Practical Meditation Advice

Interestingly, what you consider the start and end of a breath cycle matters. We automatically tend to regard the beginning as the inhale and the pause after the exhale as the end. However, if you’re thinking about the breath in that way, then that pause becomes the perfect opportunity for your thoughts to wander off, since the mind naturally tends

As fellow teacher Stephanie Nash is fond of saying, “A good meditation is one you did—the only bad meditation is one you didn’t do.” Take her wise advice to heart.

Counting your breaths at the start of a sit really helps stabilize your attention. If you’re a novice, you should use this method all the time. Once you have moved through the Four Steps and attention is restricted to the breath at the nose, start silently counting each breath. Your goal will be to follow the sensations continuously for ten consecu

A helpful phrase to remember when dealing with distractions of any kind is, let it come, let it be, let it go. Don’t try to suppress it, just let it come into peripheral awareness. Don’t engage the distraction or focus attention on it, simply disregard it and let it be in the background. Then, let it go away by itself. This is a passive process. Th

To develop intentionally directed, stable attention, you must first have a clear understanding of its opposite, spontaneous movements of attention. Attention moves spontaneously in three different ways: scanning, getting captured, and alternating.

My sense, based on personal experience and observing others, is that you taking to the practice depends on your ability to catch a glimpse of non-duality. Try it out, and if you don’t experience an opening in any way after some exploration, I advise to return to a “bottom up” approach, with my usual recommendation being Vipassana practice as it’s s