7 Meditation Myths Tackled: By Shawn Bradford

I was teaching a group of busy executives the morning before their conference last week and the first group came into the room set aside for meditation tentative, but excited to try something new.  All participants were brand new to meditation and one asked “so are we going to sit crossed legged this whole time and hum OM?”  This is a very common question and often many folks think this is the only way to mediate.  While this is certainly one way to meditate there is literally an infinite amount of ways to enjoy this ancient practice.

You don’t need to be a monk in order to reap the numerous medical, physical and emotional benefits of meditation.  In fact you can close your office door at work for 10 minutes a day and start down the magnificent journey of increased awareness, focus, happiness and relaxation right now.

My favorite definition of meditation is from Levey, J. & Levey, M.’s book Mindfulness, Mediation and Mind Fitness.  They define mediation as “Classically referring to a broad spectrum of methods, disciplines, and practices for training our minds and reducing our neurotic tendencies and misconceptions while cultivating or strengthening our capacity for living with great wisdom, compassion, patience, balance, mastery of attention and other virtuous qualities of mind.”

Let’s now debunk some common myths around meditation!

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1. To mediate you must to sit crossed legged on the floor. While a traditionalist may decide to meditate in this way it is not necessary.  Here is why:  if you are so uncomfortable on the floor that you can think of nothing other than your discomfort then you are being distracted by sitting on the floor.  Instead make yourself comfortable.  Sit in a chair and anchor your feet on the ground with your spine tall.  The point is to find a comfortable position to mediate so that you can focus on your meditation and not your discomfort.
2. You have to have a totally quiet mind in order to meditate successfully. This is not true.  Now, as you work on your meditation practice you will find that month after month and year after year all that mental noise chatter will start to calm a bit.  However, when you first start if you experience one second of quiet in your mind and that is one second longer than normal than that is a winning meditation session!  Simply be curious to what will unfold when you sit down and close your eyes.  You will start to experience states of stillness and quiet.
3. You have to focus on nothing. Nope!  You can focus on your breath.  As simple as this:  close your eyes and say to yourself “I inhale for 1, 2, 3, 4” as you inhale and say to yourself “I exhale for 1, 2, 3, 4” as you exhale.  When your mind wanders pull it back to that count.  Keep this up for 5 to 15 minutes and you have just meditated!
4. You need to go somewhere special to meditate. No, you can mediate anywhere.  You can most certainly mediate in a special places that you have set up, however you can mediate anywhere.  Often I will mediate in a very crowded room right before I give a workshop.  I will find a corner out of the way, close my eyes and scan my body as I take myself through a relaxation meditation and then I will focus on a few cycles of breath to prepare myself to speak.  At home I simply sit in a comfortable chair in my back room.  Other people like to meditate outside, in a meditation studio, or in a meditation space they have set up in their house.
5. Meditation is religious.   While meditation was discovered from religious context in the east and one goal of mediation is spiritual enlightenment this ancient technology has other goals and benefits that have nothing to do with religion such as training the mind to focus on one thing such as the breath.  This one pointed focus has enormous health benefits, such as reducing stress, and no religious context what-so-ever.
6. You have to sit in silence to meditate. No, again.  You can listen to any number of free guided meditations on YouTube to be guided to relaxation.  You can also sit in silence and focus on your breath, the space between your eye brow when you close your eyes, or gaze at a candle.  The key here is that you have an abundant of different ways to meditate.
7. You have to meditate for an hour a day to reap the benefits. Even just 10 minutes a day of any kind of meditation will provide benefits to the mind, body and spirit.  Check out the plethora of benefits from reducing negative emotions to being beneficial for heart disease as described by Mayo Clinic here:  https://www.mayoclinic.org/tests-procedures/meditation/in-depth/meditation/art-20045858

Now back to these busy executives.  After we discussed what meditation was, how to meditate and where we practiced  guided breath mediation.  After that they were guided through a relaxing body scan meditation.  Finally, they were taken through a 18 minute guided yoga nidra meditation and the benefits were powerful.  I heard comments such as “I have never sat still for that long!”  “I am so relaxed!” and “I feel so good!”

Have you tried to meditate?  Would you like to? Please feel free to share your tips for meditating or let us know what is holding you back if you desire to start a meditation practice.

Check out Shawn's upcoming workshop: Intro to Meditation Sat. June 9th from 230pm - 430pm to learn more!
Details & Registration  HERE