“To be able to climb the summit, you just have to see where to take your first step”
So says a thousand-year-old phrase; If you want meditation to be effective for you, you must start by taking your first step.
As in all learning, it starts from the easy to the difficult, from the simple to the complex; If you practice hours and hours with techniques for advanced meditators, you may be doomed to failure.
Meditation guide for beginners to start meditating:
1. Start with something simple: make a countdown; If you count down from 100 to 1 and your mind jumps from one thing to another, make a shorter account. Displays a number every two seconds.
2. Do not be impatient if you can not keep the account, even if it is short; nobody learns to walk in a day, so also meditate takes its time of learning . Relax, let go of the thoughts that appear quietly.
3. Shorten your meditation times: if you need it, start with accounts from 10 to 1, focus on clearly visualizing the numbers (you can put a clock to notify you at five minutes, since you can make several accounts), imagine them in colors, composed of bricks, wood, metal, neon lights, etc. If you lose them because of thoughts that cross, do not bother with them, let them pass and continue again where you stayed or start again. It is better to have less time with quality, than a lot of time with poor quality.
4. Increase your practices gradually: once you master the practice with few numbers, increase them by five or ten numbers, but no more. Work with them for five days, and if you see them correctly without losses in your concentration, increase the account again. Do it until you reach 100 (you can also go from 300 to 1, each account from 100 to 1 takes you about five minutes).
5. Varies your practices: after the countdown you visualize an element (a fruit, a device, a painting, a place, a vehicle, a landscape, a person, an animal, a vegetable, etc.), practice with things that know and to which you have regular access, so when you go back to see them you can check the quality of the details that you visualized, and repeat the experience if you wish.
6. Use all your senses: in your imagination remember the texture, the aromas, the taste, and the sounds of the elements you visualize; if something does not produce sound by itself, imagine that you hit it and listen to it, flavor it, throw it, cut it, crush it, etc.
7. Imagine: meditation improves with imagination ; visualize the elements that you have previously summoned in point 5, but change its characteristics, such as its color, its shapes, its texture, its weight, its brightness, its aroma, etc. You can also imagine something totally new, like a landscape of another world, a ship that takes you through space, a garden with flowers that speak, have fun.
8. Do several sessions during the day: start with a daily practice at the time that suits you best, without pressure. As your concentration improves, add one more practice, you will find three moments in the day to meditate (you can add more, as long as the quality of your meditations does not diminish).
9. Enjoy your meditations.