Practicing concentrated meditation can be difficult without first knowing what it should feel like.
Meditation can be a great way to clear your mind, but many people are unsure of how to go about it. A recent Spirituality Health blog post talks about some of the ways that people naturally meditate without even realizing that’s what they are doing. One of the best ways to succeed at using meditation to arrive at a state of peace is to try and mimic those times when meditation occurs naturally. It can be difficult to force yourself to clear your mind because the human brain is constantly thinking and analyzing surroundings, memories, recent interactions, etc.
The article points out some interesting moments of meditation that you might not have considered falling into that category. Everyone has experienced times where they “space out” and seem to leap forward in time. Imagine a long road trip where you have suddenly traveled much farther than you thought? Do you remember what you were thinking during that time? Probably not. That is the same type of experience that meditation attempts to achieve. The article also uses the example of showering and forgetting what you are rushing to get ready for. Certain experiences can calm our minds. The trick is to harness this feeling and be able to recreate it in the form of concentrated meditation.
There are a few ways to get better at this. One way is to focus your left brain on a repetitive task that doesn’t require analytical thinking. Spirituality Health suggests knitting and cleaning, but any activity that requires concentration but not necessarily complex thought can work. The task will require enough attention that you won’t be able to worry about the future, your next big meeting, relationship problems, but it will not be stressful in and of itself. The argument goes that if your mind is free of stress, you will begin to think about your problems in new ways and will come to natural solutions for them.
