1. What is good practice? Am I doing it right?

In the beginning, good practice is focusing your attention on something, like the sensations of breathing, and returning your attention to it whenever your attention wanders away. That’s it. If you’re doing that, you’re practicing perfectly. Good practice INCLUDES THINKING.

On some level you can only do it right because you can’t do it wrong. As long as you’re returning to your focus, like your breath, once you notice that you’re not focusing on it, you’re doing it right. Period.

Good practice is coming back, it’s returning.
It’s coming back in 2 ways:

1. It’s coming back to your focus, your breath for example, when you notice that you’re distracted from it.
2. It’s also coming back to your practice after a day, a week, a month, a year away. It’s coming back to do your practice. It’s sitting down and doing it no matter how long it’s been since you did it last. It’s showing up.

Good practice is coming back. Coming back to practice, coming back to your focus.

2. What if I can’t stop thinking?

I have the best news for you ever: you don’t have to! This is great news, because as long as you’re alive you’re going to keep thinking. Much like your heart will keep beating, your mind will keep thinking.  You don’t need to stop thinking for meditation to work. Meditation does not stop your thoughts. It works with your thoughts.

Many of us come to meditation because our thoughts are really bothering us. We want them to stop and go away. We feel that if we could shut off the voice(s) inside our heads that everything would be ok. When we hear about meditation and that it calms the mind, we get excited and think we’ve found the answer to turning it off.

The bad news is that you can’t. And the good news is that you don’t have to shut off the annoying, screaming voices to get relief from them.  Meditation works by training us to first learn how to focused on something other than our thoughts. This is revolutionary. We learn to pay attention to other things instead of being lost in thought all of the time. This is immediately a relief. As we get better and better at not being lost in thought another wonderful thing happens. We’re able to notice our thoughts AND not get distracted by them. At first all we’re able to do is not focus on our thoughts. At this stage, we practice refocusing on something else every time we get lost in thought. Later, we’re able to notice our thoughts AND not get lost in them.  We notice our thoughts arise in our minds, parade around and depart – all without getting distracted by them. They are here, and they are not debilitating because they don’t take up all of our attention. We are not at the mercy of our thoughts any more. We are able to master our attention and our responses.

Meditation is renowned because it helps us be better humans, better thinking humans. Meditation gives us our edge back. We’re able to perform better because we’re better able to interact with our thoughts. We don’t stop thinking. We’re better at thinking!

3. How should I sit? How important is posture? Do I have to sit in a certain way?

And the related questions: Do I need to practice in the same place and/or at the same time?

As a beginner, it is helpful to limit the number of variables you have to deal with in your practice. Predetermining how to position yourself, where and when to practice can be very helpful so that you don’t have to decide these things in order to just get started each time you want to meditate… You just deal with the rest of the practice. Which is already enough to deal with! Making things as simple as possible in the beginning is incredibly helpful.
So then it depends on what kind of person you are… is it helpful to have things predetermined? Or not?

I divide ways of thinking about posture into two main groups or schools of thought. I will briefly outline how I think about it and let you decide for yourself which one to adopt.

1. School #1: Posture is Important:

On one hand, certain postures can help you breathe easily, stay alert and relaxed. The idea with sitting (or standing) upright, aligned and relaxed is that it’s the easiest position for your body to breathe, stay awake and alert – and expend the least amount of energy doing it.

Also, if you take the same posture every time you meditate, it becomes an anchor, a signal to your body-mind that you are practicing. Meditation teacher, Susan Piver, said that in her ancient Tibetan Buddhist tradition, the body is said to start practicing first.

Following this logic, you can see that practicing in the same place and at the same time would effect the same anchoring results.

[Note that there are some energy based practices that ask you to sit in certain postures to maximize energy flows in your body. This is a whole different topic. I’m happy to discuss this via email and point you to resources that feel appropriate for you for further exploration.]

2. School #2: Freedom is Important:

On the other hand, having to be in a certain posture can become a hinderance to practice if it’s uncomfortable, causes you pain, is outside your physical ability, you don’t have the material resources at hand, you feel so locked in place that you refuse to practice, etc., etc., etc.. In other words, if the posture itself is too much of a restraint, it’s not achieving the purpose of assisting your practice.

As “freedom” thinking goes the best posture is one that you will do! What’s important is not how you sit. What’s important is that you practice. If you practice, your posture will take care of itself.

Note that there are practices that use painful postures (for example sitting cross-legged on the floor) to help you focus and deepen your meditation, and teach you to face life’s difficulties. These can be useful, and this is again a different topic. This is using restriction for specific purposes and the “freedom school” does not feel this is a necessary part of all (or even most) practices.

Finally, if the goal of your practice is to be present in every moment of your life, it’s helpful to practice being present in a variety of positions, which is clearly much more life like. As the thinking goes, if you only train yourself to be present in very specific conditions, it can be challenging to be present outside of them. This is a problem many meditators have when they only practice in rarefied conditions… They don’t train themselves how to be present outside, out here in real life.

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You can easily understand why this is a similar answer to the question, Do I need to practice in a specific place or always at the same time?

Yes, in that it can help you practice regularly. Your mind and body know when you enter your practice space, “Now we are practicing.” When the time of day arrives, you’re very clear that now is the time to practice.

No, in that you may not have regular access to the same times or spaces in your life, and you may want to practice being mindful everywhere versus in limited conditions.

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My general suggestion is that as a beginner, simple is best. You’ve got enough to deal with inside of you, so make the outside as simple as possible. Pick a posture that is easy for you to maintain for 10 minutes.  Pick a place that is easy for you to practice and a time that is easiest to maintain. As practice gets easier and easier, choose to keep these things or play with changing them as it suits you and your practice.

For me, there are no strict rules for everyone for posture, place and time. There is what works best for you as an individual, and that is what is most important. If you aren’t sure, go with a certain posture and a certain place and time until you are sure.

4. How should I breathe? Do I need to breathe in a certain way? Should I breathe through my nose or my mouth?

The basic point of meditation is to train yourself to notice what is happening. The point isn’t to change what’s happening or to make something specific happen… it is to get really good at noticing what is (already) happening. With breath, the point is to notice how you are breathing. You don’t need to change your breathing or create a certain type of breath. You want to notice how you’re breathing.

Another thing to consider is that what’s really important is the ability to notice. It’s the skill of noticing. We’re practicing paying attention. We’re training our ability to pay attention – to whatever is happening. It isn’t actually so important what we’re paying attention to, it is the act of paying attention that we care about.

Why? Because being present or mindful is the ability to notice what is happening right now (versus getting lost in thought). We want to be able to notice what is happening, our thoughts, our emotions, our physical sensations, and the information that we’re taking in from our senses. This is a big skill to cultivate and to have. It takes practice and self-training. It is the noticing that is important. When we practice, the object of our attention – what we’re noticing – isn’t as important as the act of noticing. Eventually, you will be able to notice all kinds of things, along with your breath.

Note that if you find yourself changing your breath as you notice it, that is okay, too. In that case, simply notice how you are changing your breath. Specifically, notice how your breath feels as you are changing it. Remember, it is the noticing that is important here, not the breath itself.

Certainly, there are physiological reasons to take long, deep breaths, especially if you’re feeling stressed. If you lengthen and deepen your breath, your sympathetic nervous system will respond by letting the parasympathetic system take over, turning on the relaxation response. If you’re in a stressful situation, you may choose to lengthen and deepen your breath and notice the sensations of breathing as you do that. This can be a great way to consciously calm yourself down. It’s a wonderful thing to do. I employ this strategy often.

Mouth or Nose? Notice which one you’re breathing through. Stick with that if you’re comfortable. If you’re going to change, generally, I suggest breathing through your nose if that’s easy for you. The only reason I say this is because my biology teacher convinced me that the nose is better designed to filter and regulate air intake than the mouth. Note that there are many (non-mindfulness) meditations that specify certain breathing patterns and or breathing through the mouth. These are usually done to affect the neurological system in very specific ways and we are not doing any of these practices. Yoga has a lot of these types of practices for example. If you are interested in these kinds of practices please ask me outside of class.

5. How do I know it’s working? How long before I see benefits?

In the beginning the signs can be quite subtle and sometimes it is our friends and family who can see the differences in us before we can. Having said that, meditation should feel calming most of the time that you do it. If not, come and talk to me about what you’re doing while you’re practicing. One very common issue is that when we stop to practice we want something to happen and instead of sitting and noticing what is happening in the moment (how our breath feels for instance) we try to make ourselves calm. We sit and generate a lot of agitating thoughts along the lines of, “I really want to calm down. My mind is going crazy! If feel totally stressed! I wish I would stop thinking about what just happened and calm down! This isn’t working I don’t feel calm at all! I must not be trying hard enough. I wonder what I can do to make this work better.” Etc. Etc. It is pretty tough to calm down when we’re generating this much thought and trying this hard. It is like trying to calm down by speeding up… it doesn’t work very well.

The solution here is to let the practice work for you instead of trying to make something happen. If you sit and notice your breath, and every time you notice that you’re focusing on trying to calm yourself down, returning to your breath, you will be much calmer by the end of the session. Returning to your breath is like taking your foot off of the excelerator. Your mind and body will naturally slow down if you let them.

In general, if you are practicing regularly you will see and feel benefits. If you aren’t you might want to give yourself some more time for the changes to deepen and become more obvious. You can also ask your family and friends if they have noticed any differences. How long before you see them? That is fairly unique to each individual. For some people they begin to see benefits immediately. Often these are people who practice regularly and do mindful breaths often throughout their day. Other people take longer to see or feel benefits.

Most people in my 6-week courses report noticing changes by the end. Of course, you also have to keep practicing to maintain the changes. Your brain is constantly adapting to your daily behaviors. If you practice regularly your brain adapts to that and even changes its structure to accommodate the new pathways you’re creating. If you stop practicing long enough, your brain will adapt to that as well and it will begin to break down and repurpose those structures for your new habits.

6. How much time to do I need to sit for every day? Do I have to practice every day to see results? What if I stop practicing for a day, week, month or year?

Generally it’s a good idea to sit for a minimum of 5-minutes a day. 10 is even better. Of course, the longer you sit the more experience you will gain with the practice and thus the more resources your brain will put into creating mindful structures – your brain actually changes physically as you practice meditation and the more you practice the more you create these changes. On the other hand, 5-minutes a day is a good minimum to help you connect daily with the mindful state of mind.

Consistency is more important than length of time meaning that it is better to sit for 5-minutes a day than 1 hour on Sundays. This is again because your brain responds physically to your daily activities, and daily activity, even for short periods is more impactful than a single longer session. You learn to integrate meditation into your life on a daily basis versus creating a singular, special instance where it happens. In this way, meditation is more like brushing your teeth, eating well or exercising. Daily habits will help you create and maintain health.

If you stop practicing for any length of time, it is perfectly okay to resume at any point. I know many people who only use meditation when they are in difficult periods in their life. I consider them meditators. They might consider themselves part-time meditators, like part-time runners who only run when they feel they want the exercise. On the other hand, those of us that find meditation really useful find that practicing often helps us keep those difficult periods from being so difficult. For some of us meditation is so helpful that we practice regularly. All of this is to say that you can use meditation as it suits you. If you find it really helps you, I suggest you practice daily to get the full benefits and if you stop practicing for any length of time, simply resume when the time is right. Otherwise, use meditation only when you need it. Realize that if you are only using it when you need it that you will need to practice a while to get your brain to recreate or re-wire the structures for you – meaning to be patient because it will get more effective as you start doing it again. (To learn more about neuroplasticity, our brain’s physical response to our daily activities, you can watch Dr Lara Boyd’s excellent TEDxVancouver talk on neuroplasticity.