How to Do Mindful Meditation

This meditation is a great foundation to developing insight as well as developing skills to improve your meditation practice. Mindfulness is useful everywhere and is a "Jack of all trades" meditation as it explores all aspects of the mind and body. The meditation can be used to develop deeper concentration and offers a lot of hidden benefits on the side such as being a helpful anchor to prevent the mind getting lost in thoughts and feelings and to develop skills to improve life quality.

This tutorial gives an in depth way to start and develop the practice for best results.

Edit Steps

Meditation Help

Sample Meditation Techniques

Sample Safe Space Visualization

Part One: Choosing a Place to Meditate

Select a place where you will feel comfortable meditating. Ideal characteristics of a good meditation place include somewhere neither too dark nor too light, and neither too hot nor too cold. Avoid any place likely to have many disturbances or distractions. It can be outside if it feels appropriate.
- If you don't feel safe or able to meditate in one place, try looking somewhere else.
- It's great if there is a meditation centre nearby, but you can easily use a quiet place at your home or a friend's.

Part Two: Deciding on a Suitable Posture

Choose and test the kind of posture that suits you - it may be standing, sitting, walking, or lying down. Each posture has its own disadvantages and advantages, so it is recommended to study one at a time until you are more aware and practiced at examining what goes on. Trying to do them all at once as a beginner may discourage you from continuing, so it is better to choose one posture and trial the others after some practice and experience is developed.

Try the standing posture. This is an upright posture. The hands may be raised with palms facing you at a comfortable height and angle (you may need to adjust the arms to find a comfortable pose where they hang with minimal effort and tension), or down by your side.
- The feet should be shoulder width apart with the weight dispersed evenly and the knees should not be locked.
- Relax your stomach and lower back.
This is a posture that is difficult to develop but when developed gives a sense of solidity.

Try the reclining posture. This is often called the lion posture. It involves reclining on your right hand side with your head resting on your right hand, or a small pillow. The left hand rests on top of the body which is the left side.
- If you are aware that it affects your circulation, it is recommended to try another style.
Lying on your back is a common method for beginners, but can often induce sleepiness, which compromises concentration.

Try the seated posture. This also has a variety of styles and it is best to select and stick with the style you can maintain comfortably. Some variations have the legs crossed, some have them folded with one leg on the other known as a half lotus, or both legs folded with the feet facing up, known as the full lotus. Sometimes the feet are positioned with the soles touching and the toes pointing away from the body.
- The chest should be upright and open and the lower back and stomach relaxed.
- The neck should be balanced and the head tilted gently forward to open the airways.
- Your hands may be folded gently on your lap, or resting on your thighs or knees.
- The palms may be face up with the fingers either relaxed or gently touching the thumb, or palms down resting on your legs.

Try the walking posture. This is often the best for mindfulness meditation as it gives the most, while having the fewest disadvantages. It is a posture that makes mindfulness the easiest to incorporate in your day-to-day experiences. Walking is done at a slow gentle pace, usually over a small distance going backwards and forwards. It is best done in a secluded, non-distracting area. Walking also involves empty stepping, so you when you move the foot you shift the weight after it has been placed.
- The hands can be clasped gently or by your side.
- You can focus on various parts of the body such as the hips, the chest, the legs, the feet, as well as the intention to move.

Part Three: Practicing Meditation

Relax into your chosen posture. Develop a sense of calm focus. Once you have settled into your meditation, which for a beginner may take some time, examine the four foundations of mindfulness, which are also known formally as the four frames of reference that you can study. You can try one at a time, or even all of them together or in tandem.

Examine the first foundation, mindfulness of the body. This is an examination of its composite nature, otherwise known as body-mindfulness such as mentally noting, focusing, and exploring component parts of the body such as head, hair, skin, teeth, muscles, bones heart, stomach, etc. The practice is focusing on what they are, where they are, what they are dependent on, what they do, etc.
- Focus on each part and study it. You may find that the object itself occurs as an image to you or becomes more apparent in another way.
- Focus on "in and out" breathing is also mindfulness of the body.
- A further aspect to study is physical characteristics, such as the solid, liquid, temperature, and motion characteristics.
- Another aspect to study is the movement and how it reacts and interacts with events, tiredness and muscle tension, and other phenomena. The body struggles against a lot of physical experiences, but without the mind, it's just a senseless and inactive lump of skin, meat, and bones.

Examine the second foundation, mindfulness of physical feelings and sensations. Often this is known as body-states meditation to differentiate it from the body-mindfulness.
- How and when sensations occur is one thing to focus on. Are they pleasant, unpleasant, or neutral? You can note "there is now a pleasant feeling" or "there is an ache here", etc. Study how the mind and body are acting and interacting with these feelings.
- A similar method that applies to both first two body-focused foundations is a form of body scanning; namely, scanning the body up and down to examine sensations and then letting them go to pass onto another part of the body, or watching energy flow.
- The skill is not only to gain tolerance of the body and understanding of its nature, but to mentally let go of the stress that arises and how to relax the body to reduce tension.

Examine the third foundation, the mindfulness of mental states . This covers thoughts, fantasies, ideas, dreams, images, etc. The focus is to watch how they arise and change and how they arise dependent on feelings or outside impulses or the amount of concentration you have. You can note "I'm suddenly thinking about this" or "this thought has changed into this". Here is an opportunity to study the value or benefit of thoughts and themes.
- The other practice is letting go of these mental experiences as watching them is one thing, but if you get caught up in them the practice grinds to a halt.

Examine the fourth and final foundation, mindfulness of the consciousness. This may include the state of mind such as tiredness or energetic states, or focused or unfocused states, feeling peaceful or anxious, etc.
- Is the mind being dominated by some feeling such as greed or anger? Is the mind wanting or rejecting something? These are all questions to ask in this subject to give you an awareness of how the mind is currently.
- Studying consciousness is interesting because it shows how the consciousness affects the theme of thoughts and fantasies. If the consciousness is feeling tired, the person may experience thoughts or feelings of depression, but if the mind is energetic, it could make the mind bright and happy, but if in excess it can make the mind unable to focus on one thing and, consequently, thoughts jump around.
- The skill is to temper or gently change the state of the consciousness, so introducing compassion when feeling depressed, goodwill when feeling angry, or appreciation when feeling dissatisfaction.

Take note. When focusing, you can note things verbally or mentally. Mentally is probably the best, as it really builds concentration, but again, if it's easier to study it verbally, feel free to do so, taking care to practice it where you will not distract others or yourself. You can study it by noting each event, or in the case of a monologue, describing each sensation or experience. Doing this can help gain an insight as well as seeing how the mind reacts to words and to knowledge, but the practitioner must be wary not to get absorbed in a story.
- Aim to work towards silent awareness and eventually word-less awareness, where you are simply aware without using labels or words.

Let go. An integral part of all four foundations is to let go of any stressful states in the mind and body that arise, without condemning them. Being kind to yourself is important and is hard to practice, but is also pragmatic in releasing stress without judging yourself. The mind often jumps into fear, distress, bewilderment, or confusion and condemnation, which is a sign the mind is still wild and inexperienced. When you have become more adept and familiar with the mental environment and the nature of the body, the mind then knows that what it is seeing is not new or unusual and does not react in the same way.

Consider these basic case examples where you may apply this meditation.
- A person is walking up and down and is noting movements such as "lifting foot, putting down, shifting weight, slowing down, stopping, turning around...", and so forth, adding extra more subtle actions and sensations as they are noticed.
- A person is in a sitting posture, noting breathing in, breathing out, and other things such as the muscles being used to "sit", the muscles used to expand the lungs, as well as any sensations, mental feelings, thoughts, hearing a noise, smelling a smell, etc, all while adding extra actions as they are noticed.
- A person is lying on their right side and noticing the muscles, sinews, bones, organs, body fluids, etc. Or, noticing tension, relaxation, and other sensations.
- A person is standing up noticing the muscles used and the muscle feelings in "standing up" and noticing when the mind is aware of imbalance and how it tries to correct it. You can also feel and note solidity or tension in the body as well as softness, heat or coldness, and movements.

Part Four: Developing the Meditation

Continue to practice and explore these aspects. The goal is to observe the subject sufficiently to form a deeper understanding of life, as well as to be familiar to how the mind and body interacts and finally how it changes. This is all so you can steer yourself towards a more healthy and happy state of affairs.
- It is best to recognise everything as an independent process without saying this is me or mine. You may see things that cause you alarm (as they aren't what you expected) but that have been happening normally for some time.

Keep practicing and investigating. When you see how many automatic processes there are that happen on their own, you can see their more innate nature. By releasing any fear, greed, loathing, or ignorance about these states by being aware of them at the same time as aware what they are, stressful events can be abandoned like the putting down of a heavy burden. Aim to carry mindfulness across to all day-to-day activities outside of formal meditation practice. In this way it becomes a tool that can be used in all circumstances.
- There is a consistent metaphor in meditation that is always useful to bear in mind: The mind may have its roots in the mud, but it can be like a lotus that rises above the muddy water to stand free and beautiful.

Edit Tips

Listening to relaxing music, nature sounds, or "white noise" may help you in your mindful meditation practice, especially when you are starting out.

Try to concentrate on inhaling and exhaling. In Buddhism this practice known as Anapanasati. This is the ultimate way to deeply penetrate into mindfulness.

Take it a step at a time; don't try to be aware of too many things, but merely what you see as you see it and adding things as they become known to you. Let these things go as they change. You can improve the amount your awareness of as you practice.

This practice can be used as a combination to body mindfulness in any posture etc., in order to gain the best experience and opportunity to study these frames of reference.