How To Meditate For Beginners (Animated)

– [Instructor] How to meditate for beginners. In this video, I’m gonna teach you everything that you need to know, from where to meditate, how you should meditate, how you should sit, if you should listen to music or not.
00:00:12
I’m even going to tell you how to turn off your brain. Where should I meditate? Experts will tell you that you can meditate anywhere, but in my opinion, I think you should just pick a very quiet place where nobody can bother you.
00:00:25
So this could be a bedroom, or a car, or a local library. Even a forest could work, just somewhere that’s very quiet and very peaceful. How long should I meditate for? I would recommend going for about five to 10 minutes. But it’s really important to set an alarm because if you don’t, you will always be thinking to yourself, has it been 10 minutes yet, should I stop? And the whole point of meditation is not to think. Also, quality is better than quantity here.
00:00:54
In my opinion, being totally present and mindful for 10 seconds is way better than being a little bit present and mindful for 10 minutes. So longer is not necessarily better. What should I do with my body? Most people will tell you that you should not lay down when you meditate, but I don’t fully agree with this.
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I personally meditate twice a day, once in the morning then once before I go to bed.
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The only reason why I meditate at night is to help me sleep. So at night I will lay down.
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But in the morning, I will always sit because I don’t want to fall back asleep.
00:01:28
But if you are only planning on meditating one time per day, definitely do it sitting, and I would recommend doing it in the morning. How should I sit? For total beginners, I would recommend sitting in a chair with your eyes closed, head facing forward, straight back, feet flat with your hands just relaxing on your legs. You will see Buddhist monks sitting cross legged with their feet facing up. This is the proper way to meditate.
00:01:54
But I’ve personally noticed that a lot of newer people find this position to be very comfortable. I still think you should try it, but I would highly recommend just sitting normally in a crisscross position with your legs.
00:02:07
But if that’s not comfortable, just sit in a chair. Once meditation becomes a daily habit, then we can try moving towards the Buddhist monk position. Should I listen to music? This one is really up to you.
00:02:18
But for beginners, I would suggest listening to a very calm, relaxing piano song or maybe just something like nature sounds.
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I personally use an app called Relaxing Melodies. And no, this is not a sponsorship, and I listen to a song called “Eternity”.
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But meditating without music is totally fine as well. You have to just figure this out for yourself.
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Okay, now it’s time for the really important stuff. What should I do or what should I think about when I meditate? There are many different meditation techniques, but the one that I usually practice is something called mindfulness meditation.
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This is one of the most powerful meditation techniques in the entire world.
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And the whole idea around it, is to just focus on your breathing. When you are sitting down, you need to inhale through your nose, then exhale through your nose.
00:03:06
But the key thing here is that you have to focus all of your attention on your breath, like the sensations of the air, hitting your nose, how the air fills your body and lungs, the slight pause between your inhale and your exhale. This focused attention is the thing that will get your brain to stop thinking.
00:03:25
Now, many new people who try meditation will say things like, “I’m still thinking, “I have an itch that I keep scratching, “I can’t do this, meditation just doesn’t work for me.” It’s completely normal and to be expected to experience all of that stuff.
00:03:41
I’ve been meditating twice a day for six years, and I still get itchy on my face, thoughts still come into my brain, but if you keep breathing, and you trust the meditation process, those thoughts and those itches will eventually go away.
00:03:54
However, if you really are struggling not to think then you can use my little boy breathing hack. When I inhale through my nose, I will stick my belly out a little bit as if I’m filling up my belly with air. This is actually known as belly breathing, and it’s actually the most relaxing way to breathe. I know this sounds like incredibly simple and a bit silly, but I promise that if you try this, you will feel so much better, even throughout your day-to-day life.
00:04:23
Now it’s time for the million dollar question. How can I actually get this habit to stick? The best way to build this habit is to establish a habit trigger.
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A habit trigger can be anything that triggers you to think about the habit that you’re trying to build. For example, I have a friend who wanted to start developing the habit of listening to audio books every single day. So every single time that he ate food, he would listen to an audio book, his habit trigger was eating.
00:04:51
So every time he ate food, he immediately thought, “Oh, it’s time to listen to another audio book.” So if you’re meditating in the morning, I would recommend you using something like the shower as your habit trigger.
00:05:02
So right after you shower, it’s time to meditate. Or maybe you can tell yourself that you can’t have your morning cup of coffee or even your breakfast until you meditate. And if none of that works, you can always just place a big sign on your door that says, you can’t leave the house until you meditate. If you want to feel inspired and amazing about meditation, then watch my video where I talk about the shocking benefits of meditation. And when I say shocking, I really do mean they are shocking.
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So feel free to click the screen now and I’ll see you there.