Let’s say you feel anxiety. It’s a natural state of being that almost everyone experiences sometime in their life. Sometimes one feels it daily. How does one start to meditate and where does anxiety fit into the picture?
Good questions. It took me years to find the answers which you can have in mere minutes.
It depends if you want to start alone or with someone who can cover some common questions. Let’s start with a basic focus concept.
From Meditation Yields a Better Brain:
Is it that easy for adults to get started meditating? Yes, one can practice the vipassana, a mindfulness meditation. As described in the Huffington Post article by Sam Harris, one can meditate by focusing on the breath, recognizing distractions, and reverting ones attention back to the breath.
It’s a simple instruction. That’s all you need to start alone.
Yet, it’s often not easy to do and questions arise. So, there are people who are happy to share what they know. The two instructive meditation solutions that have resonated most strongly with me are the Meditation for Fidgety Skeptics by 10% Happier and Headspace.
In my opinion, 10% Happier does a great job with instructing a person how to meditate. Yet, Headspace does a great job of sharing certain concepts through animation. Let’s start with a Headspace concept and then move on to instruction.
An important concept was introduced to me originally as Blue Sky. Technically, the title of the following video is “Underlying calm”:
Once you understand the concept of Blue Sky, you can apply it within the context of anxiety or other dominant thoughts and feelings. Here is a Headspace video about anxiety from a meditation instructor, Andy:
Andy knows what he’s talking about. As seen on this TED Talk, he began this meditation journey due to his experiences with anxiety.
So, you have been introduced to some concepts. It’s okay if not everything in those videos make sense right away. We’re laying the foundation. Now it’s time to move on to the basic instruction of meditating. Here we shift our focus to 10% Happier.
If you have an iPhone, great. You can download the 10% Happier app for free. If you can, I suggest downloading right now.
If you can’t download the iPhone app, you can access the starting 10% Happier course material on the web for free. When you start, you will hear Dan Harris (ABC News anchor) and meditation instructor and Joseph Goldstein go over the initial ideas and first steps. If you need it, the front door to the 10% Happier website is http://www.10percenthappier.com
So, there you go. Hopefully, this helps you get started down a path of less suffering and more freedom in life. All I ask is that you share these concepts and resources with others. Together we can make life better for us all.