by Sheila Bayliss
It’s taken me over 5 years to feel comfortable telling my friends that I meditate regularly. (Yes, meditate – that wasn’t a euphemism for something else!) Why? Because meditation has so many misconceptions and connotations surrounding it that are complete red herrings. They’re the same ones that tripped me up when I first tried meditating. I sat still and tried to focus on my breathing, to ‘just’ let my thoughts go. But that never happened and I always ended up frustrated and self-critical instead of calm. So I must have been doing it wrong, right?
Wrong.
When I later discovered mindfulness, the idea of meditation was introduced to me in a whole new way. One that made it feel do-able, even for me! These days, I usually tend to call it mindfulness practice, rather than meditation – and I think of it as just ‘being with’ my breath, my body, my feelings or my experience.
Here are some misconceptions about meditation that you’ll be relieved to hear don’t have to apply to mindfulness.
1. You have to sit still to do it
When I first started, I found sitting still was absolute torture because I was so used to moving at ninety miles an hour all the time. If this sounds familiar, then starting off with mindful movement can be a good way to ease yourself in. (Yes, your yoga class counts!) Even when you are doing sitting practice, you don’t have to force yourself to sit cross-legged. Thankfully, you can choose whatever posture is comfortable for you – which might be sitting on a chair, kneeling on the floor using cushions for support, or lying down. And while regular sitting practice can certainly enhance your mindfulness skills, it’s not the only way to get some of the benefits. When you learn to cultivate the attitude of mindfulness, you can also meditate while you’re just living your normal life – while you’re walking the dog, eating your dinner or exercising.
2. It’s religious
These days, a huge amount of scientific evidence has emerged that shows mindfulness can have a positive impact on your health and well-being. Sometimes people think you have to convert to Buddhism to practice mindfulness. Although this is where mindfulness has its roots (and I know a lot of very lovely Buddhists!), you can learn the skills in completely secular environments. Mindfulness is no more religious than yoga.
3. You have to empty your mind
Mindfulness is more about developing awareness of what’s going on in your mind, rather than trying to eradicate all thoughts. Your mind will always throw up thoughts, and that’s ok. Stopping thinking isn’t necessary when we’re getting to know how our minds work in meditation. It can be easy to think of mindfulness as yet another thing to succeed (or fail) at. But it’s much more gentle than that. In fact it can help you become more comfortable being human and not always doing things ‘right’. You don’t need to pressure yourself to become any different to how you already are, and instead you can move towards accepting yourself exactly as you are.
4. It involves chanting or visualization
Some meditation traditions do bring in these techniques, but mindfulness is about paying attention to what’s actually here in our experience. So while some meditations may include imagery to help you develop a mindful attitude, that’s about as far as it goes. Mostly you’ll just hear very down-to-earth guidance about where to direct your attention, and how to work with thoughts and emotions. In fact you may be surprised that there are instructions, rather than complete silence – but guided meditation can help you learn how to apply mindfulness skills before you try meditating alone.
5. You have to make your breathing really slow and deep
It may be that you’ve come across other practices where you try to manipulate the breath in a certain way. But in mindfulness, you just ‘be with’ your breath, however it is right now. You don’t need to make it change, you just notice it. This can be a relief to know if, like me, your breathing can get fast or shallow when you’re in an anxious mood. If focusing on your breathing feels too challenging or uncomfortable for you, there are other practices you can try instead. You can place your attention on your body by doing a body scan, or focus on feelings in a kindness meditation.
6. If you don’t feel instantly calm, you’re doing it wrong
To get the benefits from mindfulness meditation, it needs to be a cumulative practice. It’s a bit like running to get fit – sometimes you’ll enjoy your run and feel good after doing it, but not always. Similarly, regular mindfulness meditation can reduce the stress you feel in life generally, but you won’t necessarily feel more calmduring a sitting practice. In fact, some of the sessions that you find most challenging and least calming can teach you the most valuable lessons! Thinking of it as building mental and emotional fitness helps me to maintain my practice, even on the days it feels like a struggle.
7. It takes up a lot of time
In fact, studies have now shown that just 10 minutes of sitting practice a day can be enough to attain significant benefits. And you can practice mindfulness without changing the things you normally do at all. Mindfulness in daily life might include things like mindful walking, or applying mindful awareness to activities like housework or cooking. The more you do it, the more creative you can get about how to weave mindfulness into your life in a way that works for you. These ‘informal’ practices mean that you don’t even need to stop what you’re doing to bring some meditation into your day.
Hearing from experienced mediators can make the whole thing seem daunting. Those who’ve been practising for a long time may say they experience fewer thoughts, and feel calm more of the time. But the mindful path is a journey, one that can be taken one step at a time. If you’ve wanted to try out mindfulness but felt that you wouldn’t be able to do it, hopefully I’ve listed one or two things to help get you started, gently.
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Very good read and I can relate. I have been practicing mindfulness regularly for about eight months. It is a weird thing to say I meditate or do mindfulness to others. I get a much different response depending on the word I use. When I use the word “mindfulness”, others ask me questions. They will say they have heard about it but are unsure of what it is. I enjoy sharing my practice with others. I have experienced so many benefits and would love to pass that along to others. These misconceptions you wrote about are very true. The western culture is starting to embrace mindfulness and the benefits are becoming very apparent!
Great article. I like how you cleared up the misconceptions and the sort of stereotypical stuff people think in regards to meditating. Hopefully people will at least give it a try. It’s so helpful to so many people.
Thanks for the post. Great information. I run a mindfulness class and definitely in the South Africa conservative context I need to avoid the Buddhist/Zen/Taoist side of the conversation. I focus more on what science is showing us and this makes it far more approachable for my audience.