Photo Credit: Brooke Reynolds

Are you ready to live with less fear, anxiety, anger, and shame? Are you ready for more love, peace, compassion, and joy in your life?

Great! Meditation is a proven way to gain these benefits, and this article will give you a simple way to start or deepen your own meditation practice so that you may thrive.

Commit to these five action steps to help you have a powerful meditation practice.

1. DO A THIRTY MINUTE MEDITATION ONCE A WEEK.

• Like riding a bike, you learn to meditate by doing it. Use the 30 or so minute meditations to learn how to do a particular style of meditation (like breath, sensation, walking or loving-kindness meditations). Training meditations are marked with an asterisk (*) on our guided meditations page.

• Start by learning breath meditation on our guided meditations page. Then learn other styles in the recommended order listed below.

• An excellent way to get a 30-minute sit in every week is to attend our weekly group meditation (Now a virtual event due to COVID-19) every Tuesday at 6:15 PM (CT). Meditating in community helps deepen and support your practice. For details on how to attend, please see our events page.

• ADVISORY: If you suffer post-traumatic stress or have experienced flashbacks, be sure to read and understand these precautions to help ensure your meditation practice is entirely safe and healing.

2. MEDITATE FOR FIVE OR MORE MINUTES EVERY DAY.

• The hardest part of meditating is making yourself sit down and start doing it. To practice this vital skill, start by doing short, daily meditations. Don’t worry about the short duration of the meditation, they can be lengthened once you have mastered the skill of sitting down and meditating.

• Complete this Create A Daily Meditation Practice journaling activity to help establish a daily meditation practice.

• If you are new to meditation, guided meditations are quite helpful. Use the five-minute meditations on our guided meditations page. Start with the five-minute breath meditation.

• Hold yourself accountable by printing out and using this PDF of a meditation tracking log. Track your progress and appreciate all of the good effort you make.

3. Attend a Weekly Group meditation or LISTEN TO at least ONE TRAINING A WEEK.

• Meditating in community helps deepen and support your practice. At our weekly group meditations (Now on Zoom due to COVID-19), we do a 30-minute guided meditation followed by a mindfulness talk or activity. For details on how to attend these group meditations, please see our events page.

• If you can’t make it to our weekly group meditations, then listen to an online training at least once a week. They will help you get the most out of your meditation practice. Listen to them while driving, doing chores, or relaxing and winding down for the evening.

• Start with our Half-Day Meditation Training. It is several hours long, with natural breaks. Consider it to be four roughly hour-long trainings.

• Then listen to The Power of Persistence training, before starting our “Living in the Now Training Series.”

• After that, listen to any of our other training series.

4. INclude A Daily Slogan Practice to help Integrate Mindfulness into YOur Daily Life.

• We meditate to help us be mindful during daily life. Slogan practice helps us more rapidly integrate mindfulness into our daily life.

• Learn how to work with slogans by reading, “How to Use Slogans to Transform Your Life.”

• Start with the slogan “breathe.” Learn the significance of this slogan by reading, “Working with the Slogan Breathe.” Then use the slogan guide each day until mindful pauses become a new habit, and hold yourself accountable to this practice by printing out and using the slogan and meditation tracking log.

5. Join our Newsletter to receive updates on when new trainings, talks, podcasts, articles, and other mindfulness resources become available.

Long-Term Game Plan

Having made your five commitments, here is your long-term game plan. Learn the meditation styles in whatever order you want. But if you want guidance try them in this order:

  1. Breath meditation

  2. Sensation meditation

  3. Sound meditation

  4. Loving-kindness meditation

  5. Bare awareness meditation

For each meditation style you learn, practice it for five minutes a day for one or more weeks, before learning the next style.

After you have experience with all five styles, pick one that you are drawn to, and do five or more minutes of it daily for two to four months, with a 30 minute session of the same style once a week. This will help you become grounded and skilled in that technique to get the most out of it.

Then pick another style that calls to you and do it for a similar length of time.

Increasing The Length of Your Meditations

Once you establish a routine meditation practice where you are meditating for five or more days a week for over a month, start to increase the length of your daily meditations by one minute each week. Increase the length of your meditations until you meditate 15 to 30 minutes a day.

Once your mindfulness and concentration become more continuous, and you understand the meditation techniques, you can meditate without the use of the guided meditations. Of course, feel free to use them whenever you find them helpful.

Thanks for your desire to improve yourself and get the most out of life. Best wishes to you!