Find which kind of meditation suits you. There are so many techniques and methods. Try Relaxation Ritual. From the book Modern Magick. And Music. Binaural Beats or Meditation music.
Start by staring at an onbject and take in relaxing breaths. When you feel you are calm. Close your eyes and stare at the black screen in your eyes. Just stare look lol. Keep breathing the way u feel is best. While your eyes are closed listen to the noises around you. When you start to have a thought just know i. Acknowledge it. And let it pass as though it isnt there.do this until you are in a place of pure relaxation and joy. Im not really sure if there is anymore to this technique. But its called quiet mind meditation. Should work
When I first started practicing meditation I could not do it. It was frustrating and off putting. There are so many methods and techniques out there and it felt like I tried every single one, but nothing was working. That was because I didn't dig deep enough and find the source of my problem. I had excellent visualization skills, so that wasn't it, so I dug a little deeper. I realized that my problem was that I couldn't quiet and slow down my mind. I had too many thoughts and I couldn't push them out of my mind. I have always had an overactive mind, and I still sometimes struggle with it when it comes to concentrating and meditation for that matter. I found a few methods that worked for me.
One method is one that my friend's mom told me. I forgot the exact name of the technique, but essentially instead of trying to push your thoughts away, you actively think through them, following every train of thought until finally there are none. It can be a lengthy process, and it can get pretty emotional when you let yourself just think every thought you have without a filter trying to push them away, but it is a freeing feeling. The negativity literally just melts away.
The second method that I sometimes use is heavily relied on my visualization skills. I just picture an image that is relaxing to me. I picture it with as much detail as I can, and envision myself in that scenario, and feeling the environmental factors that would occur, and when my thoughts start to waiver, I simply focus on more and more details to bring myself back to that.
And the last method that I still use when I am having an off day, and when I first started meditating, was doing guided meditation. I found these videos on YouTube, and they are excellent. Not everyone has the same experience, and some don't like them, but I do.
I hope my personal experiences help any, along with techniques that I have found helpful in the past!
If you have a smart device, the use of an app may improve things.
A lot of people like apps such as Mindspace among some others.
I've been using the Insight Timer app. It has a lot of features, even in the free version. It tracks progress, has a journal, and a wide range of types of meditation -- from religious, to New-Age, to mindfulness, and more -- and also just a timer.
Right now, there is a free course available to learn how to meditate. It explores a different aspect every day, for a week. It is interesting, and at least gives some things to think about.
Something I like about guided meditations -- whether found in a liked podcast, on YouTube, or an app -- is that the voice of the guide and the instructions given provide a focus, and instructions on where to direct attention. This can be quite helpful when starting out.
One of the things which I had to overcome was the act of trying too hard to get any result. In my opinion you shouldn't be beating yourself up because 3 minutes in you start thinking about your cat. That is normal for anyone practicing meditation, it is still normal for me at times and I have been meditating for years. If you beat yourself up about it, try and force the thought out of your head and force yourself to think of nothing, you are going to the opposite. If you have to think about thinking about nothing, or think about focusing on an object or mantra, then you are already adding thought to were there should be none.
I personally think meditation is more of a passive exercise with some active features sometimes. But in general, the beginning student of meditation should learn to be wholly passive, that is, to simply allow whatever happens to happen. You stray from focusing on the breath? Simply allow the train of thoughts to run it's course, and go back to the breath in your own time.
Over time, this other portion of your mind which you seemingly have no control over will die down and be more controlled. You should try different types of meditation too. I have an overactive mind, I'm a gemini(Have a lot of geminiin my chart) which means I can be scattered and I get bored after 5 minutes. On bad days I find focusing types of meditation impossible. My personal favourite is mantra meditation, you pick a scared phrase such as Aum Mani Padme Hum, or Aum etc. It could also be from a different language- I would personally use one of the sacred languages such as Sanskrit, Hebrew, Latin or Greek simply because they are more resonant. You can either breathe deeply vibrate the mantra and repeat for as long as you want. Or you can vibrate the mantra with each breath and speed up the repetition until the repetitions are no long being spoken but are simply in your mind and keep your mind ticking with the phrase. I prefer the latter, but it is not practiced that way as much.
