Meditation is a borderline universal form of spiritual practice. Various forms of meditation practices can be found in most of the Eastern spiritual traditions. It was through the dissemination of Buddhism that meditation became popularized in the West, but such practices are also a very prominent part of Taoism. Shinto practice too at times had meditative elements in it. You can also find meditative practices in other religions and traditions too. Meditation has long since left the confines of religions, and has become secularized and psychologized in the form of mindfulness.
The popularity of meditation both historically and in the present day can be explained simply by the fact that it is effective and can give broad benefits, both spiritual and otherwise. In the secular context, meditation has become popular for relief of stress, anxiety and even pain. It can improve the regulation of emotions and increase awareness, both of the self and the world at large. One can find evidence for improvements in all kinds of areas related to mental function, from accuracy of perception to improved attention to tasks at hand.
Within the spiritual context, different traditions have different aims yet which nevertheless seem to have something in common. The Buddhists seek enlightenment. Taoists seek becoming one with the Tao. The Hindus seek to realize that the real Self is the same as the omnipresent, non-dual Brahman. All of these ideas share the element of rising above normal human cognition and existence.
But before one can dream of such things, we should focus on establishing a rudimentary meditation practice. Even if you wouldn't wish to pursue any kind of spiritual aims, the stress reduction benefits are most likely worth it. Even members of the Eastern spiritual traditions argue that there can be many benefits for lay practitioners too. In our hectic, interconnected and overstimulated world, the most basic forms of meditation are awfully a lot like just learning to give your mind and body a chance to properly rest for once.
What are we trying to do here?
Our aim here is to establish a sustainable, daily meditation practice that does not rely on the worldview of any particular tradition, while keeping in mind the various precautions raised both in tradition and in modern research. In time, further studies and potentially new forms of practice will be necessary, but this regimen should leave you well-prepared to further work on your practice.
In addition, we will be looking at meditation practices not only as something you do once or twice a day, but also something that can be in shorter sessions or as a mindful mindset be used as a tool in various situations.
In a nutshell, we are looking to build a daily regime of 20 minutes twice a day. This will most likely have the following effects.
1)The mental and physical health benefits from stress reduction and increased awareness
2)The ability to let various emotions and experiences to emerge and go
3)The ability to recognize the texture of your own and mind
4)Increasing your sensitivity to spirit contact
I would almost argue that the point before the numbered list – daily regime – is the most important one. Whatever it is that you do, consistent, moderate effort is the way to go. Too much at once will burn you out, but doing too little too sporadically will make sure you go nowhere.
The first point probably doesn't need much elaboration. More likely than not you are very overstimulated, stressed and suffer from some kind of smartphone-induced attention deficit. This will help to rectify all that over time. Point two is extremely important. Whether it's the ability to let go off mundane irritations or to cultivate the ability to say ”well that just happens” in front of the supernatural, meditation can help with it. The latter is really important, because panic draws in negative entities.
The ability to recognize the contents of your own mind is great for understanding the nature of your mind and thoughts. It's also great for recognizing when external influences might be trying to enter your mindstream.
To some extent meditation can also sensitize you to spirit contact. Considering how common meditation is these days, not everyone gets incorporeal visitors so easily – or then they simply brush them off, as is often instructed within meditation traditions.
How to do it?
Before you even start, you need to get preferably a real notebook which you will use as a meditation journal. After each session write what you felt and thought. Most of the time it will not be much and you don't need to be excessive in detail. But sometimes genuinely noteworthy things will happen. Sometimes it's less about happening in a session, and more over an extended period of time. If you have ten entries of ”my back started hurting”, maybe you should do something about your posture...
For the posture, I recommend sitting in a chair at first. It's easiest to get the alignment of the spine right with a chair. You want your spine to be upright, but not unnaturally tensed as you want to keep that natural curve at the lower back. Don't slouch or recline. Your shoulders should be relaxed and drop down and a bit back to allow you to breathe in a relaxed, open manner. Keep your palms on your hands.
The problem with chairs is that it can be a bit difficult to get into the proper mindset while sitting in one. We spend so much of our time sitting in a chair. It can be helpful to clearly separate meditation from other activities. The various lotus poses you take on the floor are not only iconic and very stable when done right, they clearly signal to you that you are doing something else than what you normally do on a chair.
The most basic lotus position is quarter lotus. Sit down on the floor so that each of your legs rests under the opposite knee. This is pretty much a basic cross-legged posture that most will take intuitively. Half lotus has one leg over the other so that one foot rests over the opposing thigh. This can be a bit hard on the knees, so see if this works for you or not. Full lotus is the most complicated and has both legs over each other. Most people can't manage this – at least comfortably – without training (if ever), so you probably shouldn't push yourself to use this.
You have to be a bit more mindful about your spinal alignment with the lotus poses so that your lower back doesn't get too rounded. A meditation cushion can help with this, but I don't expect – or want – you to shell out money into meditation until you can stick with it.
As for where to put the hands in the lotus position, for getting started, hands on knees is just fine. You can also experiment with the various mudras. I like to do the gyan mudra, which is palms upward on knees with index fingers and thumbs forming a ring. For your head, you should tuck your chin in slightly. This helps with potential tension. Often you will see instructions about holding your tongue slightly behind the front row of your teeth, and I have found this useful in at least avoiding jaw tension.
Try to find a posture that's comfortable enough so that your meditation doesn't become just a pure struggle with your body. At the same time, your body should be awake. For this reason lying down is not a good idea in most cases.
Now that you have the basic posture down, it's time to start the meditation. We will be doing what is called focus meditation, and it will use your own breathing as an object of focus. There are some other types we will explore later, but this is what is very commonly suggested for beginners.
It's really simple. Count your breaths and reset the count every ten counts. The breath is counted on the inhalation. Don't try to control your breathing per say. Just let it happen naturally. If you mix up the count, start again from one. Do your best to fix your focus on your breathing. All kinds of thoughts and sensations will come and go. Don't try to ”squeeze” them out, because that distracts from the focus on breathing. Just keep on focusing on your breathing will the sensations or thoughts play out and expire.
The technique is ridiculously simple, and the challenge is maintaining a kind of balance: you can not try too hard, because it turns meditation into a struggle but you can not try too little because you will just drift off.
A bit of supplemental advice I have stumbled upon is focusing on your lower stomach, what would in Japanese culture be called ”hara”, helps maintain body awareness in case you start suffering from excessive thought activity.
Building up the regime
I recommend you start with only five minutes twice a day. You should meditate in the morning (after taking care of your hygiene, before breakfast) and in the evening (before sleep is probably the most helpful). Five minutes is so little that while you will most likely not see much benefits from it. However, it's low enough of a goal to help you build that routine. Stick to this for a week or two, and do it twice every day. I can't overemphasize that consistency is the key here, especially at this point.
Next you move up to ten minutes twice a day. Some studies have found that you can get much more notable benefits from mere eight minutes, so this is probably the point where you can slowly start to feel something change. Stick to this for 2-4 weeks depending on how much you struggle to maintain the focus during the sessions. If you struggle, you obviously need to do the ten minutes until you get more comfortable with it.
After you can do ten minute sessions comfortably, it's time to move to fifteen minutes. In my experience (and based on some other anecdotes) after ten minutes seems to be a kind of cut-off point where you can have a bit more stronger or unusual experiences. These can be really mundane (weird sensations, long forgotten memories resurfacing, mood changes) or then considerably less mundane. You should pay attention to the things that may emerge, but don't get too obsessed with them either. Some of it will be complete junk, but some of it may be very significant, and it is impossible for anyone else but you to ultimately figure it out. Do this for 1-2 months.
After that you can move to 20 minutes twice a day. This is as far as we will be going. This appears to be a very reasonable upper limit for daily practice. For example, the Transcendental Meditation movement encourages its members to do 20 minutes twice a day. Zazen practice for lay meditators is also often broken up into 20 minute blocks, so there seems to be something to it.
At this point you should have built a solid routine that will serve as the bedrock of your practice, no matter what direction you want to take it. You might also have started to notice some changes.
The tl;dr
Here is a quick condensed version of the practice regimen we are seeking to build.
0) Consider if your life situation and history of possible mental or physical health problems makes meditation suitable for you.
1. Sit, either in a chair or cross-legged on the floor. Straighten your spine, but not too much. Tuck your chin in a bit. Put your palms on your knees. Put your tongue slightly behind the front row of your teeth.
2. Perform focus meditation on your breath. Breathe and start counting your breath. Count from 1 to 10 and then reset to one after you hit ten.
3. Let whatever thoughts, feelings, sensations, imagery etc come and go.
4. Do this twice a day.
5. Do it every day.
6. Start with 5 minutes for 1-2 weeks, then move to 10 minutes for 2-4 weeks, then 15 minutes for 1-2 months and finally 20 minutes for the rest of your life.
7. Experiment to see which techniques are most relevant to situation once you have built a routine.
What to possibly expect and when
You probably shouldn't expect any notable change or experiences very quickly, though even five minutes can let you relax a bit and break off from whatever your mind was on before. The ten minute mark is where you can start to expect to feel both more immediate and long-term effects.
The various long term changes will most likely start manifesting over the course of several weeks to months to years. These effects are most likely quite subtle at first and are related to the balance of your nervous system returning. You will probably feel overall a bit more relaxed and sleep better. Awareness and ability to concentrate will slowly start improving. This awareness includes both environmental and self-awareness. The more spiritual side of things might start manifesting too, though in very subtle and personal ways. These might include a kind of sense that there is ”more” to the world and yourself and becoming more sensitive to things that most people tend to pass off as ”vibes”.
Sustained long term practice will of course see greater results, as well as result in broader changes from these results. The increase in awareness, focus, calmness and sensitivity of perception and ability to let different kinds of thoughts and impulses go will have a broad impact on your life. How exactly these manifest is entirely dependent on your situation. You might for example find that certain activities become more enjoyable, while others become less so.
You shouldn't be too fixated on ”results” either. They will come in due time. In the moment, you should just focus on meditation itself and maintaining the routine. You will of course need to maintain the routine to sustain these benefits. There are also some potentially negative effects and troubling experiences you can have. We will look at those later.
Techniques beyond counting breaths
There are many, many different techniques of meditation for different types of aims. Here are a number of supplemental techniques that you might want to experiment with once you have established a routine. These should primarily supplement, not replace, the breath focus meditation. Advanced practitioners say that meditation is a lifestyle, not something they do in sessions. While there is a long way to go, if you ever desire to go there, think of these as tools you can apply to different situations. It ultimately is up to you what you want to do with your practice.
Option 1: Simple mindfulness
While it is the most secularized and monetized of all types of meditation, there is a reason for it. Mindfulness is about focusing on what you are feeling and sensing in the moment. There's a lot of different ways to go around doing this. The simplest possible form is just stopping to pay attention to what is going on. You can either focus on yourself – what are you feeling right now, both mentally and physically and what kind of thoughts are rising up – or then you can pay attention to the external world. Both are excellent skills to train.
A bit more ”meditation-like” practice would be focusing on the sensation of breathing. Don't try to control it, just let it come and go naturally. Let whatever thoughts, feelings and sensations arise. Don't judge them, just take note of them, and then let them pass away.
On some level mindfulness is more of an approach to life, and you can do basically everything in a mindful way. You can walk, eat, shower, talk, work and play in a mindful way. This can get you focused on what you are actually doing at the moment, and might start finding some rather mundane things quite enjoyable. A very good form of this is taking a walk in a forest or a park or the closest semblance to nature that you have around and really paying attention to it all. Mindfulness that is focused on you has its places, but so does mindfulness that is not focused on you.
Option 2: Body scan
Sometimes considered a subtype of mindfulness practice, this is best practiced either lying down or standing up. Focus your attention on each and every part of your body. You can either go up or down, starting from your toes and moving to your head, or vice versa. Focus on each body part slowly and with intent. Take note of what kind of sensations, thoughts or memories rise up when you focus on a particular part of your body. Don't get too stuck on any particular thing that emerges.
Body scanning is a great tool to utilize before physical activity to ensure that your body is awake and present. My first exposure to this technique was actually singing lessons. It can also be used as a way to relax bodily tension. If used so, you might find surprising thoughts or memories emerging. We carry our feelings not only within our thoughts but also within our bodies.
Option 3: Focused attention
Pick one and only one anchor for your focus and focus on it the best you can. When distracting thoughts or sensations arise, let them come and go. The source of focus can be basically anything. A very popular choice is your own breath, which we already went over in the basic technique.
There are other options too, but you shouldn't try anything too distracting or fancy or things that carry occult potential you may not be fully aware of. Don't go staring into random mandalas for 20 minutes. A popular choice besides counting breaths are candles. You just basically stare at a candle. Be aware that the visual distortions that will inevitably appear if you do it for long enough can be quite startling at first. They should disappear if you blink. Over time you may learn to just tolerate them. Burning incense, clouds or a body of water can be good choices too.
Doing focused attention meditation will have considerable spillover benefits if you keep doing it long enough, which is why the focused attention breathing method is so often recommended. Beyond the spillover benefits, focused attention can also be used in short sessions to clear your mind and prime your attention.
Option 4: Breath-centric
Remember how we talked about the role of breathing in autonomous nervous system regulation? There's a reason why there are so many meditation techniques utilizing specific breathing patterns. Some of these are such that I wouldn't recommend them to beginners because they can get intense and be difficult to do properly. You probably don't want your first exposure to meditation to be accidentally whipping yourself into a panic attack or hypoxia. The breath is an incredibly powerful thing.
That said, a general breathwork principle of ”deeper, slower, quieter, more regular” is fine to experiment with. By assuming a more relaxed, diaphragm-oriented breathing pattern you will activate the parasympathetic nervous system and relax.
Boxed breathing and the 4-7-8 count are examples of specific patterns using these techniques. In boxed breathing, you count in fours. Count to four while inhaling, hold breath for four counts, exhale for four counts and then hold again for four counts. The 4-7-8 count is similar, but you breathe in for four counts, hold it until you count to seven and then exhale on eight. You can easily find further instructions for these. Please don't overdo or force these either and stop them if you feel unpleasant. Some people find 10 minutes to be a mark where these can become excessive.
You can also do a kind of breathing centric version of body scan, where you just pay attention to your breathing. Is it deep or shallow? Do you breathe through the nose or the mouth? How does it feel? How does it make you feel? How do these feelings change if you change the way you breathe?
Option 5: Mantra
Mantras are essentially either a verbal or a mental point of focus for meditation. They do possess genuine spiritual potential, so don't go chanting random Buddhist or Hindu mantras. I don't think anything bad per say will happen, but please be mindful of the story of the anon who ended converting into Buddhism after chanting ”gyate gyate” for two months and learning it was a Buddhist mantra only afterwards.
If you want to experiment with these, I recommend the classic ”om” or ”aum”. The primordial sound of the universe is no-one's property and has genuine power.
You can either focus on it silently, or then vocalize it out loud. You might see the term ”vibrate” being used in esoteric or spiritual literature. There's a particular style to doing it out loud ”properly”. You can find examples of it by searching for ”om mantra”. Essentially you want to make a reasonably loud, long and resonant ”oooooooooommm” or ”aaaaauuuuummmm”. You should feel it in your head. The power of sound is a big part in many spiritual traditions. Experimenting with this will most definitely help you understand why.
Option 6: Do nothing
Just get into the posture and do nothing until the timer runs out. Whatever thoughts or sensations emerge, let them come and go. What kind of things come to your mind? Is there something unexpected? Did you daydream? What of? This is a great way to get to understand the texture of your mind, the contents of your mindstream. You can also do a bit less of a do nothing version of this by leaving your smartphone at home when going home and just getting bored for once.
Meditation trouble
In recent years there has been more discussion about the possible downsides of meditation. This however isn't exactly new knowledge, as there are some very old texts detailing potential negative effects of meditation. The various downsides include physical issues as well as mental ones. There have also been observations about certain people slipping into more egoistic and even sociopathic mindset through meditation.
Regarding physical issues, a lot of old meditation texts speak of all kinds of potential ”meditation sicknesses”. These are written in the context of Buddhist or Taoist monasticism and I consider them extremely unlikely to emerge in a lay practitioner engaged in moderate meditation. It's more likely that you might develop some kind of minor issues related to posture. A lot of traditions essentially tell you to ignore discomfort, and while there is truth to this, you should not ignore what are very clear posture issues.
It should be noted that meditation can bring out difficult memories and emotions. This is actually fairly common and for most people it is a normal and healthy part of the practice. Meditation can give us opportunities to let these go, or to look at these from a more detached perspective. Some would say dealing with these types of emotions, memories and thoughts is a big part of the practice. As with all thoughts and impulses, letting them come and go applies here too.
However, both old sources and newer studies highlight what we would in the West conceptualize as potential mental health problems emerging from meditation. There's quite a large variety that can emerge and they can include things like worsening of existing mental health issues as well as development of new ones such as depersonalization or psychosis. It should be noted that the most severe issues mostly arise only in extreme contexts such as doing multiple hours of meditation every day or attending a long meditation retreat while unprepared.
However, even moderate meditation can worsen some mental health issues. Very anxious people can have full-blown panic attacks when attempting meditation. People who are extremely introspective can be tipped into pathological scrutinization of the self and the body. People on the fringe of psychosis can become pushed over with relatively little practice. People who have severely traumatic memories might end up reliving those memories as soon as their mind lacks anything to distract it and find it extremely difficult to untangle from those.
If you have pre-existing mental health conditions or things like severe traumas, you need more competent guidance than this. Practice might still be possible, for example PTSD patients can't often do mindfulness but can actually benefit from focused attention. If you find that the practice is skewing your mind into an undesirable direction, please terminate the practice and find some guidance IRL from competent and non-cultish instructors if you desire to continue.
It should also be noted that there some people apparently develop sleep disturbances if they do certain types of meditation too late at night. Focus meditation seems to be the culprit here, as some kind of a hypervigilant state can carry over into the dream world. In particular, if you have pre-existing problems with sleep quality, you might want to reconsider doing such at night.
Development of antisocial personality traits is a very troubling and very undertalked potential problem. I also think this is the most difficult one to deal with because it's so insidious. I believe the mechanism is essentially that you can use meditation to deal with bad feelings you should be feeling such as guilt over hurting other people. Ultimately, there is a very good reason why most religions that featured meditative practices also had generally speaking heavy focus on moral codes. In particular, Buddhism considers following the moral precepts essential.
There is sometimes this view in Buddhism that enough meditation would kind of cascade into the Buddhist morality system, and to some extent I can see it. One would think that becoming more aware would also make you more aware of the suffering of others and thus make you desire to avoid causing any more suffering...but unfortunately not all people are so naturally empathetic.
Becoming more sensitive and visible to the spirit world can of course attract unwanted attention. These, if they ever show up uncalled, are most likely very inconsequential locals and can be largely ignored, as unpleasant as some of them may be. However, it's not always easy, and there are plenty of practices you can do to deter these entities. We will look at these later on. It's also unlikely that they will show up any time soon.
How to go forwards?
At some point you might feel the desire to take the practice to a new direction. Perhaps you will develop an interest in a more explicitly Buddhist approach, or perhaps a more Taoist approach, or a more magical approach. In these cases, you need to seek out resources and guidance on your own. A word of caution is needed here: there are a sizable number of cult-like operators in all of these spaces, and you will need to figure out this on your own. There are too many Buddhists sects, Taoist groups and Western esoteric circles for me to know all of them, let alone to comment on whether they are suspicious or not. One and the same group can also have perfectly fine people and rotten apples.
Over time you will find more and more new applications for these techniques on your own. You will probably run into some hurdles and you will most likely eventually be able to clear them on your own. You might start noticing that some weird tension has disappeared, or that you are much more capable at paying attention to the little things than before. You might notice that you are processing some things that need processing. Ultimately, as you advance, you will need more advanced guides than this. I hope to keep on updating this, but in the end, I am at this point just a relative newcomer telling others that they should consider starting the journey. I don't know where I will end up. You will inevitably need to study and experiment on your own.
Next, we will take a look at another practice found in multiple traditions that will let you better tap into the other half of your consciousness: dream journaling and related practices.
