How to meditate

Only a few years ago, meditation was decidedly niche, and viewed as wacky and floaty; the domain of the hemp-wearing, vegan, Brighton/Glastonbury-living alternative health community.

Anecdotal evidence says that's all changing – and fast. At our Chelmsford-based studio, Yoga At The Mill, mindfulness classes are selling out faster than our yoga offering, and other teachers report a similar explosion of interest in all-things meditation.

Helped by recent research showing a kaleidoscope of benefits from de-stressing and improved sleep to lower blood pressure and enhanced wellbeing, meditation, it seems, is the new yoga: fashionable, Scientifically validated, and very much 'out there'. It's wonderful to see the shift.

Yet many people are still confused about what meditation is, and how it came help. So we thought we'd put together an easy-to-digest guide, based on the mindfulness tradition.

First of all, here are some common misconceptions:

Meditation is NOT about clearing the mind, or banishing thoughts. If you try to do this, you're likely to end up with a massive headache.

Meditation – at least in the mindfulness tradition – is not religious, and is practised by people from a full range of traditional religious and secular backgrounds.

You do not have to sit in a perfect Lotus, or crossed-leg position, to meditate. In fact, you can be doing anything, at any time. Meditation is not about going somewhere else, changing things, or finding some kind of different state.

So what is meditation?

Mindfulness meditation is a form of mind training that teaches us to be with our current experience – whether good, bad or neutral – in an open, non-judgemental, compassionate way. It is about coming out of our default mode of auto-pilot and mindlessness, whereby we are almost continually trapped in an exhausting cycle of future planning or churning over the past. Meanwhile, as we are so trapped within our own thought habits, we miss out on much of our direct experience, often involving our body and senses: the feeling of the breath moving in and out; the colour of autumn leaves; the burst of sensations involved in eating breakfast. This is the essence of meditation: a spacious awareness of how things are right now, with a willingness to acknowledge and stand close to experience, from moment to moment. This is no mean task, but, with willingness, practice and commitment, can be transformational.

Chocolate meditation

One of the best ways to experience mindfulness – which is highly experiential and hard to 'get', theoretically – is through eating meditation.

Set aside about 10 minutes or solitary, uninterrupted time.

Turn off the TV, iPhone, iPad, radio. Discard reading materials.

Start by looking at unwrapping your piece of chocolate slowly, feeling the texture of the wrapping, and noticing how it is packaged.

When all unwrapped, hold the piece of chocolate on your hand, and begin to notice its colour, texture and smell. Allow your senses to sense the food. Be aware of the long manufacturing processes – harvesting the cocoa, work at the factory – involved in getting this food to you.

Notice how it smells, and any bodily reaction to this; any desire to immediately eat!

After a while, take the chocolate to your mouth, and pop it in your mouth.

Let the tastes and textures reveal themselves to you, and change. Be in no hurry to finish.

When you do finally swallow, notice the feeling of the chocolate falling down your throat, towards your stomach.

Spend a little while noticing the after-effects of the experience – taste, tone, smell, how this was for you. There's no right or wrong answer; meditation is about awareness, not about changing how you are, or self-improvement.

Top tips

Here are some of our top tips:

Eat three meals per week mindfully - it does not matter which meal. Just make sure you cannot be interrupted

Aim to practice 10 minutes of meditation every day, building up to 20 minutes over time. A great starting practice is Mindfulness of Breathing (in essence, sensing or feeling the breath) or the Body Scan (a lovely, relaxing practice, involving bringing awareness to each part of the body in turn)*.

Get some motivation - join a group or if you have a smart phone or tablet, download insight timer.

Come along to a meditation retreat - they are a great way to learn some 'take away' tools to allow you to practice at home

* Not sure how to do a body scan? Here are some ideas:

The book Mindfulness for Dummies by Shamash Alidina has a lovely practice CD at the back, as does the newly-published Mindfulness for Health by Vidyamala Burch and Dr Danny Penman. Also try Headspace for downloads.

Check out youtube - search for mindfulness body scan

Looking to start meditation?

We run a number of meditation and mindfulness retreats in the UK, and Morocco. See our schedule page for all of our meditation retreats.