Episode 259: How To Meditate: 5 Simple Steps + Common Myths Debunked

Hello, and welcome to today’s episode. I’m so excited you are here. Let’s talk about something that I have a lot of people ask me about, and that is, how do you meditate? How do you meditate without doing it wrong? First off, let me take you down a journey of how I found meditation before I answer that question. I was going through my massive spiritual awakening, the dark night of the soul, and my guides kept telling me to go do hot yoga. I followed that direction. It was one of the best decisions I ever made, and I started meditating at my yoga practice. I would be the last person that would leave the room. I would lay there, and I would lay there as long as possible. And I could feel my consciousness slipping into blissful peace. And it was so amazing because I primed my body to meditate. Which then led me to a question of, I want to know how to meditate outside of a yoga class, which then led me to my second dark night of the soul. And what I was doing, I was going through this process of metamorphosis. I was stripping away my identity because I cracked my tailbone for the second time.

I just moved to be with my now husband. I moved from Wisconsin to South Carolina. I I had no friends. I was rebuilding community. I was figuring out what I wanted to do with my life, and I could feel myself slipping into a deep, deep, deep depression. I asked myself, what do I want to do that I haven’t been doing? Or what do I want to do that I’ve been telling myself I want to do and I haven’t been doing it? And that was, I want to learn how to meditate. I found my first meditation teacher, and I signed up for this meditation course, and I was so excited. I couldn’t to get all the materials in the mail because back then, you got materials in the mail if you signed up for a course, and it was all done through email. I sat down and meditated right away, and I was so excited because when I meditated, I didn’t even know if I was doing it right. All I saw was green, and it was so cool. Later to find out, I was seeing green because I was in my heart chakra. So let’s talk about what meditation is.

Meditation is making time to hear the answers to your prayers. I also say it’s slightly different. Meditation is also taking time to find peace. Meditation is to receive downloads. Meditation is decompressing, letting go, finding your authentic voice, owning your energy. I can go down a list of what meditation is. To really simplify it, meditation is a practice. It is simply a practice of allowing yourself to get into your heart and out of your mind so that you can go throughout your day without having the mind chatter and clutter. Let’s talk about the myths of meditation. There’s this myth that I’m not meditating right if my mind is just yapping away and I’m thinking about my to-do list. I’m thinking about everything under the sun, and that just simply is not true. You do not have to have a silent mind in order to check the list of you meditate it for the day. There will be days where your mind is going to be really loud, and there’s going to be days where you slip right into meditation, and the mind doesn’t really bother you. We all have monkey mind, and it is very natural for the to think of things while you’re meditating because we don’t know how to be bored anymore.

Let me say that again. I bet you some of you, if you’re watching this on TV or listening to it in your car, you might be scrolling right now on your phone while listening to this. It is something that our society has lost the art of being bored. I think being bored is really important because it allows us to contemplate. It allows us to receive downloads. It allows us to receive answers from spirit. When we make this space to meditate, the more we meditate, the more we practice, the more you will teach your mind it is okay to come into silence. It is okay to relax. It is okay if the mind does not get silent. It is about teaching the mind how to relax so you can get into a state of receiving. You do not You do not have to have the perfect setup. That is myth number two. You do not have to have the perfect setup. You don’t have to be dressed in special garments, all white. You can wear whatever the heck you want. You can sit or lay down wherever it is that you want. Myth number three is that you have to be sitting on a meditation pillow in the most perfect position.

This is just simply just not true. It’s important to take the your body wants to take, not what you’ve been told to do or what you think is right to do based on things you’ve read or things you’ve watched in the past. Meditation is about decompressing. If you’re worrying about all the rules, you’re not going to do that. For me, for a long time, I was taught to meditate sitting up on a pillow on the floor with my back against the wall. This was an amazing practice for me because I was already a devoted yogi and I really love sitting on the floor. However, as I got older, that does not feel good on my body. Sitting up to meditate, actually at this moment in time in my life, does not feel good whatsoever. I prefer laying down to meditate. There is no rule that you have to sit on the floor. You can sit, you can stand, you can lie down. Whatever feels right and true for you in that moment, check in with your body. Take that position because your body will thank you for it. Myth number four is that you’re not allowed to move, wiggle, scratch, do anything while you are meditating.

And life just happens. Sometimes you need to scratch your nose. Sometimes you realize your hip really hurts in that position, and you need to wiggle your body into a more comfortable position. When you sit down for the first time or lie down, you might notice all the little aches and pains and cricks and creaks and all the things that are happening in your body. It’s because you’re making space to listen to your body. And so listen to your body. Move your body in the way that feels good to get into position. Trust. Just trust. Myth number five is that you have to meditate for an hour or 30 minutes. You can meditate for as long as you want. It could be five minutes, it could be one minute, it could be 10 minutes, it could be 20 minutes. Whatever the amount of time is that you have is perfect. You do not need to meditate twice a day. You can meditate once a day. I think five minutes to start is a great starting point. If you can get up to 20 minutes, that would be great because I find 20 minutes is a sweet spot, but there’s no rule that five minutes doesn’t count as a meditation.

It totally counts. Trust that. Let’s talk about the five simple steps to having a successful meditation practice. One, set yourself up for success. Decide where you want to meditate. You can meditate in your house. You can have a designated room, a designated chair, designated spot. You can even meditate in your car. The car is really helpful because it will allow outside distractions to not interrupt you. If you don’t have time in the morning or at night, you can meditate in your car at work or before you pick up your or wherever. Know that you can go anywhere and meditate. So set yourself up for success. Two, set a Timer and decide how much time you have and turn off all outside distractions. So turn your phone on Do not disturb. Set a Timer. Five minutes, 10 minutes, 15 minutes, 20 minutes, 30 minutes. However the amount of time you have is great. It’s really important you set the time, especially if you’re worried about falling asleep. If you fall asleep, it’s Okay, no big deal. It’s a practice. Try again tomorrow. Number three, close your eyes and bring your awareness into your heart and start to breathe.

Breathe deeply. Let go of the attention in your body. Anytime the mind wanders, you’re going to come back to the breath and you are going to simply have a statement, an intention, or a mantra that you are going to come back to any time your mind starts to wander. The intention can be one word like love, love, love. The intention or mantra can be three sets of words. I am present. I am at peace. Whatever feels good to you, the mantra is going to bring you back to heart center any time your mind wanders. You might have a meditation practice where that’s all you do. Say a mantra over and over and over and over and over and you’ll just slip back into peacefulness. You might journey somewhere. Don’t worry about what you’re looking at, where you’re journeying to, none of that, because that is just a part of receiving the messages from God, creation, universe. When you sit down to meditate, that is not the goal. I want to really emphasize that. You receiving visual images is not the goal. The goal is to center and to make space for receiving. If you are constantly tightening up going, I have to receive, I have to receive, you’re not going to receive.

You can’t receive from the place of openness when you’re all tensed and you’re too focused on that because you’re going to miss the subtle signals that spirit, God, universe is sending to you. So give yourself permission to use that mantra and ease your way into it. Use compassion. Any time you have to redirect your mind, any time you notice you’re not breathing, I want you to recognize that as a win because you’re noticing, you’re witnessing missing and you’re redirecting with compassion and not judgment. No one is going to give you a gold star for meditating. It is a lifelong practice of mastery without judgment. It’s going to be really hard at first to not judge. That’s why it’s really important to have compassion anytime you do judge. To have compassion where it’s like, My mind was really strong today. Clearly, I really, really required this meditation practice today. There’s always tomorrow to have a more relaxed practice, and it’s perfect. You might also notice with compassion that there might be certain triggers that are happening in your life, and that’s why your mind can’t settle. And that’s why the mantra is there as well. The very final step, the fifth step to meditating, is to close it out.

The close can be anything you want. You can put your hands in a prayer position, express gratitude. You can bow your head towards the ground in gratitude. You can put your hand on your heart, take a nice deep breath in, congratulate yourself and thank your guides, universe, the divine. You can do anything you want to close out your meditation practice. I highly, highly recommend this. If you want, you can also set up a little bit of time at the end of your meditation practice to journal anything that you receive during your meditation. It’s not a requirement, so let me emphasize that, but it is really cool to track things in the beginning of your practice so you know you’re not making them up because you might be getting all sorts of fun things. Also, do not compare your journey to anybody else’s because you might not get anything but silence, which is beautiful, where some other people might have a lot of visuals or might get some thoughts that pop into their heads as downloads. All good. There’s no magic secret sauce to making a download come in except being in a position to receive, which that is what you’re practicing in meditation as well.

So close out your meditation practice. I will tell you that meditation has completely, completely, completely changed my life. When I started to meditate, I was in chronic pain from cracking my tailbone. In less than a month, I was off my pain meds, and I was completely pain-free. When I I say, I was miserable, I was walking around with a limp, I couldn’t take my mind off the pain. The one thing that helped me was meditation because I was working through all of the emotional junk, not through my mind, but energetics. I was making space to receive love from God. I was making space to dump my emotional debris, junk, garbage while I was meditating because I was using a mantra that served my highest good, that supported me, and let me feel like I was loved and protected no matter where I went and no matter what space I was in. I craved my meditation practice. So let me ask you a big question. How much do you want to meditate? And are you going to make a commitment to meditate? Comment below this video. Let me know if you’re going to start a meditation practice or if you’re going to continue your meditation practice.

I’d love to hear from you. Practice, practice, practice. This is not practice makes perfect. This is just practice. And you will eventually have mastery over your lifetime with meditation. I hope you enjoyed today’s episode. Please make sure you like and subscribe and share this with a friend. Take care. Bye.