How to Begin a Meditation Practice When You've Failed Twice Before

You have tried this before. Once on a New Year's morning, full of resolve, with a Calm subscription you would later cancel. Once again after a hard week, when a friend told you what it had done for them, and you sat for four days, and on the fifth you didn't, and on the sixth you forgot the cushion existed.

This is the third time, and you are tired of beginning. So this time we will try something different. We will not begin grandly. We will begin so quietly that you would forget you started, except your body will know.

Sit down

Find a chair. Not a special chair. The one you have. If you must sit on the floor, fine — but a chair is honest, and a meditation that requires special equipment to begin is already lying to you.

Sit so your back is mostly straight, your feet are on the floor, your hands are on your thighs. That is enough.

Close your eyes, or don't

If closing your eyes makes you sleepy, soften your gaze toward the floor a few feet ahead instead. There is no rule about eyes. There is no rule about anything yet. We will get to rules later. Maybe.

Notice that you are breathing

You have been breathing this whole time. You did not arrange it. You are not arranging it now. Notice that.

Feel the breath where it is most obvious to you — the cool air at the nostrils, or the rise of the belly, or the small expansion at the chest. Pick one. Stay with it for a few breaths.

That is the practice. That is the whole practice.

Your mind will leave

Your mind will leave. It will go to email, to a fight from last week, to lunch, to whether the dog is in the room. This is not a failure. This is what minds do.

When you notice the mind has left — this is the moment that matters — do not scold yourself. Do not declare that you are bad at this. Just bring the attention back to the breath, gently, the way you would lead a small child by the hand back to the kitchen.

You will do this many times. Forty times in five minutes is normal. Eighty is not unusual on a hard day.

The "doing it many times" is the meditation. It is not what gets in the way of the meditation. It is the meditation.

Set a kind alarm

Five minutes. That is the deal for week one. Five minutes a day, every day if you can, four out of seven if life is loud.

Set a phone timer with a soft sound — a bell, not a buzzer. The point of the alarm is so your mind doesn't have to keep checking how long it has been. The mind will check anyway. Set the alarm to free it.

When you miss a day

You will miss a day. Then you will miss two. The voice that says you've already broken the streak so you might as well give up is not telling you the truth. It is telling you the story it has practiced for years, the one that gives it permission to stay in charge.

Just sit on the day after you missed. That's all. The streak is not the practice. Returning is the practice.

What this is not

This is not a productivity tool. It will not give you a competitive edge or sharper focus for your 9 a.m. meetings, though both may happen. It is not therapy, though it may put you in better contact with what therapy could help.

It is, simply, a daily appointment with the part of you that is not thinking. That part is always there. You have just been very busy.

After two weeks

After two weeks of sitting most days, something usually shifts. Not enlightenment. Not visions. Something small. You may notice you are slightly less reactive in traffic. You may notice that you finish a meal without having checked your phone. You may notice that when a feeling arrives — anger, sadness, anxiety — there is a small gap before you act on it. That gap is the whole gift.

Stay with five minutes for as long as it serves you. Add a minute every week or two if it feels right. Many people sit for fifteen or twenty minutes and never go further. That is fine. The depth of practice is not measured in minutes.

Begin

You do not need to read another article. You do not need an app, a teacher, or the right cushion. You need a chair, five minutes, and the willingness to come back to your breath when you notice you have left.

So put this down. Sit.

We will both be better for it.