Meditate Without Meditating
When you think of meditation what comes to mind? Someone sitting on the floor with their legs crossed and their thumbs & index fingers touching? Maybe someone in a robe repeating “Om”? When you think of the benefits of meditation, what comes to mind? A quiet mind? Control over your emotions? An empty mind?
Meditation is a mindfulness practice in which an individual trains their sense of focus to become more attentive and aware of themselves. Along with this sense of awareness comes emotional awareness, increased active attention, tranquility, and stillness. The most common practice of meditation is sitting with your eyes closed and focusing your attention on your breathing or on a mantra that you repeat. But meditation doesn’t have to be the typical “sit and breathe”, it can come in the form of any activity that requires attention and focus on even the smallest scale.
Let’s take pour-over coffee as an example, one of my personal meditation practices. Every morning after a shower, I go into my kitchen and brew up coffee. Making pour-over coffee requires attention to detail –– heating the water to the exact temperature, weighing the beans to the exact .1 of a gram, pre-rinsing the filter, grinding the beans the right amount of time before brewing. All of these components sound basic, but it requires me to be attentive to the small things. Constantly checking these components keeps me from being distracted by my phone or anything external of coffee brewing. Plus, when I’m done, I get to enjoy a nice steamy cup of goodness.
Another example is just going for a walk. Going for a walk is one of the most powerful ways to find stillness. From ancient philosophers in Athens to Nikola Tesla and Beethoven, going for walks has helped the greatest minds in history find stillness and an escape from the overstimulation of everyday life. Even monks in Eastern monasteries go for walking meditations, where they focus all their attention and awareness to their steps and the ground they walk upon and the scenery that surrounds them. Walking detaches you from your day-to-day tasks, and allows you to take a break so that when you come back to your work, you are refreshed and with a clear mind.
A commonly overlooked meditative activity is writing. In traditional breath meditation, one is to center their focus on breath and their bodies in efforts to detach from thoughts internally. Journaling, however, is like the opposite in that you detach from your thoughts externally. Whatever looping repeating thoughts that bother or haunt you, write them down. This allows you to separate yourself from your thoughts and feelings to then see them objectively. Our minds are looping machines that perpetuate overthinking. Writing down your thoughts and feelings gives you some distance and clarity from them. You can then analyze them, reinterpret them, and eventually settle them.
Final Thoughts
You don’t have to sit on the floor with your legs crossed for an hour everyday in order to find stillness, focus, and tranquility. Sometimes the greatest meditation comes from doing something you love rather than the lack of doing. Find a practice you can incorporate into your daily routine that allows you to feel present while active. Remember there is no one-size-fits-all; what works for you works for you, and stick with it. Change won’t come fast, but it will come big.
