8 Week Introduction to Meditation

Week One

You CAN Meditate

There is a widespread misunderstanding about meditation and even people who have been doing it for decades often believe they can’t do it, or that they are bad at it. This is simply a misunderstanding.

Meditation is not about having some superhuman ability to hold perfect concentration. That WOULD be hard. Instead it is a process of experiencing small moments of focus, often. In between we get distracted.

Getting distracted, and then noticing you have been distracted by the mind – is part of the meditation. A very important and useful part. Each time we notice we have been distracted and then refocus our focus we are developing skills – the skill of awareness of our own mind, and the skill of being able to redirect our attention wherever we want. This is a superpower.

One of the things we are doing in meditation is simply becoming more familiar with our own mind. Indeed one of the Eastern terms for meditation is often translated as meaning – to become familiar. At first glance our mind can be a little scary.

The very first thing we often discover in meditation is that our minds are not as under our control as we might have thought they are.

Week Two

Being Present

The present moment has more to offer than we might think.

Our mind has no interest in the present moment – it reminisces over the past, it worries about the future, it plans, judges, strategises, fears, dreams but is never in the present.

Yet one of the central hypotheses of meditation is that everything the mind thinks it wants and thinks it will achieve with its schemes in terms of joy, happiness, contentment, peace of mind is all available right now, if we just know how to be present.

This is what we can start to touch into and get a feel for the more we meditate. Small moments of present moment awareness, often.

We can use anything going on right now as an anchor point for present moment awareness. Last week we used the breath, and we will start each week with that classic meditation. But another powerful anchor is to use the sensations of the body.

Week Three

See, Hear, Feel

Mindfulness meditation is about observing the present moment, exactly as it is, with no judgments, opinions, beliefs or any other mental modifications.

Easier said than done.

Nevertheless, we experience short moments of focus and full absorption into the present moment and we can try to have short moments, often.

This week we look at a really useful variation of mindfulness meditation technique from Shinzen Young known as See, Hear, Feel which uses the activity of the mind as the object itself.

In this technique we notice, or ‘note’ every few moments what we are experiencing internally – either something visual – ‘See’, something auditory – ‘Hear’, or something we are feeling – ‘Feel’.

A more active meditation than we’ve used before but often a game-changer for people who have struggled so far to really see their own minds working in detail.

We also introduced another new meditation technique – that of ‘Feel Rest’. What is also present in every moment is various parts of our body and psyche that aren’t stressed or in pain. Our minds tend to focus on what is wrong, but in this technique we choose to focus on what isn’t wrong – what is restful.

Week Four

Emotional Dexterity

Mindfulness meditation involves meeting the present moment, exactly as it is, without all our mental modifications such as our judgment, opinions, preferences, or beliefs.

In previous weeks we’ve looked at our breathing, our body sensations, even our thoughts, as objects in the present moment onto which we can place our attention.

In this, the last week of our look at mindfulness meditation, we look at what is perhaps the most challenging aspect of the present moment – our feelings.

Meditation is good for so many things, but one benefit is to do with our becoming more familiar with our mind, and more aware of what it is saying to us. As we notice its propensity to focus more on what is wrong than what is right, and its propensity to become almost immediately dissatisfied with whatever it has we can start to have agency over whether we allow our attention to stay there. Once we develop this awareness of our mind we can see where it’s coming from and choose to move it somewhere else.

In meditation we don’t try to avoid uncomfortable emotions, but we can stop listening to our mind when it is leading us down unhelpful pathways in our head that is likely to lead us to experience needlessly unpleasant emotions.

Week Five

Mantras

After four weeks of looking at mindfulness meditation we changed track and looked at a new type of technique.

Mantra meditation is a very simple, powerful, and universal technique involving the repetition of a syllable, word or phrase.

“At first you do the exercise, and then the exercise does you.”

Week Six

Loving Kindness

This week we look at the four virtues that Buddhism suggests make up love, kindness, and compassion, together with a couple of meditation practices to cultivate them.

“Our task is not to seek for love but merely to seek and find all the barriers within that we have built against it.” – Rumi

Week Seven

Chakra Meditation

This week we continue where we left off last week but then introduce a new meditation technique where we focus on different spots on the body (sometimes referred to as chakras), while listening to music.

The music is from Joachin Lievano’s album ‘Ecologie’ which may be available on Amazon.

It can also be streamed on Spotify.