What Is Meditation?

What is meditation?

You might be wondering this and it was the same question I had when I first started.

I think that there are so many ways of explaining meditation to someone who is new.

This is just the way I define it.

I think there are so many different types of definitions for it.

But for me,

Meditation is a way to ground into the present moment.

It's a way to notice my thoughts without judgment,

Without fixing,

Without any sort of negative connotation,

But rather just allowing myself to root into the present moment.

Moment to find stillness,

To find silence.

And to just notice what is going on within my body,

Within my mind.

It's a way for me to integrate mind,

Body and breath and just sit with it to see what comes up and to just notice.

I think so often in fast paced modern daily life,

We sort of don't have awareness within ourselves,

Within our bodies,

Within our thoughts.

And so meditation is just a nice way to give yourself that five or ten minutes during the day to slow down,

To find stillness,

To find softness within yourself,

To come back to that compassion,

Awareness that usually we lose when we're doing things and when we have our mind on daily commitments and when we're busy and everything.

And I think it's important to know how the meditation carries forward within your life.

The meditation is for you to find presence,

And once you can find presence within yourself,

You can find presence within your relationships with other people.

You're more present.

Versus distracted.

You're more present to the surroundings and more aware to the world around you.

You notice the smaller details.

You can stop and slow down a little bit more within your daily life,

Within the busyness of it all.

I think it definitely takes time to train this muscle.

I heard a quote somewhere that said,

Your mind is like a muscle.

It really is like a muscle.

You train it.

You train the presence,

You train the stillness,

And you expand this capacity over time.

And if you're new to meditation,

Sitting down for two minutes might be tough.

And you start from there.

You build up to five,

Build up to ten,

Build up to half an hour if you want to.

But it's all about just meeting yourself where you are at for that day and noticing that the meditation practice is not a project.

It's not a six-month project.

There's no goal.

It's a practice that evolves over time for you to connect back to yourself.

And it's going to look different every single day.

Sometimes you're going to show up with a cluttered mind that's really hard to calm down,

Like the monkey mind they say.

And some days you're going to come up and just show up a little bit calmer and softer and a bit more restful and more compassionate.

It's really just about holding these two at the same time,

Noticing that some days are going to be a bit busier and a bit tougher.

And some days are going to be a bit easier and a bit more calm.

And notice it,

Let it be there without judgment,

Without the need to fix.

And the more compassion we can have towards ourselves within our meditation practice,

It helps us develop this capacity to bring it into the world,

To bring it into our daily lives.

I hope this cleared off any doubts and I wish you the best in your meditation practice.