How to Create a Daily Meditation Practice: 3 Tips from Jackie Stewart
Starting a daily meditation practice can seem like a daunting task. With so many other things we forget to do during the day, how can we add one more thing to our routine?
The key is to reframe the habit of meditation in your mind. Think of it as part of your hygiene — just as you take care of your physical health through exercise, eating well, showering, brushing your teeth, etc., your mental health deserves the same amount of daily care.
You might be wondering if it's worth the effort. Can 10 minutes of meditation a day really make a difference in your life? According to research, the answer is yes. The benefits of meditation are worth putting in the extra effort each day.
If you want to start meditating but don’t know where to begin, check out these three tips on how to begin a daily meditation practice from NYC-based mindfulness instructor Jackie Stewart.
How to Meditate Daily: 3 Tips for Beginners
“It’s important to build a solid foundation to support a consistent meditation practice,” said Stewart. “Consistent practice supports mindful living, and if we stick with it, we’ll find moments of mindfulness showing up all through the day.”
These three tips will help you support the development of a daily meditation habit.
1. Build it into an existing routine.
It’s much easier to incorporate a new habit if you weave it into your existing routine. “If you wake up, brush your teeth, and have a cup of tea every morning, maybe now you wake up, brush your teeth, meditate, and then have your cup of coffee or tea,” said Stewart.
As Stewart suggested, try meditating as part of your morning routine, or work it in as an evening ritual before bed. Science backs this principle up — research shows that repeating an action consistently in the same context will help you in habit formation.
2. Aim for consistency rather than length.
The last thing you want to do when creating a habit is make the challenge feel insurmountable. Starting out with just five minutes is a lot easier to approach than making a lofty goal to meditate for an hour each day. “It’s better to do five minutes every day than 30 minutes one day, because we’re building a habit that does need consistency,” said Stewart.
Approach your habit timetable in a realistic way. If your goal is to meditate for 10 minutes each morning, perhaps you start off with five minutes each day for a week straight. Once you have the week down, go for six minutes each day for the next week, and so on until you reach 10 minutes a day. Or perhaps you're fine keeping your time at five minutes a day indefinitely — allow your goals to change with your needs, and aim for consistency above all things.
3. Find a relatively quiet space where you can sit undisturbed.
Though it’s impossible to completely free yourself of distractions, design your meditation space to be as quiet and comfortable as possible. “This will create a container for you to feel safe and you won’t need to worry about external distractions,” said Stewart.
If the noise of daily life is inevitable, such as having an open floor plan in your living space, being near a noisy street, or having your kids nearby, perhaps you shift your meditation time to right before bed when you’re finally alone with your thoughts with no immediate alarms or tasks to worry about.
How can I stop being distracted during meditation?
It’s a common meditation myth that you’re supposed to empty your mind of all thoughts. The focus of meditation relates more to attention and awareness.
Stewart practices meditation techniques rooted in Buddhism called Shamatha and Vipassana. “In the West, we know these practices as mindfulness,” said Stewart. “Shamatha means tranquility, peaceful presence, or calm abiding. This is the concentration aspect of our practice. Vipassana means insight or clear seeing, and is considered the wisdom aspect of our practice.
“In order to see clearly, we need to have relatively stable attention to sustain that clear seeing. Otherwise, we’ll be whisked away in distracted thinking. More often than not, we don't even realize when we've become distracted. The more we practice and the more introspection we develop to know where our attention is at any given moment, the more insight or clear seeing we’ll have about the nature of reality.”
Stewart says that we can think of meditation as a way of refining the mind. When we practice meditation, we are shining the light of our attention on particular aspects of our experience.
“A common practice might look like bringing your attention to something,” said Stewart. “In most cases, this will be the breath and letting your attention rest there. At some point, you may notice your mind gets distracted by something — a rumination, restlessness, some distraction, and you might be diverted for five minutes or five seconds. The key is, the moment that we realize we’ve become distracted, we gently bring our attention back to our breath or the object that we're working with. This will happen over and over again, and each time we bring our attention back, we're strengthening access to our awareness.”
Think of your meditation practice as mental strength-building. By focusing on both physical and mental strength, you’re creating balance in your wellness routine for a healthier, richer, and fuller experience in your day-to-day life.
Want to practice meditation with Jackie Stewart? Try her 14-Day Meditation Habit series for free with a 14-day trial to Alo Moves.