How to Keep Up a Daily Meditation Practice

Most people acknowledge there are benefits to meditation. Those who have tried it usually experience first-hand some positive effects. However, it is a huge challenge for most of us to keep up a daily meditation practice. Here are a few suggestions about how to keep up your daily practice.

1

→ Know your motivation and keep it top of mind. In order to stick with daily meditation you need to know why you are meditating. Otherwise, there will always be something that will feel more important and productive than sitting and following your breath for 30 minutes. Some of the most common reasons people meditate include: to manage stress, to feel happier, to improve concentration and focus, to feel more relaxed, to deal with pain, to decrease depression and to sleep better. There is scientific research evidence that daily meditation helps with all of these things. If you meditate for a period of time and notice some positive effects, write those down and read them when you’re feeling unmotivated.

2

→ Schedule a time for your meditation. Research has shown that people who schedule a specific time to do something are 8 times as likely to follow through compared to those who don’t set a time. By scheduling a time to do something, you won’t spend the day thinking, when am I going to do it? If you can’t do the same time every day, that’s okay. You may want to sit down and plan what time you can meditate each day of the week and for how long. Write it in a calendar. Set a reminder in your phone.

3

→ Set a timer. When you sit for meditation set a timer for the length of practice you want to do. Commit to yourself that you will not get up until the timer goes off. You will probably want to stop at some point during a sitting period. But let the timer tell you when to stop. This gives you the opportunity to sit through the urge to stop and to observe the sensations, thoughts and feelings that may have been causing you to want to stop.

4

→ Use Guided Instruction.If you are just beginning a meditation practice, it is strongly recommend that you listen to guided instruction for the first several weeks or months of practice. Gradually you will internalize the instruction, but to start you will benefit from good guidance from a trained instructor. Over time you can alternate days with guidance and days without. There are many good CDs and MP3s out there with meditation instructions. Here are some recommended teachers who have meditation CDs and MP3s: Jon Kabat Zinn, Jack cornfield, Sharon Salsberg, Joseph Goldstein or Stephen Levine.

TIPS

→ Set a meditation goal. Write this down and tell a friend about it. When your motivation to meditate is waning, ask your friend to remind you why you want to meditate.

→ If you can't find a sangha or sitting group in your area, try starting your own! Try sites like MeetUp.com to find other people who are interested in meditation.