How To Access a Meditative State — A Complete Beginner’s Guide to Mindfulness Meditation
Learn the secrets of meditation to change your brain’s operating state.
Mindfulness is arguably the most popular branch of meditation used in today’s Western society. Despite being practised amongst cultures across the globe for centuries, science is only now beginning to show the real benefits of mindful meditation.
We’ll be looking at effective mindfulness practice, its usefulness in battling the limiting aspects of your thoughts, and what it means to be in a meditative state.
A New Awareness
Practising mindfulness is all about being in touch with your thoughts, breath and body. Through acquiring a special concentration towards these matters, you’ll be able to access meditative states that can change your brain’s functioning state.
This new state comes in the form of alpha waves — a brainwave with a frequency of around 9–14Hz. Unlike the beta state that we primarily function on associated with alertness and sometimes anxiety, being in an alpha state gives way to complete peace of mind. These moments are when the best ideas flow to us, or when we feel most spiritually ignited.
You may be thinking ‘How can I access this state?’ Well, there is no formula per se, but mindfulness meditation provides the perfect grounds to tune your brain to this blissful frequency.
Here’s a short 10-minute exercise you may wish to try to give yourself a taster of mindfulness:
Becoming Mindful
Good meditation begins with good posture; plant your feet firmly on the floor and position your spine in a tall, proud position.
Now, closing your eyes, place your hands on your lap and begin to take some deep breaths: first, a few controlled, breathing in for 2 and out for 4, then let your breathing gradually flow away at a steady pace.
As you become aware of your breath, notice your body and pay attention to any areas that may be tense. One thing I instantly notice is my shoulders being pinned up in the sky, so take a moment to consciously drop the shoulders.
Focus on the mouth and jaw. Let any slight tensions dissolve as you drop the jaw. Feel the way your eyelids are sealed shut, and notice the muscles above the eyes as you feel and shift your eyebrows.
Notice the cool, refreshing air that goes in through your nose. See how this relates to the movement of your body as you bring awareness to your chest area. First, notice the obvious movements, specifically that of the abdomen going up and down. But as you continue to tune in with your breath, notice the perhaps more subtle movements of the upper chest — the lungs expanding and contracting before refilling.
As you pay attention to these details, you may notice your breath deepening. The deeper your breathing becomes, the easier it is to identify the features. And so, this cycle continues as you interact and observe your breath.
Maintaining Focus
Sustaining this subtle concentration is key to becoming mindful and accessing more relaxed states of awareness. These forms of consciousness allow for creative ideas to arise and may offer an environment for solutions to ignite. Perhaps it’s a fix for a problem you’ve been overthinking or an opportunity you’ve discovered that you may have missed.
You may wish to use mindfulness as a tool to harness the power of the brain, much like Tom Bilyeu’s idea of thinkitating, or simply benefit from the several plus sides of practising mindfulness.
Controlling Your Mind
Meditation does present some challenges, however. It is unfortunately our own chattering minds that are responsible for this issue. But with practice, you’ll be able to conquer the complexities of the mind to have more peaceful meditation sessions and live a more peaceful life.
Mindfulness lets us gain better access to what goes on in our heads. It helps us to focus on thoughts that boost us and discard those unhelpful, unnecessary thoughts that hold us back.
Overcoming Interruptions
When first practising the exercise above or any form of mindfulness, you will find the mind veering away from the exercise at several points. It may be a current concern or what you’re planning on eating for dinner. The goal is to eliminate such distractions, not by fighting them away but by gradually gaining control of them and guiding them away from the picture.
Irrelevant injections of thought are typically harmless but if not managed can lead to long periods of being lost and derailing from the exercise. This, in turn, can lose your focus, essential for sustaining those powerful meditative states.
Many thought leaders have tried to come up with a system to stop thoughts in this way. A story goes that the Buddha once said if you can meditate for 1 hour with not a single thought, you will be enlightened.
Stopping interruptions of thought during meditation helps stop interruptions in real life. One case experienced by many people involves the thought ‘But what if they think I’m doing [this]?’, usually occurring when one steps outside their comfort zone.
One of the best ways to stop unnecessary thoughts from invading during meditation is not by kicking yourself every time one arises but rather by learning the skill of disidentifying with thought.
Undefining Thought
We live in a society of labels. Sets branch out into multiple subsets. We are forever breaking down categories into more specific ones — just look at modern music genres, for instance. In such a data-rich world, it is hard not to give something a label, and this applies to our thoughts too.
One of the best analogies we can use when looking at meditation is the essence of nature. Just like we can watch clouds go by without giving them a name, there is an art to viewing things happen without thoroughly analysing them. In our case, this is letting thoughts pass us like waves in the ocean.
Learning this skill will invite a real sense of peace to your mind. It will stop overthinking and eliminate unnecessary thoughts, namely the 95% of anxiety-inducing thoughts that are utterly pointless.
Awareness Without Speculation
So how can you prevent disrupting thoughts from ruining your meditation practice? One useful approach is setting yourself a mind-frame to use every time an interrupting thought arises.
To demonstrate, here’s one that I use:
Assign your thought to a loose object in your mind, or give it some approximate physical location in your headspace.
Now, be aware that exists in your head but don’t let this cause any concern. Try to blur the image now, or let the location become a misty fog. Any time you feel a need to identify with it, let it become more unclear and naturally wash away. Be confident in marking it with ambiguity — let the pleasant stillness of meditation boost this confidence.
There can be an extra challenge involved when moving on from this short exercise back to the main focus, but not to worry: the key is to be aware that something was or is there, but not feel any need to think about it further.
Consistency Is Key
So, there is an in-depth guide to practising mindfulness meditation and the ways to challenge the obstacles it presents.
Like many things, trying this once isn’t enough to benefit from its qualities; practice and consistency are key. Learn the skill of mindfulness and see your inner and outer perspective of life shift in unthinkable ways…
