Want to get into meditation? Learn how to meditate? Be able to meditate? And actually enjoy it? Well my friends, you’re in luck. As here’s a complete guide for how to get into meditation – coming from someone who used to think meditation was “a load of fluff!” (Oh how silly I was!)
How To Get Into Meditation (Step By Step Process)
Without further ado, let’s jump straight into it. Here’s my simple, step by step guide, for how to both learn and enjoy, meditation.
Read it. Take it in. Read it again. Then work through it – bit by bit.
Remember: knowledge is nothing without action, so take that action now, to start installing stronger, more consistent meditation practices into your life!
How To Get Into Meditation
When it comes to how to get into meditation, the process can be summarised in 5 simple steps…
Step 1) Know Your Reasons “Why”
Like all new habits and goals, the first step to embedding or achieving them, is to have the DESIRE. You have to really see the value and power of meditation, and want to meditate, in order to get into it.
So let’s make this a little easier, shall we?
Here’s some of the benefits of meditation. This is not to lecture you. But so that you can fully understand the impact and use this to drive your desire to meditate (the all-important first step.)
The Benefits of Meditation
Meditation is a powerful thing. See, according to the studies found in Healthline, some of the science-based benefits of meditation include:
– Stress Reduction
Studies have shown that meditation reduces the inflammation response, caused by stress, therefore helping to ease it. Meditation calms you and is an effective tool for stress release.
Furthermore, research has shown also shown that it can also improve symptoms of stress-related conditions (including irritable bowel syndrome, post-traumatic stress disorder, and fibromyalgia, to mention a few.)
– Anxiety Management
With less stress, you’ll have less anxiety. In fact, there’s been multiple studies into meditation for anxiety relief and the stats clearly show a significant, positive impact!
– Emotional Health
Some forms of meditation can lead to improved self-image and a more positive outlook on life.
For example, studies have shown the effectiveness of meditation for improving the symptoms of depression. Likewise, other studies have shown that meditation shifts negative thinking. So it really is quite remarkable!
– Self Awareness
Some forms of meditation may help you develop a stronger understanding of yourself, helping you grow into your best self. Other forms teach you to recognize thoughts that may be harmful or self-defeating. It also helps to clear your mind for better problem solving.
All of these things tie together to be a powerful tool for self improvement.
– Focus & Attention:
Meditation is like weight lifting for your attention span! It helps increase the strength and endurance of your attention. On a similar note…
– Improved Memory
A review found preliminary evidence that multiple meditation styles can increase attention, memory, and mental quickness.
– Fights Additions
The mental discipline you can develop through meditation may help you break dependencies by increasing your self-control and awareness of triggers for addictive behaviors.
In fact, research has shown that meditation may help people learn to redirect their attention, manage their emotions and impulses, and increase their understanding of the causes.
– Creates Kindness
Want to become a nicer person? Then meditation is a great route to go! It increases positive feelings and actions, not just towards yourself, but towards others too.
– Improves Sleep
Becoming skilled in meditation may help you control or redirect the racing or runaway thoughts that often lead to insomnia.
It also helps to relax your body, releasing tension and placing you in a peaceful state in which you’re more likely to fall asleep, hence why studies have also proven its effectiveness in this area.
– Better Health
Meditation can also improve physical health by reducing strain on the heart.
It has proven to reduce blood pressure by relaxing the nerve signals that coordinate heart function, blood vessel tension, and the “fight-or-flight” response that increases alertness in stressful situations.
Finding Your “Reasons Why” To Meditate…
In a nutshell, when you practice meditation, you genuinely become happier and healthier – whether you can notice the difference straight away, or not.
Because of this, you have plenty of reasons to drive the motivation behind wanting to meditate. So let’s move onto the next step, shall we?
How To Get Into Meditation
Now you have more of those strong reasons ‘why’ you want to get into meditation, let’s look at the process for ‘how’, to tie it altogether. See, if you want to get into meditation, you need to:
Step 2) Get Committed To It
The next thing you need to do if you want to get into meditation, is to get committed to it – and understand what you’re committing to. I mean:
- When do you want to meditate?
- What do you want to use meditation for?
- How will you meditate? (As we’ll touch on this in a moment, but there are actually many different forms!)
- Will you have a set schedule, a set time? Or meditate at different times?
- How long do you want to meditate for?
Set yourself a goal for the bare minimum each day or week. Set it so that it’s realistic and achievable for you and where you’re at right now. As you can always build it up from there. This leads me onto my next point…
Step 3) Do It Little & Often
You don’t have to become a meditation master, straight away, suddenly at once.
Instead, if you want to get into meditation, the best thing you can do, is try to do it little and often. (Don’t bite off more than you can chew!)
Even if you just start with a minute meditation a day, or a 10 minute calm down meditation as and when you need. Find when works for you and play around with it until you find your own routine – then firm up your meditation goals from there.
A great starting point, is with this 30 Day Meditation Challenge for Beginners.
After all, it’s all about embedding it into your life and getting into the habit of meditation – so that the practice then comes naturally and easily to you.
Remember: It’s normal to have a period of adjustment. Initially, you may struggle to feel focused. But that’s okay. It’s okay if your mind drifts during meditation if you then bring it back to the present moment.
Just stick with it. Practice, practice, practice. And every time you complete another meditation session (no matter how big or small), feel the victory in that, feel the reward!
Step 4) Track It
Now, even if you’re not using a specific meditation challenge to get you into meditation, I encourage you to TRACK your meditation practices to see how often you’re doing it.
I use the “Calm” app, which has “Streaks” already embedded in the app, but you can also get a streaks app separately to monitor the number of consecutive days that you meditate.
This really helps to get you into meditation as it’s a major motivating factor. The more days you meditate, the more you want to meditate, as you don’t want to break the “streak” you have going on!
It’s all about focus, you see. Like many things in life. And by tracking when you meditate, it gets you focusing on it, and remembering to do it. So this can be a major game-changer!
Step 5) Utilise The Different Forms
The final, fundamental step, when it comes to how to get into meditation, is to explore the different types of meditation, until you find the form / way that best suits you.
See, you might think that some people prefer to sit silently, in their own space, and meditate themselves. Whereas others prefer shorter, snappier, guided meditations. And this is true…
But there’s still far more ways to meditate than just these two differentiations.
Different Types of Meditation
To touch on it briefly, some of the different types of meditation include:
- mindfulness meditation
- spiritual meditation
- focused meditation
- movement meditation
- mantra meditation
- transcendental meditation
- progressive relaxation
- loving-kindness meditation
- visualization meditation
And within these categories, there are more types of specific meditation practices, breaking it down even further!
The point is – if you have a picture in your head, that meditation is just sitting in the corner, trying (and failing!) to think about NOTHING, well, you couldn’t be more wrong!
By trying the different types of meditation, you’re then able to find which works best for you.
Which type of meditation keeps you the most engaged? Which do you find the most powerful? Experiment to find out for yourself, as the process of doing so is a surefire way to get you into it! On that note…
How I Got Into Meditation
Now this isn’t an affiliate post. I just wanted to share my personal experience. See I tried for some time to get into meditation – to little success.
I’d “Youtube” guided meditations and even went to a mindfulness retreat. But it was only once I downloaded the app, “Calm” and explored the different meditations available on there, that I finally found my flow…
They’ve got guided meditations for different purposes: work, stress, self-care, focus, inner piece, managing emotions, personal growth & relationships, to mention just a few.
They’ve also got soundscapes for you to do your own meditations too. Then there’s guided meditations varying in length – anything from 1 minute to 60+ minutes.
There’s also movement meditations (which we touched on above), guided breathing exercises, daily “wisdom” sessions and relaxing sleep stories or sleep meditations (which is what I listen to most nights.)
In fact, meditating at night, has been become main time for meditation – but this works well for me, significantly improving my sleep and calming my mind. So I’m loving it!
Getting into meditation, for me, has been a huge facilitator for my self improvement (and better self care too!) For this reason, I’m genuinely excited for you to reap the benefits from it too…
How To Get Into Meditation
So there we have it – how to get into meditation.
If you follow this process, and stick to giving it a proper go, for a decent duration (let’s say, actively meditation for at least 30 days), I promise you – you will start to understand and enjoy meditation, in ways you wouldn’t have expected!
When you find a way to easily (and naturally!) embed it into your life, in even the smallest of ways, it becomes a powerful, grounding tool… So commit to it and stick with it, until you reach that point!
That’s all for this one now then…