How I Learned To Meditate – 8 Minute Meditation

Meditation is easy, and you can learn a simple form of meditation with this article.

When you’re interested in spirituality or even in health in general, you may have heard that meditation is a very good thing to do.

Harvard lecturer Shawn Achor, author of “The Happiness Advantage”, writes that “meditation takes practice, but it’s one of the most powerful happiness interventions.”

He continues to say that “research even shows that regular meditation can permanently rewire the brain to raise levels of happiness, lower stress, even improve immune function.”

So even science begins to see how useful meditation can be.

Benefits of Meditation

Meditation can

• reduce stress
• improve focus
• lower blood pressure
• lead to a happier life

Meditation also helps with intuitive development, because your mind becomes clearer and clearer, and so it’s much easier to get messages from spirit.

Then, why don’t more people meditate? Because meditation is hard! Or so they think.

OMG – it’s sooo hard!!

Don’t you have to sit in strange positions when you meditate? Maybe you’re imagining a monk, sitting on a mountain top in a position that looks complicated.

Or even funny. But complicated, nonetheless.

And you may think “now you tell me I should do that kind of stuff, too?”

Um, no. 🙂

But let me tell you a story: I also thought meditation was hard.

As a teenager there was a time when I was fascinated about having a clear mind. So I decided to start to meditate, and I wanted to meditate for hours!

Aim big, right? 🙂

The problem was, I didn’t really know how one would meditate, so I just sat there, still, and didn’t move my body.

After a while I experienced a lot of tension because I think I had a very uncomfortable posture! I had to stop.

I tried it again the next week or so, but I failed again. It was too hard! Or so I thought.

It would take years after that that I finally managed to try meditation again. But this time it worked.

This time I had the right instructions.

8 Minute Meditation

I don’t remember exactly how I found out about the book “8 Minute Meditation: Quiet Your Mind. Change Your Life.” by Victor N. Davich, but I’m glad I did.

I like books where you have a clear program, a step by step instruction what to do. This is such a book. And it’s written in a great style to keep you motivated to continue meditating.

The main premise is that it only takes 8 minutes every day to meditate – the space between two TV commercials.

It’s enough to do the 8 minutes to get some really nice benefits. At the end of the book there are some suggestions to “upgrade” your meditation practice, but it’s completely optional.

The 8 Minute Meditation program is designed as a baby-steps program, so it’s rather easy to do it.

I really recommend this book if you want to start a daily meditation practice. 🙂

A Simple Meditation Technique

There are many different techniques in the book, but the most simple form of meditation is this:

• Sit comfortably on a chair. Yes, it can be a chair in your house. No mountain top necessary!
• Relax yourself with a few deep breaths.
• Close your eyes.
• Watch your breath go in and out.
• If thoughts arise, bring your focus back to your breathing.
• Don’t worry about your thoughts.
• Do that for 8 minutes per day.
• And don’t forget to open your eyes again. Otherwise you could stumble upon things when you get up. 😉

Sounds not too hard, isn’t it?

The only thing that may be hard is to do it consistently, but that’s with every new activity that you learn.

One way to overcome this is to add meditation to something that you already do each day.

You could do it right after getting up, or also just before going to bed. Or add it to any other daily activity or habit.

Do it

Do you want to have the benefits of meditation?

Then really start to do it! It’s just 8 minutes a day. What do you have to lose?

You can try it for a while and see if it’s something that you like.

Do you say “oh that’s a nice idea, I’ll do it some day” – but then you’ll never do it.

Or do you buy 8 Minute Meditation (or something similar) and start today?

The link above is not even an affiliate link. I just want you to be more happy, and I think meditation is a good way to achieve that. 🙂

Do you already meditate? Do you decide to start meditating?