Here’s how it usually goes. You sit down. You close your eyes. About nine seconds later you’re wondering whether you paid the electric bill, and then you’re thinking about something your manager said in 2019.
You open your eyes and decide you’re just not a meditation person.
But that moment, the one you took as failure, is the actual exercise. Noticing that your mind has wandered, and coming back, is the repetition. It’s the push-up. A session in which you wander forty times and return forty times has plenty in it.
Patanjali’s Yoga Sutras open with a line about stilling the movements of the mind. Nobody reads that and assumes it’s easy. People have been working on it for a very long time, many of them in caves, with far fewer notifications than you have.
Use the chair
Forget the cushion and the lotus pose for now. Sit on a kitchen chair with your feet on the floor and your back upright but not stiff. Put your hands wherever they rest. Close your eyes or lower your gaze.
Set a timer for five minutes, so you aren’t checking the clock.
What to do
Feel your breath, wherever you feel it most clearly. For some people that’s the nostrils, for others the belly.
Count the out-breaths, one to ten. Then start again at one.
You will lose count. You’ll find yourself at 23, or planning dinner. Don’t scold yourself or sigh. Just go back to one, the way you’d turn a toddler gently around by the shoulders.
That’s all of it.
If your tradition gives you a mantra, use that instead. Silently repeating a name of God, or Om, or So Ham on the breath does the same job as counting, and it may mean more to you.
A few honest warnings
It may feel boring. That’s fine. Boredom usually means your mind wanted something to chew on and didn’t get it.
It may not feel relaxing. Sitting still can make you notice how wound up you already were.
And if sitting with your thoughts brings up something heavy, such as old grief or panic, stop, open your eyes and move around. If that keeps happening, talk with a doctor or therapist. Meditation is a practice, not a treatment.
Keep the appointment small
Tie it to something you already do: after you brush your teeth, or before you touch your phone. Five minutes on most days will do more for you than an hour you try once on a Sunday and never repeat.
Some mornings your mind will be a monkey market. Sit anyway. That was the morning you needed it, and you got forty push-ups in.
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