Top 5 Tips for Successful Meditation Practice by Fred Busch
Hey everybody! People always ask me for some practical tips to help them with their meditation practice and to make it more fulfilling and a deeper experience. So here you go! These are some of my most potent teachings about meditation that i deliver during my teacher training programs!
1) Don’t try to be good at meditation. Simply Enjoy being in your body and being relaxed. Often we start thinking and judge and criticize that as not being good at meditation. This criticism simply leads to cycle of more thinking and anxiety and stress about whether you meditated correctly. Instead of that as the thoughts arise just allow them to be without any attachment or identification or wish for them to disappear… they always dissolve on their own accord the way the clouds pass through the sky and the sun is always shining above.
2) Understand that time does not exist…but still set a stopwatch. You must have a stop watch for meditation so that you are not opening your eyes all the time trying to figure out ‘how much longer’ the meditation practice is going to be. When you have a stopwatch set you can surrender completely.
3) Time can be transcended in two ways… the way of Buddha by saying to yourself that you ‘will be there forever’ or by recognizing that since there is no such thing as time or past that ‘you just arrived’ in the meditation position even if you have been there for minutes of ‘clock time’
4) Practice asana everyday! Hatha Yoga and all asana was designed to transform your body so that you can sit still in meditation without the aches and pains of your body distracting you and bringing you out of deep states of consciousness.
5) Practice pranayama always before meditation. Pranayama is the ‘on ramp’ to the states of meditation so a nice and simple pranayama practice of 10 minutes before meditation is the best way to experience the deep relaxation and peace of an effective daily meditation practice.