Starting A Meditation Practice? Avoid These Three Mistakes
There are many reasons to meditate, including the many benefits that meditation has for your mental, physical and emotional health. There’s tons of advice out there on how to meditate, but there are also some pitfalls that it’s important to be aware of when you begin. Read on for some more info about three issues that new meditators often run in to, and what you can do about them.
BTW, this isn’t meant to put people off meditating. On the contrary, I think everyone can benefit from meditation, and it’s a shame that so many people give up in the early stages. For that reason, it’s important that people know what to expect when beginning meditation, and have realistic expectations about it. So with that said, here are three mistakes to avoid when learning meditation.
1. Impatience
Firstly, be patient, and don’t expect miraculous results overnight. Meditation is a skill, and like any skill, it requires practice – regular practice! As with anything else, there are people who seem to take to meditating like ducks to water, but most (me included) have difficulty with keeping their thoughts focused and their minds and bodies relaxed when beginning meditation. This is normal! But until you get your mind under control, you won’t get the full benefits of most types of meditation.
So what should you do instead? Just know that in the early days and weeks, your meditation practice might not be as satisfying as you might expect. So let go of any goals and expectations you may have, and just meditate every day for its own sake. While many meditate for a specific purpose (for example, anxiety reduction, or developing paranormal powers), focusing too much on the end result in the early days is counterproductive.
It’s ok to have a greater purpose for meditating, but when you’re beginning, just focus on sitting in meditation daily without thinking too far beyond that. This will reduce the inevitable frustration that arises on those days where your mind just races around madly and you feel like nothing’s happening and you’re wasting your time.
2. Inconsistency
The second thing to avoid is a lack of consistency. Don’t just meditate occasionally when you ‘feel like it’. Instead, make sure you set aside time each day for regular meditation. In fact, make it a priority, just like taking a shower or cleaning your teeth.
Why is this so important? Simple because as we noted earlier, meditation is a skill that is learned and developed with practice. The more you meditate, the easier it becomes to focus and relax your mind, and the sooner you move beyond that frustrating beginner stage.
At the very least, you should commit to meditating daily for several weeks at least before deciding whether or not it’s ‘working’.
3. Negativity From Those Around You
Thirdly, don’t let anyone put you off meditating. Now this won’t be a problem for everyone, but unfortunately there are still those who view meditation as some kind of weird ‘dippy hippy’ kind of thing to do, and may feel threatened if their friend or family member takes it up.
If anyone in your life starts criticising your meditation practice, politely tell them to mind their own business and carry on regardless. You can’t the ignorant opinions of other people influence you away from the things you’re interested in, or you’ll just end up being miserable and feeling out of alignment with your true values.
Others will probably come to respect your decision to meditate if you stick to your guns. And if they don’t, they’re not worth bothering about.
One other thing you can try as a new meditator that can help improve your progress is to use a brain wave entrainment recording. These recordings include sounds of very specific frequencies, which naturally guide your brain into a deeply relaxed state. With mental relaxation comes a slowdown in the mental chatter that derails so many new meditators, so your meditation will become more effective.
Anyone can benefit from brainwave entrainment meditation, but it’s of special value for beginning meditators. This is because it can be difficult to learn to focus the mind using traditional meditation techniques, so by using a recording, your brain gets a kind of helping hand, and the learning process becomes a lot easier. And then eventually you’ll get so used to entering a profoundly relaxed state, you may not even need to use the recording anymore!
If you decide to tap into the power of brainwave entrainment, it’s vital to use a high quality recording, as there’s a lot of junk out there. I suggest checking out the ‘Meditation’ recordings from The Unexplainable Store. This is a great site with a reputation for producing quality products, all of which are fully guaranteed, and I really like using them myself. You should also get the free downloads which are available while you’re over there!
Click here to begin exploring meditation right now
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