If so, I totally get it!! My nickname used to be ‘the whirlwind’ – my days were filled with to do lists that never got any shorter and every day was manic. Even my mum used to call me that and she lives overseas so I guess it must have been pretty obvious.
The odd time I did sit down and try to meditate seemed like a waste of time not only because my brain refused to switch off, but also to be honest because it just seemed like a really annoying thing to do. And I kept forgetting to do it ….
So trust me when I say I was once the world’s worst meditator.
My belief is that there are three initial tricks to getting into meditation.
Remember frequency over quality. You are much better off starting out with even 2-3 minutes every day rather than 30 minutes once a week. Meditation works when you do it consistently, so the initial step is to get into the habit of just sitting. It might be in the car, on the bus, even in bed before you get up – whatever works for you. Just take a couple of minutes to sit, close your eyes and focus on breathing. That’s all you need to do.
Figure out which way of accessing meditation resonates with you. What might be right for one person could be totally wrong for another. Is there an ideal way to meditate? Many would say that there is. But initially you just need to begin. Meditation is all about switching the mind off to outside distractions.
For me what worked was having to be accountable to someone. My teacher moved away and so the only way I could access her was via zoom – but that made it easier in many ways as all I had to do was wake up and hit a button on the computer. In the past I have had personal trainers who I could distract into not making me put too much effort in, but my teacher is kind of hard core so that was never going to work. And I started to feel bad if I didn’t show up. And I began to miss the others in the class …
For you it might be downloading an app (and there are some amazing ones out there – email me if you are not sure which to use), jumping on a zoom call with a teacher or maybe it’s something you might feel like you can do on your own.
Which brings me to my third trick. I figured that if I was going to get up in the dark and cold of the early morning, then I was going to make it as pleasurable as possible. I set up a corner in the house and filled it with sheepskin rugs, beautiful crystals, vintage cushions and big candles and that was usually enough to drag me out of bed in the early hours of the morning – knowing that I could go and sit in a space that made me truly happy. It became a place that I wanted to spend time and suddenly the alarm going off at 5.20am transitioned into something that I looked forward to. Is there somewhere in your home that you can do a similar thing? If you are not sure what that would look like check out our inspiration page for some ideas.
So – if you are too busy to meditate, have a play around with some of the above ideas and see which works for you. It’s the starting that counts …
Xx Sophie
