Tag: silence the mind

5 Easy Ways to Stop Unwanted Thoughts in Meditation in 5 Minutes or Less

,
A person with short hair and dangling earrings sits with eyes closed, thumb to forehead, fingers point upwards.The background appears to be a bedroom with white walls and soft sconce lighting.

When many people first begin a meditation practice, the biggest questions often circle around the logistics. How can I create a space of time to make a meditation practice? Do I have to do it every day? How long every day? How can I make it a regular habit? Will I be able to do it? These are all valid questions, and answering them becomes a highly individual experience. But there’s a bigger, more long-lasting challenge to growing your meditation practice. Nearly everyone grapples with this, not only in the early days of creating a practice but often during every…

How to Stop Random Thoughts During Meditation

,
A beautiful early morning sky, with the sun breaking through the clouds in a halo of yellow, orange, pink and violet. At a far distance, 7 birds are in flight.

One of the biggest misconceptions about meditation is that it will silence the mind. In fact, learning how to stop random thoughts during meditation has become the Holy Grail. But see, here’s the thing. If meditation could silence the mind, our entire planet would be cured of its many ills. Humanity would become cooperative. War would end. Suffering would cease. We would have utopia. The reality is, as you practice, you will have thoughts. That’s what the mind does – it has thoughts. Lots of thoughts. This includes ideas as well as emotional reactions to those ideas. Some thoughts are…

How Long Is Long Enough in Meditation?

,
An hourglass on gravel. The sand amount is roughly equal for both ends.

Even if you have just 5 minutes to relax, doesn’t it feel great? There are days when you can relish a 5-minute break as though it were a mini-vacation. But with meditation – how long is long enough? What if you have just 1 minute? Can you experience benefits from a mere 60 seconds of meditation? Let’s find out. One Minute Together  We’re going to do a single minute of breath meditation, together, with eyes closed or open.  All we’ll do for one minute is gently notice the breath, coming in…and going out. Move at your own pace, gently and…

How Can You Tell When You’re Meditating?

There's an old man with a white beard with his eyes closed. He seems to be praying. A little girl is sitting next to her watching him.

Often, even people who’ve been meditating for years will express a concern that perhaps they’re not doing it right. After all, each of us has only our own experience of meditation, so there’s not any actual objective point of comparison. (Even if you’re hooked up to an EEG, different brains will show different results.) And while a quiet mind might sound absolutely fantastic, figuring out how to still the mind seems mysterious…even impossible. What is the mind doing when it’s still? Nothing? Hardly. Meditation Is a State of Two Minds The conscious mind thinks thoughts. That’s its job. It craves…