why is it so difficult to meditate?

mm
By: Andrea Roca

Why is it so difficult to meditate? Spirituality

You try to sit every day in your lovely meditation spot but nothing happens. You feel stressed all day long. You’ve tried guided meditations but it’s just not working. Why is it so difficult to meditate?

Here are some of the reasons why meditation becomes hard. Being aware of them may help us to change our attitude or habits.

Inconsistency

Ask yourself: How often do I meditate? And if the answer is something like this: “Mmm twice or three times a week, sometimes four, i couldn´t tell cause it depends a lot on my week schedule…”

You need to set a time for your daily, DAILY (yes you read it correctly) practice. Some yogis say that the best time is four in the morning. But let’s be realistic about it. Not a lot of us will wake up and meditate at that time. But at least set a time each morning, the same time everyday, in which you know you won’t be disturbed for at least 20 minutes.

Being committed to this schedule will improve your practice because you’ll create a habit. Then when you don’t meditate, your mind will ask you for it.

Lack of a ritual

Meditation is a ritual. If you prefer to call it a tradition or habit, be my guest!

You need to have a sacred meditation spot. Maybe burn a candle, light some incense. You can say a prayer before or after you meditate. Or read a page of a sacred book at the end of your meditation and use it as a reflection for the rest of your day. Creating a ritual for your meditation practice will help your mind calm down faster.

Wrong expectations

Why do you meditate?

If you meditate because you want to see dead people or angels or whatever, forget it! It won’t happen. Meditation helps you to calm your mind down. Some people eventually may see lights, and may connect to another dimension during meditation, but that takes a long time. Plus, you usually need a guru (teacher) to learn to achieve those states.

Never sit down to meditate with an expectation, cause you will be disappointed. And disappointment leads to frustration, which is the main reason people quit meditation. Just sit down and let your meditation time flow. You never know what will happen.

Attachments

In our busy lives, we sit down to meditate thinking things such as “OMG, i should use this 20 minutes to make the kid’s breakfast” or  “I should go back to bed, I still have 20 minutes to rest before going to the office” or “Maybe I should send that email I needed to send yesterday and i forgot.”

If you start your meditation practice thinking about all the things you should or could be doing in that moment and attaching to them, your meditation practice will be a waste of time. You’ll never manage to calm down.

When these thoughts come up — and they will — just let them go. Tell yourself that you have set this time aside for meditation and you’ll use it solely for that purpose. Everything else can wait.

Meditation may be hard sometimes, especially for beginners, but also for people who have been meditating for a long time. The trick for meditation is to be constant, to sit down without any expectations, to let go of your fears, or thoughts, especially when your meditation practice seems to have pulled back a little bit, because sometimes that happens. Just be persistent and you will see a huge difference in a short time.

If you are looking for a way to start or deepen your daily meditation – take
look at this program by MindValley: bit.ly/YOGIMeditation and the Mindfulness Based Stressed Reduction online course by Sounds True: – The YOGI TIMES team

You also might read about this 15 minute meditation to change your life