Why We Need A Daily Meditation Practice And How To Start It In 2024
It is not only gurus who have a daily meditation practice.
These last number of years, having a daily meditation practice has become widely recognized in our Western cultures as a powerful tool to increase our awareness and ability to focus.
A great number of successful athletes, celebrities, and entrepreneurs publically share how they are using a daily practice of meditation to become more focused and enhance their performance and productivity.
As well as increase their general sense of well-being.
But these are only a few of the many profound benefits of establishing a daily meditation practice.
This article will cover some of the immense positive effects meditation can have on our lives.
It will also cover what meditation is and how to start a daily meditation practice if you don’t already have one.
In addition to that, I will also provide some useful tips on how to overcome some of the major excuses the egoic mind conjures up to trick us into not starting a daily meditation practice.
I, personally, have had a solid daily meditation practice for many years, and I sometimes share that daily meditation is more important to me than food.
What I mean by that is that I could go (though I am consciously choosing not to) for days without eating good and nutritious food, and it wouldn’t affect me all that much.
But only a few days without meditation has a tremendous effect on my overall well-being.
So, from personal experience, I can testify to the amazing positive effects of daily meditation.
The Benefits of Meditation
The list of spiritual, mental, emotional, and physical health benefits from meditation is long.
So, to honor the length of this article, we will only briefly touch on some of these.
If you wish to take a deeper dive, there is a ton of useful information and studies out there. So I would encourage you to search for them.
Overall Well-being
Meditation beautifully activates the parasympathetic nervous system (PNS) in our bodies.
The activation of the PNS reduces cortisol (the body’s stress hormone) and promotes various feel-good hormones such as dopamine, serotonin, and oxytocin.
The activation of these makes us more relaxed and increases our sense of general well-being.
Studies have shown that regular and consistent meditation can improve our sleep and even help with insomnia.
Regular meditation has also been shown to lower blood pressure and slow down our breathing.
In other words, regular meditation dramatically reduces stress, leading to an increased sense of calm and emotional, mental, as well as physical well-being.
Increased Health
The above-mentioned positive effects on our overall well-being may also have positive ripple effects on health, as low levels of stress can have a positive impact on our immune system and digestive system.
Enhanced Focus and Concentration
As meditation is all about focus and concentration, when practiced on a regular basis, meditation helps us build strong and powerful attention muscles.
This allows us to sustain our attention on whatever we choose to focus on, so as to not so easily be distracted by external (or) internal stimuli.
This practice of being fully present also allows us to cultivate a powerful ability to witness and observe the mental and emotional content that flows through our minds without being attached or identified with it.
So meditation helps us become more self-aware as well as mentally and emotionally balanced.
In addition to this, when our minds are no longer running amok, we are more tuned in to our creative faculties.
In other words, meditation can dramatically help us boost our creativity.
What is Meditation?
These are some of the beautiful effects a daily meditation practice can have on our lives.
And as we have now established that meditation is good for us, let us for a moment explore what meditation is.
I have found, over the years as a spiritual teacher, that many individuals don’t really know what meditation is.
Not knowing what meditation is makes it so much more difficult to find a practice that suits us.
So meditation is the simple (though not always easy) practice of being fully present with that which is here and now.
It is being in a state of witnessing and observing everything that comes into our awareness.
Without judging or labeling it.
It is embracing and allowing everything to be as it is.
Regardless of what it is.
So basically, any and every time we are in that state of being fully present in this now moment, we can be said to be meditating.
In other words, meditation is not when we are sitting cross-legged, with our palms facing upward or fingers touching in a particular way.
Various postures can be a part of the meditation, but they are not the actual meditation.
Another common belief is that meditation is about reaching a subliminal or Divine state of consciousness.
Meditation can certainly move us into altered states of consciousness, but for the general meditation practitioner, that is not the purpose of meditation.
The purpose and practice of meditation are simply to help us be fully anchored, centered, and grounded in the nowness of this moment.
That’s it.
Many ways to establish a daily meditation practice
Yes, there are many different modalities of meditation to help us get to that space of being fully present.
But these are merely modalities.
They are tools to help us to be fully present, but they are not the meditation in and of themselves.
Knowing what meditation is makes it so much easier for us to actually begin meditation in a way that works for us as unique, perfect, and whole individuals.
I remember when I first started out meditating, and how I had this perception that I had to sit cross-legged, in a state of complete mental silence and utter bliss.
That was my idea of what meditation is, but my meditation experience was completely different.
First of all, because of a lack of flexibility in my hip joints, sitting cross-legged for a long period of time is very uncomfortable and even painful for me.
So just forcing myself to sit in a way that did not work for the body was really setting myself up for “failure” to meet my preconceptions.
And second of all, I found no mental silence or stillness at all in the beginning.
Actually, it was quite the opposite.
The more still I became, the louder my mind got.
Obviously, that is not really what happened, but that is how I perceived it.
In reality, the more I slowed down, the more I became aware of the incessant mental activity that the mind was engaging in.
And as I had this misperception of what meditation is, after only a few months, I ended up stopping meditating out of sheer frustration.
My experience of meditation was nothing like what I believed it was supposed to be.
The mind will never go completely silent
Even now, after having had a solid meditation practice for years, I still experience periods when there is more mental stillness and periods with less mental stillness.
Only now, I know that I don’t need to judge or label mental movement and activity as bad or negative.
Even when I sit to meditate, only to “wake up” from fantasy land when the time is up, it is not wrong.
It simply is what it is.
Everything is always in motion, including the activity of the mind.
And as meditation is not primarily about stilling or quieting the mind, we get to witness and observe whatever is.
Including the racing of our minds.
With practice, our presence and attention muscles grow stronger, and our ability to be present even when the mind is running wild like an untrained dog increases.
How To Establish A Daily Meditation Practice
Alright, now that we have defined what meditation is, let us for a moment talk about how to establish a daily meditation practice.
Obviously, the first step is for us to choose to establish such a practice.
Just like we need to choose to learn a new language, play an instrument, or any other skill for that matter, we need to choose to have a daily meditation practice.
Any habit is formed through repetition, and so a good way to start is to pick a time of the day that will be our meditation time.
If we simply set the intention to meditate on a daily basis without deciding for ourselves when to do it, it is likely that we will fail to establish a daily practice.
Something to contemplate is that we do not want to build our meditation practice around our lives, but we want to build our lives around our practice.
So, picking a time that will be our meditation time every day is highly recommended.
Whether that be the first thing we do in the morning or the last thing we do at night, or during our lunch break, it really doesn’t matter.
As long as we do it on a regular and consistent basis.
So we want to choose what time to do it every day, or our daily meditation practice will most likely dissolve into, at best, a random activity that we do every once in a while.
We all have time to establish a daily meditation practice
Another aspect of establishing our daily meditation practice we need to consider is for how long we are to meditate.
This obviously depends on what our lives look like, but we want to set a timer for at least 10-15 minutes for each session.
In the beginning, it may take a little time for the mind to begin to slow down. And so if all we give ourselves is 5 minutes, chances are we will not reap the tremendous benefits of daily meditation.
A common excuse or objection people have is “I don’t have time to meditate”, and while that may seem a legitimate reason, it is really not.
Every single one of us has at least 15 minutes to spare each day to sit and meditate.
This reminds me of an old story I have heard many times.
The meditation student asked his teacher, “How long should I meditate?” The teacher answered, “At least 30 minutes a day”, whereas the student said, “I don’t have that much time”.
The teacher nodded and responded, “In that case, you should meditate at least 60 minutes every day.”
What this points to is that the egoic mind will always find excuses as to why we don’t have the time, or the energy, or enough knowledge, or even how we simply don’t feel like it today.
As long as we give the ego power to dictate our choices, we will always be held hostage by the ego.
Once again, we want to build our lives around our meditation practice.
Not the other way around.
Practice, Practice, Practice
I do my meditation pretty much first thing in the morning when I wake up.
And as I have been doing it for so long, I no longer need to argue with the ego about doing it.
It has just become such a natural part of my morning that I just flow into it.
Kind of like having breakfast or brushing my teeth.
I don’t need to think too much about doing any of these.
They just sort of happen, if you know what I mean.
Obviously, if there is another time during our day that is more suited for meditation, then it is perfectly all right to go with that.
Perhaps you have a busy household with kids that need to get ready and prepped for school or whatever.
It is not nearly as important when we sit to meditate as that we actually do sit our butts down and become still.
Every day. On a regular and consistent basis.
We want to make meditation enjoyable
What I do is that I begin by making myself comfortable.
It is important that meditation is enjoyable, and so often, I sit upright with my feet firmly planted on the ground or floor.
Starting with closing my eyes, I usually put a smile on my face to inform the body that it is safe to relax so that the body can begin to produce those healing chemicals we talked about in the beginning.
I set a timer for 30 minutes and move into the meditation with the intention to be as present as possible with the breath.
I then turn my attention toward the breath, witnessing and observing the breathing as it happens.
As the air flows in and out.
As the chest rises and falls.
When I become aware that my attention has drifted away from the breath, I gently and lovingly turn it back.
And I begin again. Again. And again.
All my meditations are silent (vipassana) meditations, but in the beginning, listening to a guided meditation that soothes and resonates with you can be helpful.
Invitation
So the invitation for us is to set the intention to start a daily meditation practice.
How that looks for us is obviously unique for each of us.
Obviously, over time, our practice will evolve and change.
But in the beginning, it is far less important how and when we do it than that we actually do it.
Getting started and getting into the habit of having daily meditation practice is the most important thing when starting to meditate.
So that is our invitation. To set the intention to meditate every day.
We can put little post-it notes with reminders on the bathroom mirror, the fridge, or our nightstand.
We can set an alarm to go off on our phone at the time that we have chosen as our meditation time.
Whatever we need to get started, we need to do it.
And when the time has come for our moment of meditation, we are wise to pay attention to all those egoic excuses that would keep us from meditating.
We can witness and observe them, but we do not want to give them the power to dictate our choices.
Or as that Nike slogan goes: Just Do It.
And then we find a space and place where we know we will not be disturbed during our meditation.
Out in nature is a wonderful place to meditate, but if we are living in a city, we make do with what we have.
And if we become aware of noise and distractions, we can use these as our focal point as opposed to the breath.
And then we give ourselves the tremendously healing gift of meditation. Today and every day.
Namaste 💜✨🙏🏾