7 Skills to enjoy Meditation

This is a summary of different skills that I developed over the past years to enjoy meditation exercises. It shall serve as a rough beginner’s guide into the world of meditation and is purely based on my own very subjective experience. I use the term meditation to describe a set of mental training techniques that can be learned through various different exercises - too many to count.

Meditation is not meditation!

I studied with many different traditions and teachers all over the world, attended many different retreats, wisdom or mindfulness conferences, organized my own mindfulness conferences and used different apps. Each school teaches different styles of meditations and depending on their practice, they put more or less emphasis on any of the below mentioned skills. 

At the beginning of my meditation journey, it was very difficult for me to understand the differences between them. At one point, I was really confused about the differences, until I started to look at differences and similarities from a bird’s perspective and could see some patterns emerge. Most exercises train many of these below mentioned skills at the same time. 

The meditation practice as a combination of exercises

Imagine a pushup exercise. The first thought that comes to mind is that with this exercise you’d train the strength of your arms, maybe your core. If you do push ups with full awareness, you would probably recognize that you train many different muscle groups and body parts at the same time. And with more experience, you can even modify your pushup to enhance the precision of your training. Same goes with meditation.   

When you look at meditation skills very closely, you will discover that they are inseparable from each other, because our skills are also interlinked at any time. What we do in Western empirical research to test the effect of an intervention - that is, trying to change one little object while holding all else equal - is in the experience of life and knowing that each moment is a unique moment - in my view impossible. 

Be the conductor of your own experience

However, one can still deliberately guide attention and intention of training towards the different skills, so that to allocate our mental resources towards areas where we want to grow our skills. It’s like guiding torch light into different angles of awareness. Depends on where you direct the torch, you may see different things. But the torch is irrelevant if you find yourself in the middle of a bright day. You could point it anywhere and would see different things - but it’s not because of the light of the torch! 

It’s important to be aware that there is only so much you can guide, by your steering, and then there is so much that happens - by itself with and without your intervention. 

7 Skills for Enjoying Meditation:

1. Awareness of Body, Breathing, and Their Relationship
2. Attending the present moment as is
3. Discover space in density
4. Concentration through letting go of distractions
5. Expand in all directions
6. Be all that is in the present moment
7. See each ending as a new beginning, vice versa

Exercises that go with the 7 skills (or skill groups)

Awareness: of Body, Breathing, and Their Relationship

Body: You can do guided body scans, that help you develop a sharper sensibility for what is happening in different body parts, where you can find tension and relaxation inside the body, and what is happening on the surface of the body (e.g., skin sensations). Many meditations also guide you towards finding an “anchor” for stability through the body posture, the weight distribution, or identifying spots that hold emotional tension. Some exercises also teach you how to experience “connection” through your body to the “earth” (e.g., sense into the connection between your feet and the earth). 

Breathing: Typical breathing exercises guide you towards understanding the “nature” of the breathing (typically breathing awareness exercises). You learn how to just be with your breathe, or some techniques teach you how to steer your breathing intentionally (typically Pranayama exercises). 

Interrelation Body & Breathing, You would then also develop the skill to understand how these two concepts interrelate. Typical questions are: What happens to my body while I breathe in? What happens to my body, while I breathe out? What sensations do I feel when the breathe enters the body? How does my body posture affect my breathing pattern?

As an outcome of training this skill, you would eventually be able to calm your mind through calming the body, or to resource yourself through your breathing. The body and the breathing become an “anchor”, the stable mountain that gives you strength and stability in challenging times. 

2. Attending: the present moment as is

This includes exercises that help you be in a state of peacefulness with all that is around you and inside you. Some schools use the term equanimity, which in its Latin roots means an even or kind mind (aequinimus + animus). What you train is to be aware of signals or triggers that we perceive in and around us, and let go of the urge to react to them. 

Some exercises guide you through a step-by-step approach of observation, calming the body along different sensory channels (seeing, hearing, touching, smelling, tasting) and thinking (some teachers call it mind chatter). 

An an outcome of training this skill, you’d eventually see and understand the micro-patterns of your reactions already in split seconds; this can sometimes be the precious time needed to prevent an emotionally challenging situation from escalating. What I personally find helpful is to start this from a calmed and stable body, and with an intention to meet all experiences in the present with an attitude of kindness. 

3. Discover space in density

Exercises to discover space would often be part of body scans (see awareness section). In some ways, it’s a deepening exercise. In addition to just understanding what is the sensational status quo snapshot of the physical living body, you’d zoom into the details of single body parts - let’s say the space between two fingers and dive into different layers of sensation (the outer, the inner, the dynamics) in micro-steps. Same goes for your thoughts. You can also dive into the pause in between the single thoughts, and venture around to see what is this pause and in which way does pause and stillness interrelate. 

As an outcome of this fine-tuning of your awareness for body relationships, you may start to find or experience a lot of space in your body. I do this exercise when I feel tension in my body and want to understand it a little bit better or when I feel very agitated and I have recurring thoughts of worry or anxiety that don’t seem to end. 

4. Concentration: through letting go of distractions

Many people have told me that they think meditation is not for them, because they can’t concentrate or focus. When I ask what they mean by that, most of them describe their inability to “think nothing” when they sit down, which makes them nervous. I think this is the most common pitfall when speaking about meditation - to me, concentration is an outcome, not the process. It’s not a “plank” exercise, but it’s a push-up exercise, in particular for beginners. 

Some schools suggest to practice keeping the mind to keep the focus on one object, e.g., the breathing, and stay with it, and when you lose the breathing, you just come back to it. It’s like training the mental muscle - you train it every time you caught yourself losing yourself in a thought, and you bring back your attention to the object of attention. Each time you bring your attention back is analogue to a mental pushup. Many mental pushups equal intense mental training. As an outcome of focus attention training, you’d experience higher capability to be with a moment (e.g., from section 3) for a longer time. 

In my classes, I teach a slightly different way of reaching concentration. I think of the present moment experience as an onion - I let go of each layer of distraction, step by step, so that I can touch the essence of the present moment. That is all that is relevant to me at this point in time and I dwell on it as long as my concentration holds. My observation has been that my body tends to increase tension (I call it “false focus”) - and that’s a signal to relax the focus, recalibrate and get back on track again. 

In my understanding, training concentration is like training “stamina” for meditation. The more stamina you have, the longer you can sit in stillness and you have more mental capacity freed up to pay attention to more subtle nuances of the present moment. 

5. Expand: in all directions

Expansion or growth can be in all directions as in growing in height, growing into depth, expanding into the horizontal plane. Different schools use different terminology. What I feel the common patterns is to create connection between different seemingly separate constructs. This can be for example bringing awareness to the depth, that is the connection between my past (even my ancestry) and my current self. Other exercises focus on creating connection between me and other living beings and/or nature (the horizontal). Buddhist schools would call this “metta”, loving kindness or compassion meditations. Some exercises refer to spiritual growth, the connecting to your “higher self”, the transcending of space and time. 

The exercises often start with expanding from one point of attention (e.g., the spot between your eyes, or your heart, or just your “thought”), cultivate an energy or intention of love, compassion, gratitude or “humility” (to surrender to a source, to God, to the light, to nature, yourself, ... - there are countless variations of what to surrender to). You’d then gradually and intentionally expand your awareness to include more and more objects of contemplation, including living beings. 

As an outcome of these exercise, many people feel increased sense of belonging, many describe waves of love, warm energy or light pulsing through their body. I love to do these exercises when I feel that I am harsh to myself or to other people. It helps me find grounding again, see connection between humans and let go of anger, frustration or bitterness. 

6. Be all that is: in the present moment

In my view, this is an advanced skill that requires basic mastery of the above mentioned skills. What you train is to completely melt into the present moment with all that is, all imperfections and limitations. 

One conceptual way of looking at it is that you and all that is not you are at peace with each other, because you are of the same - the moment can’t be as it is without you, because you leave an imprint to it, irrespective of what you decide to do or not do. And you cannot be as you are without all the conditions that are in the present moment, because on the most simple level, your body is exchanging signals with the world outside of your skin every single moment. 

From an experiential point of view, it can feel like your body is dissolving into space, and that there is no separate body anymore. That all of the sudden you feel like you are light (different people use different colors to describe this, some have told me they are purple, others told me they are white). Some exercises use music (high frequency, binaural beats, sound bowls, humming, “ommmms”) to guide you into this state; others use visual journeys (light, color schemes). 

In my experience, this “be all that is” in the present moment doesn’t have to necessarily feel like you are tripping on hallucinogens. It can also feel like you are completely aware of the present moment, fully at peace with the birds that are chirping, fully aware of the wind that is rushing through the winds, fully aware of your body that is expanding and withdrawing to the rhythm of your breathing without your active needing to intervene or regulate anything. 

7. See each ending as a new beginning, vice versa

What I refer to here is what Buddhist schools may call contemplation of “impermanence”. In my understanding it means to be aware that any object of experience has a beginning and an end, very naturally. With deep reflections I always come to the conclusion that beginning and end are the same. Each beginning is an end and each end is a new beginning. 

Exercises to train this awareness are for example to contemplate on the nature of your breathing. Where does it actually begin, and where does it end? Or the limitations of you body - where does your body begin and where does it end? Where does “self” begin and where does it end? 

As an outcome of exercises that train the awareness of change inherent in every moment, you may experience something such as the dissolving of time and space barriers, or - in very simple terms - that birth and death are just part of every moment. 

I have found the practice of seeing these dynamics helpful in gaining freedom from my natural “clinging” to pleasant sensations or experiences or my wanting to run away from unpleasant experiences. Good opportunities to practice this skill is for example when you notice you had reached for example a state of absorption (e.g.. from section 6), and then realize how you feel sad when it comes to an end. It’s the training of letting go of attachment and enjoy the beginning of the new moment that is unfolding. 

Come see for yourself.

To conclude, as I mentioned before, most of the meditation exercises train several of these 7 skills at the same time, without being explicit about it. Many of the schools offer different types of meditation exercises. My invitation to you is to just dive into the experience and see for yourself what resonates best with you. And when you feel it’s time to hone another skill, then go for it. My own practice has been more to get to some basic level of understanding of these different skills, and then depending on my context decide what skill I want to deepen at this moment in time. 

Any questions, send me a pm. You can also join my weekly free 60-minute mental resilience training sessions on Wednesday mornings, 7:15-8:15am CET (Berlin) | 10:45-11:45 IST (Delhi) | 12:15-1:15 pm ICT (Vietnam) : www.bit.ly/igmaf-signup . It includes guided meditation, reflection and deep listening exercises. Recordings from previous sessions are on youtube, e.g.,: www.bit.ly/igmaf-meditation13

Love, Yip