Hello everyone, and welcome back to my channel.
My name is Olivier, and I am a mindfulness meditation teacher.
In today's video, I am going to share with you some tips on how you can practice meditation
more consistently.
If you are interested in mindfulness meditation and want to learn more about it, consider
subscribing to my channel.
Every Tuesday, I post a new video on this topic, and I show you how you can apply this
tool in your daily life.
Having a regular meditating practice can be very challenging, especially at the beginning.
It is the case for pretty much everybody who starts meditation.
I wanted to share with you some tips on how you can practice more consistently, more regularly,
and make meditation a daily habit.
My first tip to meditate regularly is to start small.
Maybe you have the idea that you want to meditate at least 10 or 15 minutes a day, but you realize
that you don't find the time to do it, so why don't you just try to meditate for five
minutes, or even three minutes.
If you can't stick to that, then practice just ten mindful breaths a day.
You don't have to meditate for a long time to experience benefits of meditation.
In meditation, we talk about two types of practices.
There is the formal practice, which is when we set time aside and dedicate this time to
practice mediation.
And we also have the informal practice.
This is where we practice mindful breathing throughout the day.
Say you're waiting in line at the grocery store, or waiting for the light to turn green.
You can practice a few mindful breaths throughout the day like this.
The formal practice and the informal practice are both important.
They both feed each other.
When you sit for 10 minutes a day, that's your formal practice, this will help you to
slow down and remember to breathe through your day, and vice versa.
If you practice mindful breathing throughout your day, this will help you to slow down
and make it easier for you to get into your sitting practice.
The thing that is challenging at the beginning is to find time to sit and meditate.
We find it difficult because we have this habit energy of running since we were kids,
so it is actually hard to slow down and to stop.
Especially the busier we are.
The busier we are, the less we think we have time to meditate, but it's actually the most
important thing that we could do for ourselves, so keep that in mind.
Practice just a few mindful breaths a day if you feel you don't have time to meditate
for 10 minutes.
This will help you stay connected to the practice and remind you of the benefits of breathing
mindfully.
The second tip is to have reminders.
Because at the beginning, our meditation habit is not very strong, life gets in the way.
We just forget at some point, to meditate.
It is useful to have some types of reminder.
That can be a reminder on your phone by setting an alarm in the morning or at night to practice
meditation, or even just to practice 10 mindful breaths.
It can be a reminder on your calendar, or it can be an object in your house that reminds
you of the practice.
For me, what has worked the best is to have a corner in my house that is dedicated to
meditation.
I'm going to show you now what it looks like.
Here we are.
We are in my bedroom.
This is my little corner where I meditate.
I have a little mat and a bench and a little altar.
I'm going to show you how I have set up my altar, just to give you some inspiration.
On my altar, I have a meditation bell that I use when I start my meditation.
When I finish it, I rang the bell.
I have some incense that I burn sometimes.
I have a little tiny Buddha.
A picture of Zen Master Thich Nhat Hanh, from who I have learned a great deal.
And a little booklet that I read on a regular basis.
By having this setup, this corner right in front of my bed (this is my dog Sam by the
way) I am reminded always to meditate, in the morning when I wake up, but also at night.
That's just to give you some ideas on how you can setup your little corner for meditation.
If you have challenges to have a regular practice, please let me know what is holding you back
using the comment sections below.
The third tip is to remember your intention.
When you start your sitting practice, take a moment to remind yourself why you are practicing
meditation.
Maybe you have a hectic schedule and meditation is the only moment in your day that you can
feel a little bit more calm, relaxed, at ease.
A Zen nun one time gave me this analogy on why we should meditate every day.
If I have to run a marathon, I will not train the day of the race.
I will train months before the race.
The same thing goes for meditation.
We practice every day so that when the storm comes, meaning we feel a lot of anxiety and
stress or fear, or worries, we will remember of the practice and we will be able to apply
it in that moment so that we can reduce our stress, our anxiety, our worries and fears.
The fourth tip is to join or create a meditation group.
In my own experience, joining a meditation group was the single most effective tip that
helped me build a consistent practice at the beginning.
I would often not meditate throughout the week, but by going to the meditation group
which was on Saturday mornings, I was sure that I would meditate at least once a week.
It really feels like joining a group exercise in many ways.
By joining a meditation group, we feel inspired by others to practice.
We also feel accountable.
There are many meditation groups throughout the world.
I'm going to post a link in the descriptions below on where you can find such meditation
groups.
My last tip of today is just enjoy the practice.
Last week, I gave you some tips on how you can do that, but today I want to share with
you another one.
At the end of each sitting practice, I make a mental list of five of 10 things that I
am grateful for.
I go through each of these items.
For each of these items, each of these conditions of happiness, I take a moment and I try to
fully appreciate them.
We spent a lot of time planning, thinking, ruminating on worries and feeling stressed.
How much time do we actually spend appreciating the conditions of happiness that are in us
and around us?
We know that things are impermanent, things will change at some point, so why can't we
appreciate the conditions of happiness that we have here?
For example for me, I go through my body and I become appreciative of being able to see
properly, to hear properly, that I have a healthy heart, that I have no pain in my body.
I appreciate the conditions of happiness outside of me, that I have a roof, that I have food,
or that I live in a safe environment, and so on and so on.
The more we practice this gratitude exercise, the more we will be able to enjoy the little
things in our daily life.
If you have a regular meditation practice, please let me know what has helped you the
most by using the comments section below, so that others can read them and benefit from
them.
If you have found the content of this video helpful, please let me know by hitting the
Like button below, and don't forget to share with your friends and family, if you think
the content will be helpful to them.
In next week's video, we answer the question whether or not we can meditate while listening
to music.
Again, thank you so much for watching, and I will see you soon.