major ones in order to show you why it will be a good idea to adopt mindfulness meditation.

1. A Coping Stress For Routine Stress

Let’s face it; excessive stress is no longer an occasional occurrence for the majority of us. The modern world of today has surely made things convenient and efficient for the humankind. However, a side effect of it is a competition, one that is unheard of for the human community. Take a look at your life and you would be able to see the kind of mechanical life that you and your peers are leading. Working for more than half of your day throughout the week is not just about making good money anymore. It has turned more about survival. The moment you give up on the idea of consistently working hard, you are setting yourself up for mediocrity. And such is the very basis of why we are all confronted with excessive stress on a regular basis.

So, it’s already established that there is hardly a way around stress owing to our lifestyles of today. This brings us to the alternative strategies that you can use to cope with the routine stress. Truth is, much of the stress is more or less cooked inside your brain. It is your unnecessary, disturbing, or troubling thoughts that exaggerate the stress in your head. With mindfulness meditation for a few minutes, you can essentially make sure that such thoughts are wiped out of your head that serves to work optimally as a coping strategy against the routine stress.

2. Restoring The Balance Of Your Mental Health

What needs to be understood is that stress is not a standalone component. It is important to deal with stress in a timely fashion since it has a proclivity to give rise to a wide range of mental health disorders. Talk to a psychologist or a psychiatrist for a while and they’d let you know that being confronted with excessive stress on a routine basis while taking it lightly is the perfect recipe to open the gateway to more serious problems including anxiety and depression. Therefore, if you happen to be someone who takes his mental health any seriously, mindfulness meditation has the simplest and most time-effective answer for you.

Mindfulness meditation has the potential to be proactive as well as a reactive approach to tackling mental health concerns. Since it enables you to handle excessive stress circling your life in a timely fashion, it prevents you from developing more serious mental health issues including depression and anxiety. On the other hand, however, it has also been found to be effective in temporarily controlling the intensity of such episodes as well. In other words, mindfulness meditation is not only for the victims of depression and anxiety but is just as valuable and helpful for people who would like to keep such disorders at bay and have their mental world working optimally.

3. Better Prospects For Professional Success

In the spirit of talking about the mechanical lives that we have been tricked into leading, what would you say is the greatest asset that can define your success in such a lifestyle? If you are being honest, the personality and cognitive traits including the likes of creativity and productivity will surely top the list. In the world of high competition, the better the creativity and the higher productivity that you can depict in your professional life, the better would be the prospects for your success.

But remember the time when you had a big fight with your spouse before leaving for work and you could literally feel yourself operating at less than your potential for the entire day? It was purely because of the excessive stress that consumed much of your cognitive power and paralyzed it for a while that manifested itself in terms of reduced creativity and productivity. As such, with mindfulness meditation, once the disturbing and troubling thoughts have been pushed aside, you will have all of your mental capacities working to determine the creativity and productivity of the day. Consequently, it will significantly improve the chances of your professional success in the long run. Think about it, a few minutes of mindfulness meditation and you will almost be destined to achieve the one thing that you hold the dearest in your life.

4. A Peaceful Personal Life

There is no denying the fact that much of the arguments that heat up beyond our control are because of our submission to the temporary emotions. Anger and frustration are two of the absolutely normal emotions for human kind. However, for a peaceful personal life, it is important to learn to express such emotions in an acceptable fashion. What’s more is that it is also likely that you end up expressing such emotions to the wrong person or at the wrong time. For instance, the last week when your supervisor came to your office and started bashing for a report that was not more than a few minutes late was probably not about you, but in fact, could have been about a personal complication that he might have been experiencing in his life.

With mindfulness meditation, since you adopt a proactive and a reactive approach to tackle excessive stress that might have been controlling your emotions and your actions, you disable its effects from penetrating into your personal life. By dialing down the negative emotions like anger and frustration, it enables you to keep a certain level of maturity and decency in all of your arguments that benefits you in the form of a peaceful personal life, be it revolving around your partner or any other relationship that you hold dear.

5. A Good Night’s Sleep

There is a good chance that like a lot of us, you have been taking the night’s sleep for granted. It is so unfortunate that the majority of us fail to realize the far-reaching effects of not having sufficient sleep on a consistent basis. An occasional lack of sleep because you were busy working on an important report to submit in the morning is fine. But for the rest of it, it should be your goal to get around 8 hours of sleep every night. The importance of sleep is sufficiently accentuated by the fact that your cognitive capacities continue to diminish as you consistently lose a good night’s sleep. All of your creative tendencies and productivity that you take pride in, will fade away in a matter of days if you don’t start to take the sleep any seriously.

But it’s not always the work that keeps you up at night, is it? More often than not, you will find yourself going to bed at a reasonable hour and yet you will end up taking a couple of hours before you can finally fall asleep. What’s that about? Of course, that can be associated with stress as well. Somewhere at the back of your mind, it is the stress that pushes you to overthink about the circumstances of the future or bring back the memories from your past that you would rather not remember. Since it’s a part of the same mind game that we have been talking about, do you see how mindfulness meditation will help you to quickly fall asleep and get a good, deep night’s sleep? A few minutes of practice that can remove the troubling memories and clear up your mind to let go of all the overthinking will surely help you with your sleep-wake cycle.

6. Be More Proficient In Hitting Your Weight Loss Goals

If someone were to tell you that the reason you are unable to lose weight is that you are stressed, wouldn’t you have a puzzled look on your face? What if we told you that the reason you are getting obese in the first place is the same as well? You are probably going to laugh and shake it off. But take a moment and think about it again. Have you ever heard of stress-eating? Do you see now where we are going with this?

Truth is, a lot of the people have this one similar response to excessive stress. The routine pressure makes them eat more. It’s synonymous with how some people lose sleep over excessive stress, others would over-eat as a response. This can turn into a primary reason why you are unable to hit your weight loss goals and have been adding a few pounds every month to your weight for quite some time.

As such, mindfulness meditation is an impeccable strategy that can lend you a hand in making you more proficient in hitting your weight loss goals. By removing the stress, unnecessary thoughts, overthinking, and whatever else it is that is disturbing the natural balance of your mental health, it helps a great deal in protecting you against overeating that eventually translates into optimum weight and improved physical health in the long run.

 

What Else Can Mindfulness Meditation Help You With?

Remember that the above mentioned are only a fraction of the benefits being offered by mindfulness meditation. There have been several psychological studies that have further shown that mindfulness meditation can help a great deal in the management of chronic pain as well. It could be because of an injury or a serious medical condition like that of cancer. Since the idea of mindfulness meditation is premised on getting your mind under control, it has been effective for patients in terms of pain management. By removing the focus from the pain and replacing it with the calm and peace, it can temporarily reduce the intensity of the sensation and provide relief to the patients.

As already evident, mindfulness meditation can also be taken as a surefire way to overcome your negative feelings at least temporarily. The feelings, emotions, or memories that have the potential to disturb your mental state, cause trouble and havoc in your thoughts and push you towards overthinking. All of such feelings and emotions can conveniently be replaced with happy thoughts with a few minutes of mindfulness meditation on a regular basis. It may not be a permanent cure for such emotions, but as always, it can reduce the intensity for a while and prevent you from overreacting or expressing it in an inappropriate fashion.

Lastly, as per the psychological research, people who practice mindfulness meditation on a regular basis are more likely to have a higher concentration of gray matter in their nervous system. An increase in the gray matter has an implication of enhanced memory, improved capacity for learning, an optimum regulation of emotions, and an ability to have a perspective that leads to better and informed decisions in general.

In light of the many benefits that mindfulness meditation has to offer, there is hardly a reason why you shouldn’t give it a go. Be honest to yourself and try to think of a single benefit that has been highlighted above which is not worth the pursuit. The best part is that all you have to do in order to adopt mindfulness meditation as a habit is to spare a few minutes of your precious time every day. You don’t need any special equipment, a coach, or a specialized venue to practice such meditation either. You can practice it at home, at work, or even in the park. Blend such conveniences with the range of benefits that it has to offer and you would automatically be convinced to put in an effort into making it a habit for yourself to practice mindfulness meditation on a daily basis.

 

Frequently Asked Questions About Mindfulness Meditation

We made a promise to you at the start of this guide that we are going to try our best to make it as comprehensive as we possibly can. In this part of the guide, therefore, we would like to highlight a few of the commonly asked questions about mindfulness meditation and their answers in order to make sure that all of your queries have been answered up to satisfaction.

1. Am I Practicing Mindfulness Meditation In A Wrong Way?

More often than not, just because the mind wanders and there are several thoughts that are consistently popping into your mind while they are trying to meditate, people would think that they are doing something wrong. An important thing to remember, however, is that as long as you are able to be gentle and polite in bringing your mind back to focus on the object or event of your choice and let go of the wandering thoughts, you are absolutely fine. A busy mind certainly doesn’t imply that you are not practicing it the right way.

It is an innate habit of your mind to be lost in thoughts. You can try as hard as you can but you can’t make your mind deviate from its very nature. The whole point of mindfulness meditation is to learn to be able to be in control of your mind. The ability to bring its focus back to where you want it to be is the aim of this form of meditation. If you start being frustrated with the way your mind deviates and tries to focus on other thoughts would be the moment you are going astray from the right way to practice mindfulness meditation. Be gentle and slowly bring your focus back to whatever it is that you have decided to concentrate on. That’s the true essence of meditation.

2. Are There Specialized Trainings For Mindfulness Meditation?

Another common question that people ask is about the specialized trainings regarding mindfulness meditation. The beauty of such practices is that it can be applied at any time, any place, and with whomsoever you want. If you are the kind of person who prefers to indulge in mindfulness meditation alone, you can do so at your home. On the other hand, if you want to practice it with your friends or perhaps with a specialized group under the supervision of a coach, you can find one and try it out with just the same effect as practicing it solo as well.

As for other specialized trainings, guided mindfulness meditation has been made an important component of various psychological therapies including that of cognitive-behavioral therapy CBT. Depending on your individual circumstances, therefore, you may want to try such specialized trainings as well. The integration of mindfulness meditation to psychological therapies is yet another proof that the practices are backed by science and are known to be effective in optimizing your mental health for years.

3. Should I Practice Mindfulness Meditation On A Daily Basis?

As mentioned earlier in the guide, mindfulness meditation is both a proactive and reactive approach. While there is no such requirement for you to practice mindfulness meditation on a daily basis, it would certainly be recommended in an event that you want to adopt it as a proactive approach. Say, for instance, you are going through a difficult time in your life and are confronted with excessive stress. It would be a commendable idea to practice mindfulness meditation as a coping strategy under such circumstances. It will, however, be a reactive strategy in this case.

On the other hand, if you adopt mindfulness meditation as a routine practice, the likelihood that excessive stress would create even bigger mental or physical health issues for you, in the long run, would be drastically reduced, in the first place. In such an event, you will be using mindfulness meditation as a proactive strategy.

All in all, however, the effectiveness of the practice isn’t disturbed based on how many days did you miss. So if you are unable to practice it for a couple of days, there is no need for you to think of it as a failure or get a panic attack. You can pick it from where you left it on the third day. In simpler words, it’s not about keeping a streak.

4. Should I Opt For A Coach Or An Instructor?

In all honesty, opting for an instructor for mindfulness meditation is purely a matter of personal preference. There are a number of people who prefer to start with the instructors in the beginning and then continue on to practicing it all by themselves while there are many others who would start alone in the first place. You can find success stories for both of these groups of people and as long as the fundamentals are being followed, the effectiveness of mindfulness meditation is in no way defined by whether you are practicing it under the supervision of an instructor or not.

The point is that there is ample information available on the internet. We have tried to cover much of everything that you need to know as a beginner in this guide. If you want to opt for guided mindfulness meditation, there are plenty of tracks, videos, and podcasts that you can find on the internet as well. So, if you want to start without a coach or an instructor, it is more than possible for you to do so with maximum results. Simply put, there is no “requirement” to opt for an instructor per se.

5. Does Yoga Blend Well With Mindfulness Meditation?

This is the best part of opting for mindfulness meditation. It can easily blend with your routine activities. And when it comes to merging it with another specialized activity like that of Yoga, the benefits are likely to be multiplied that much. If there’s anything that makes a perfect combo with mindfulness meditation, it is the practice of Yoga.

Combining yoga and mindfulness meditation is like aiming for the best of both worlds; physical health and mental health. There is a range of postures that you can try with Yoga which are known to enhance your physical and mental capacity to cope with stress. Such postures can make it more convenient for you to regain your focus and clear up the unnecessary thoughts from your mind.

 

Common Problems People Face While Starting Meditate

One thing that you have to keep in mind is that integrating mindfulness meditation to your routine life is essentially about change. And like all other changes that you may have gone through in your life, it is likely to be tough and there will certainly be a few problems that you will be confronted with, in the beginning. We have highlighted a few of such problems and their potential solution in order to prepare you better to keep at it.

1. Wandering Mind

As mentioned earlier, the wandering mind is perhaps one of the major problems that are common to all the beginners. When you give mindfulness meditation a go, you would instantly find out that your mind is louder than you thought. You would struggle with bringing its focus back while it continues to defy and get lost in the thoughts of its own. Such is an instance that makes a lot of beginners ultimately quit with a thought that mindfulness meditation is perhaps not their cup of tea.

Such a thought, however, couldn’t be farther from the truth. Mind it that such a problem is common to everyone who has ever tried meditation in any form. As a matter of fact, many of the experts continue to struggle with it to date with an experience of years in meditation. It is because your mind is programmed to be lost in its thoughts. It’s what it does. The point of mindfulness meditation is not to silent your mind. Rather, it’s to develop an ability to take control of it and be gentle in bringing its focus back to where you want it every time it wanders around.

2. Finding Time

There is no argument over the fact that we are all leading a busy life. Thanks to the excessive competition, for the most part, it is like a race. We must keep running or else we’ll be left behind. As such, it is likely for someone to find it difficult to make time for mindfulness meditation. Yes, it’s true that it doesn’t take more than a few minutes of your time every day, but even that can be an issue for some people especially when they are beginning with the practice.

This is the very reason why we decided to include the routine activities which can be merged with mindfulness meditation. If you are finding it hard to make dedicated time for more specialized practices of mindfulness meditation, make it a goal for yourself to integrate mindfulness with the routine activities such as that of taking a walk, eating your food, or even having a conversation with one of your friends or colleagues.

Once you are mind is prepped with it, it will eventually start to get easier for you to make time for more specialized practices and get the most out of what mindfulness meditation has to offer.

3. Nodding Off

Here’s another common problem that beginners face when they start with mindfulness meditation. For some, it’s an issue of a loud mind that just won’t stop talking. For others, it may be an overly silent mind that makes them nod off instead. The simplest solution to such a complication would be to make use of a different posture while practicing mindfulness meditation. If lying on the floor or sitting on a comfortable chair isn’t working for you, you should perhaps try one of the postures from the book of Yoga. Once a bit of your concentration is dedicated to keeping a certain posture, the chances of nodding off are going to be greatly reduced. A word of caution, though. Make sure that the posture you choose is still convenient and comfortable enough. You don’t want all of your efforts being invested in getting the posture right. Otherwise, it may become an impediment to the overall practice of mindfulness meditation.

4. No Visions

This one can probably be linked with a lack of information or misinformation, to say the least. There have been many instances when the beginners practiced mindfulness meditation for a week or so and then wondered why is it that they don’t see any vision, colors, light, or a poetic scenery as they were indulged in the practice. The only thing that we can tell you about it is that it’s an utter myth. Meditation is in no way about seeing lights and colors and fairy meadows. This is not how it works to make you calmer and peaceful. The idea here is just to remove your unnecessary thoughts and focus on a harmless event that is happening in the present. If you are in search of light to guide you and show you the way, we can go ahead and let you know beforehand that you are going to be utterly disappointed.

5. Trouble Relaxing

Lastly, every single guide that you can find on mindfulness meditation would emphasize on being relaxed while practicing meditation. However, for some people, it is hard to relax. Put the blame on the excessive stress or any other reason, as long as your mind and body are not properly relaxed, it will continue to be hard for you to get the best out of mindfulness meditation.

In such circumstances, it can help a great deal to practice other techniques which can help dissipate the energy and promote relaxation in some way. For instance, you could try exercising. Physical activity has a way of relaxing your mind and body which will serve to make it easier for you to try mindfulness meditation. Therefore, it would be a commendable idea to assign the time right after your workout session for mindfulness meditation. Similarly, a wide range of other such activities can serve the same purpose. For instance, breathing exercises, taking a walk in a park, listening to your favorite music, etc.

 

Last Words

So, here’s pretty much everything that you needed to know about mindfulness meditation as a beginner. You now have sufficient information at your disposal to start with the practice and see the difference that it creates in your personal and professional life. So, are you ready to unlock the true potential of your mind and body? Then it is time for you to start implementing everything that you have learned in this guide. Remember, being patient and consistent with it is your way to realize the benefits of mindfulness meditation.

We tried our best to be as comprehensive with this guide as we could. If, however, you still have a question or query that can help you get a better understanding of mindfulness meditation, please feel free to reach out and ask for help.[/restrict]