10 Ways to Hack Your Meditation
Insights on building a solid meditation practice from my experiences as Chief Joy Officer at Makers
Meditation is backed by scientific research and evidence, and can improve your wellbeing, just like regular exercise or a balanced diet. Taking care of yourself is an important aspect of professional development, which we take very seriously here at Makers.
In fact, at Makers, I’m often met with people who want to meditate more yet are struggling to integrate it into their lives. Below are some of the most common excuses and the advice I often give our Makers in response.
“You should sit in meditation for twenty minutes everyday — unless you’re too busy; then you should sit for an hour.”
― Zen saying
1. “There’s not enough time.”
If you don’t fill your own tank first, you’ll be running on fumes, which means you won’t be doing things as well as you could. Meditation is an effective way of ‘fuelling up’.
With benefits such as increased energy and focus, clarity of mind and improved health, meditation gives you time because you’re optimising yourself.
Tip: Don’t find time, make time. It might mean waking up a few mins earlier in the morning. If you can set 15 or 20 minutes aside to practice, that’s great, but don’t underestimate the benefits of a 10 minute meditation.
2. “It doesn’t work for me.”
Everyone ultimately needs to follow what feels right for them but you owe it to yourself to give meditation a fair chance.
Meditation requires patience: while a decrease in tension is often felt from the first practice, it can take a bit of time for its deeper benefits to be felt. In my experience working with over several hundred students, I’ve yet to encounter someone who hasn’t felt the worthwhile benefits with consistent practice.
Tip: Commit to a meditation practice for 30 days. Let go of any expectations of how it should go. Notice and enjoy even the smallest progress.
“Meditation has helped me find inner peace about something I’ve been struggling with for so many years” — Makers student
3. “It’s too hard.”
Training yourself to do anything can be challenging. Is the gym meant to be easy? This is where having a growth mindset is useful. Meditation is like a ‘gym for the brain’ — if you do the push-up, you’ll build the muscle.
Meditation has so many benefits that make life richer and lighter. In my opinion, living with less self awareness, excess tension, duller focus and so on is far more difficult.
Tips: Meet yourself where you are, observe yourself non-judgementally experiencing a difficult time and you will connect with the essence of the practice. Lastly, tell yourself “It’s not hard, it’s new”. Remind yourself that this practice is backed by extensive scientific research, and will improve your life if you stick with it.
4. “There are too many distractions!”
In the footballing world, training is often done on beach sand. This is harder than training on grass, and players are fitter and more agile as a result.
Makers campus is in the heart of London, students’ minds are flooded with code… it’s not the most serene environment. Yet we cultivate a meditation practice in the midsts of that — we’re ‘training on beach sand’.
Distraction is good. Part of meditation is practicing allowing of all ‘the happenings’. Soon your strength and stamina as a meditator will increase, leading to a strong, clear and focused mind.
Tip: Practice viewing everything as ‘just a happening’. Nothing is deliberately trying to add or detract from your experience — it’s all just impartial stuff coming and going.
5. “I can’t turn off my thoughts.”
The nature of the mind is to think. The point of meditation isn’t to stop thoughts but rather to identify less with thoughts as you observe them in a non-judgemental way.
With practice, you rewire your brain, the mind is less ‘on auto-pilot’ and increased mental calmness prevails.
Tips: Treat the mind like a puppy. The nature of the puppy is to wander, just like the mind. Training the puppy to stay in one place takes understanding and gentleness. Some thoughts can be so compelling, sucking us in for the duration of the practice — that’s normal. With practice you’ll catch your wandering thoughts more and more.
6. “I can’t sit still.”
Busyness/doing-ness, achieving, being productive, is the order of the day in our ‘rat-racey’ modern life. It can feel very counter-intuitive, even wrong, to take time out to do ‘nothing’.
The ability to be still with yourself is a highly overlooked skill and is totally worth practicing. If you can’t sit still for 10 minutes, you should definitely be practicing meditation.
Tips: Try meditating soon after physical activity e.g. a walk, gym, yoga, house cleaning etc. — it helps to release restlessness. Don’t put pressure on yourself to jump into a 10 minute practice straight away. Start with 2 minutes a day and when you feel ready, add an extra minute. Going at your own pace will ease you into stillness.
7. “I’m not a religious or spiritual person.”
Many meditation practices have spiritual origins, and if you are a religious/spiritual person, you might enjoy exploring those aspects of the practice.
The type of meditation I teach is a simple mindfulness meditation which I often refer to as “brain training”. With regular practice, you strengthen connections in your brain, also known as cortical thickening. This leads to benefits such as better concentration, an increase in emotional intelligence competencies and enhanced wellbeing.
Tip: Remind yourself that your meditation practice is time you’re taking to optimise your brain.
8. “I practice yoga instead.”
In my blog post “Coding and Yoga Unite”, I talk about the 8 limbs of yoga and explain that often people think that yoga is mainly just the physical postures (Asana).
Asana’s purpose is to prepare the body for concentration (Dharana) and meditation (Dhyana), which are the limbs of yoga for training the mind.
Tip: While there’s some crossover of physical yoga practices and meditation, you’ll gain much more when you treat them as two separate practices, as each one has its different benefits ie. Asana practice + meditation = :)
9. “I keep falling asleep.”
Falling asleep during meditation is very common. What we’re looking for in meditation is to be relaxed and focused at the same time.
It’s normal to tip into either being too tense while trying to concentrate or too sleepy from relaxation. With practice we learn to ‘hover in the sweet spot’.
Tips: If you keep falling asleep, it may mean you’re tired! This awareness is helpful so that you can take appropriate measures to get better sleep. Meditate sitting upright instead of lying down — lying down increases the likelihood of falling asleep. Meditate away from your bed as bed is usually associated with sleep.
10. “Things are going well; I don’t need to meditate.”
Meditation can bring great relief when life gets challenging. It helps us destress, focus and restores balance. We should be mindful not to see it as just a ‘cure’ because the benefits of having meditation as a daily ritual far outweigh using it only when ‘times are tough’.
In fact, it helps to make tougher times easier because daily practice makes you more mentally and emotionally resilient.
Tips: Make meditation a habit. Try to do it at the same time, same place (if possible) everyday. If you see it as a chore, try shifting your attitude and see it more as a gift to yourself — it really is.
How to meditate
This meditation exercise is an excellent introduction to meditation techniques.
- Sit comfortably in a space where you won’t be disturbed.
- Close your eyes or soften your gaze on one spot.
- Breathe naturally as you allow sounds in your environment to come and go.
- Focus your attention on your breath and how the body moves with each inhalation and exhalation. Notice the movement of your body as you breathe. Observe your chest, shoulders, rib cage, and belly. Simply focus your attention on your breath without controlling its pace or intensity. If your mind wanders, return your focus back to your breath.
Maintain this meditation practice for two to three minutes to start, and then try it for longer periods.
