5 Essentials of Meditation-Don’t Try Too Hard
This is my third installment of McLean’s 5 essentials for successful meditation:
Don’t try too hard.
Forcing one’s self to have a certain experience (“I’m gonna sit here until I don’t have any thoughts”) when meditating is only going to create more thoughts. I love McLean’s example of trying to force oneself to go to sleep. The more we try to go to sleep, the more we tend to think about the fact that we are not asleep. McLeans says “The only effort you put in is the effort to set aside the time and space for your regular practice.” This is really important. Schedule a time, create a quiet, and sit. That’s it. Period. Anything more and you’re going to find yourself becoming frustrated.
Remember, meditation, like every other thing we get do, requires practice. The idea of meditation is simple, isn’t it? Come and sit and quiet yourself. In reality, this is not so simple and requires repetition. So schedule that 5 minutes per day, go find a quiet corner in your home, and sit.
As always, come and sit with me at Yoga Hohm