Jennifer Beall, LCPC, LCADC
What do you imagine when you think about meditation? Do you picture a guru sitting cross-legged on top of a mountain for hours on end, their mind completely clear of thoughts? If so, meditation probably doesn’t feel like something you could do, even though you may have heard how beneficial it can be. Luckily, meditation is much more accessible than that!
There are many types of meditation, but the one I most often recommend to clients is mindfulness meditation. Mindfulness meditation can help lessen the symptoms of depression and anxiety and lower blood pressure. It can relieve stress associated with chronic medical conditions, leading to a better quality of life. It can even, in some cases, ease physical symptoms.[i]
Mindfulness meditation starts with something to focus on, most often your breath. You can do that in different ways. One way is to mentally say “in” as you slowly breathe in, and “out” as you slowly breathe out. Another way is to count the number or lengths of your inhales and exhales.
When thoughts come up, as they inevitably will, you just notice them without judgment and then let them go. Some people picture putting post-it notes on the thoughts with the word “thought” on them. Others imagine the thought floating away down a river. I often picture the thought as a balloon (an environmentally friendly balloon!) floating away into the sky.
After you let go of the thought, you go back to focusing on your breath, returning as many times as you need to, without judgment about how many times you do so.
[i] https://www.ummhealth.org/services-treatments/center-mindfulness/benefits-mindfulness
Getting Started With Mindfulness Meditation
Many people assume that you have to meditate for at least thirty minutes at a time. You don’t. In fact, I suggest that you start with a much shorter period of time, five minutes at most. It’s a lot easier to carve out five minutes in your day than it is to find a free half hour or hour. Starting with shorter meditations also helps to keep you from getting bored and giving up on meditating entirely.
If you’ve never done mindfulness meditation before, I recommend starting with the Headspace app. It’s a great introduction to mindfulness meditation, and it has a lot of helpful features. It’s a paid app, though, so if you don’t want to take on another subscription fee, I recommend that you use Headspace long enough to get comfortable with meditation, then switch to a free app like Insight Timer.
Cultivating Mindfulness In Your Everyday Life
Mindfulness goes beyond meditation. In addition to the benefits of meditation that I mentioned above, mindfulness offers a new way of looking at yourself and your actions. Remember the idea of observing thoughts without judging them? You can do that at any point during your day, not just when you’re meditating.
When you feel like you’re stuck in a particular thought or emotion, you always have the option of stepping back and observing it nonjudgmentally, then letting it go if it isn’t serving you. In IFS (Internal Family Systems) terms, you’re unblending from the part of you that is holding the feeling so that you’re no longer fully identified with it. For instance, rather than thinking “I am resentful,” you could say “I am feeling resentment, and I can choose to let that resentment go.”
In our fast-paced world, taking time to slow down can feel unrealistic. Think, though, about how much easier it would be to deal with all of that busyness if you could cultivate a sense of calm anytime, anywhere. And think about how much better you would feel if you could let go of judging yourself, your thoughts, and your feelings!
As helpful as it is to learn to nonjudgmentally let go of thoughts and feelings, it’s also possible to go deeper than that. I use EMDR, IFS, Brainspotting, and sandtray therapy to help clients to get to the roots of their negative thinking patterns and change them. If this sounds like something you’d be interested in, fill out a contact form, schedule a free consultation, or call or text me at 410-888-0590. And don’t forget to check out the Headspace app!