In fact it is better for beginners to only sit with meditation for five minutes but I recommend this several times during the day consistently. The best practice is to begin it upon waking up in the morning and repeat it every two hours throughout the day until you go to sleep at night. Five minutes each time, once every two hours.
What to do in these five minutes? Please read the following articles, learn all the tools suggested and make your own combination for repeated and consistent practice. Cultivate it into a lifelong habit. You will start seeing practical benefits in your life within two weeks after starting the regular practice and after that you will not need anymore motivation to continue with the practice.
Selvan Srinivasan · 1y
What are some breathing exercises for beginners who struggle with focusing on their breath while meditating?
Do this for just three minutes and see if it helps. Sit on a straight back chair with feet flat on the floor, the entire soles of the feet from tips of the toes to the heels firmly contacting the floor. Keep your back erect, you may place a cushion behind your back for support if required but do not lean back on an inclined backrest of the chair. Let your head be held straight, neck straight, shoulders square and relaxed. You may tilt the head very slightly downward to gaze at a point on the floor in front of you a few feet away from you. Keep your eyes fixed on that spot for the three minutes without moving your eyeballs. Allow your eyes to be half open and half closed and hold that spot in a gentle gaze and not a stare. You are not looking there to see something but simply holding that spot in a gentle gaze. Exhale with a loud sigh from your mouth and use gentle effort to empty your lungs as far as possible without straining too much. Then relax your body and allow the inhale to happen effortlessly and soundlessly through your nostrils. When you sense that the inhale is over, do not put any further effort to breathe in but repeat the exhale from the mouth with the sound and gentle effort. I call this conscious breathing. Effort only for the out breaths and allowing in breaths to happen effortlessly. This entire process is called FGCB or fixed gazing with conscious breathing. You may set hourly reminder alerts on your smartphone and repeat this 3 minute FGCB every hour throughout the day today and see how it helps with calming your mind. This is a powerful grounding practice and you can do this even when you are driving and waiting for the red signal to turn green. Allow any such interruptions in your day to remind you to come back to the practice of FGCB repeatedly. For more information and plenty of free resources to aid with the practice of meditation and deep healing, please visit my website.
Selvan Srinivasan · 1y
How can I meditate 24*7?
Yes it is possible to hold a background state of Awareness or be present in the here and now or be connected with your grounding or meditate 24×7 as you call it and yet be completely focussed on something else in the conscious part of your mind or logical / analytical mind (you call this without being aware). Before I tell you how to achieve it, I would like to explain what is happening here. Let me take the example of a juggler in a circus show. This person is able to juggle several things simultaneously but if he or she looks at one particular thing they will drop all the other things. So their conscious attention may be focussed on the audience and they may be making some funny face or saying some joke to entertain the audience but simultaneously they are probably juggling ten different balls of different sizes. Their conscious mind is mindful about the audience and talking with them and their unaware mind (as you call it) which is actually their background state of awareness is taking care of the hand movements to keep all the balls in the air in continuous motion. In other words, this juggler is being present and grounded or being mindful with all the balls he/she is juggling and and not aware of it because they are simultaneously entertaining the audience with their jokes and facial expressions. What happens normally when we work and are not being mindful is that we end up having very bad body posture which ruins our health and it turn reduces our efficiency and productivity at work. But if we stop working and start spending equal amount of time in meditation and exercise, we are not able to concentrate and complete our work on time. We would like to do both and this seems to be the aim of your question. The answer is to slowly cultivate a habit of returning back to your presence or grounding often during the day consistently. I suggest you begin with the following two practices for a few days and then see how you fare with your maths. 1) Selvans Deep crossing: https://youtu.be/qq6iKZquuVI 2) Selvans Short Meditation – Witnessing the Four Simultaneous Activities The first one takes three minutes and the second one takes five minutes so together it would be a ten minute practice. I suggest that you do this practice upon waking up in the morning and once again just before going to sleep at night. In addition please also repeat this ten minute practice once every two hours throughout your day. If you can do this consistently and cultivate a habit out of it you will be able to achieve what you aim for in a few months. I have answered a similar question before and you might be interested to read that answer here For more information and plenty of free resources to aid with the practice of meditation and deep healing, please visit my website.