Developing a More Consistent Meditation Practice
The number one struggle I hear from both students I work with and one-to-one mentees is how to keep a consistent daily meditation practice. I hear this so much that I finally decided to devote some content to it.
What Is a Consistent Meditation Practice?
Consistency can really be anything we want it to be as long as it's something regular. I personally consider a consistent meditation practice to be something we do every day. This helps us to cultivate the longer-term benefits of meditation and to grow beyond the more short-term (and fleeting) experiences we can have.
A daily meditation practice can really look a lot of different ways. I recommend trying to fit meditation into your morning routine, preferably the first thing you do, as you’re more likely to do it. Meditating first thing in the morning is also a wonderful way to shape the day because we connect straight away to our intentions, inner wisdom, as well as beneficial mind states like loving-kindness and compassion.
The Most Common Blocks To Sustaining a Daily Meditation Practice
Poor time management
Meditation being a low priority
Clinging to quick results
Fear of “failure” or not getting it “right”
A limited purpose or intention around why we meditate
A lot of us are busy these days and have very little extra time. Some of that time we genuinely need for basic necessities like work, family, food prep, exercise, etc… and the other… let’s just say it seems to disappear into the abyss of a busy day. This of course relates to how we manage (or don’t manage) our time. This is the first common block I see.
The second most common block is related to not knowing or understanding the true value of meditation, and therefore it remains a very low priority.
The third is related to having too many expectations around short-term or quick results. This also relates to emotional obstacles we may bring like fear of “failure”, low self-worth or feeling like we're never going to get it “right.”
Lastly, I often see a lot of confusion around the purpose of meditation or being bound to a limited purpose or idea of what we are attempting to get from meditation. What I mean by this is within Buddhism the intentions are quite vast and so the purpose can become very vast. This is a little bit different than maybe some other forms of intention for meditation where we just want to feel a little bit better within the moment or a little bit more calm. Though there's nothing fundamentally wrong with these intentions, they do often serve a very short-term and limited purpose. This can prevent us from getting inspired by and developing a commitment to the longer-term benefits of meditation.
Remedies For the Most Common Blocks
Bottom line is we need to carve out the time to practice. Maybe we need to re-think our schedule for the week and plan out some time to practice. Setting aside some time in the morning to meditate can be a great way to start the day.
Less is really more when it comes to consistency, and I recommend setting a bare minimum of practice time for the morning. This means deciding on a time frame of practice that we can absolutely do even when we’re stressed or busy. This can be as little as five minutes. Of course, in order to mature in our practice we’re going to need to eventually devote more than five minutes per day to it, but that’s not the point here. The point of having a bare minimum is to simply get us to show up for our practice session daily.
If after a month, two months, three months, or six months you want to expand your practice time to 20, 30, 45 minutes, or longer, great! Hopefully by that time you are experiencing some more of the longer term benefits of meditation and so a natural enthusiasm may have already developed.
Studying The Dharma Helps
Knowing the purpose, path, and benefits of meditation goes a long way, even if you are only interested in meditating for its health benefits. Though here I will mostly focus on the benefits of meditation from a Buddhist perspective.
As I wrote in my previous blog post “What Is Meditation?” from a Buddhist perspective we are trying to get to know the mind, what produces dissatisfaction/suffering, and what eliminates it.
Getting to know the mind and the process of eliminating clinging and therefore suffering comes out of strengthening the aware quality of mind and then using that aware quality to investigate the nature of mind, self, and the apparent world around us. It’s only through strengthening awareness and implementing it in a skillful way that we can experience how our thoughts and emotions bind us. From there we can then begin the process of finding freedom from/within that bondage.
The long-term benefits that come out of this kind of practice are massive and have completely changed the lives of myself, dharma friends I know, and students that I’ve had the pleasure to work with over the years. Even within the first year of meditating with a longer-term approach in mind I could see lasting shifts in how I related with thoughts, emotions, and habitual patterns. This has only increased over time.
Within the lineages of Tibetan Buddhism we normally study the dharma extensively as a part of our practice. In this way we first gain an understanding of the road we are aspiring to travel. Then we begin to travel on that road via contemplation and meditation. This helps us to both know the practices that we are training in, and to become more flexible and skillful in avoiding sidetracks and pitfalls. So study is like having a very good image or map of the territory we are trying to master. From there we can genuinely transform and finally arrive at our destination of unchanging realization or inner freedom. His Holiness the 14th Dalai Lama is a very good example of this, as he considers himself to still be a student of the dharma well into his 80’s!
The main idea is that we are growing our understanding, applying that understanding to the meditation practice, and that the meditation practice is transforming us. In short, knowing the dharma brings purpose to our meditation practice.
Keep It Simple
My last tip is to keep it simple. Set up a beginning, middle, and end to a practice session. In the beginning form an altruistic intention for the practice, in the middle train in the main meditation practice you’re working with, and at the end dedicate the merit or energy from the practice. In that way you can make steady progress each day in familiarizing with a boundless heart/mind.
