Meditation Foundations
How to Start a Transformational Meditation Practice
Welcome, Dear Heart.
First things first: you don't need a course, an expensive program, a special meditation room, perfect posture, twenty years of spiritual study, or any particular belief system to develop the meditation practice that's going to change, amplify, and enrich your life.
You only need yourself, fifteen minutes, and something that marks time. That's seriously it.
This page contains everything you need to start a daily meditation practice today. You may watch the video if you want me to walk you through the philosophy and methodology, you may read the guide below if you want the instructions laid out cleanly in front of you, and then, at the bottom of this page, you can meditate with me for your first daily meditation.
That’s it.
No secret additional steps, no need to keep digging into philosophy, psychology, spirituality, mysticism, occult, the esoteric, or this page unless you want to.
Once you understand the practice, the keys are yours. Perhaps they always have been, and now you're simply turning the key in the lock.
Start Your Daily Practice in 3 Steps
Choose Your Moment
My recommendation is that you meditate first thing in the morning, immediately upon waking.
My beloved teacher Davidji used to say RPM, which stands for Rise, Pee, Meditate. I love that methodology, but I've discovered that if I get out of bed to pee first, there is an excellent chance that when I get back to bed, I'll pick up my phone and start scrolling.
So for me, the better system has proven itself to be: rise, turn off the alarm, start the meditation timer.
I don’t get out of bed until I've meditated. If I absolutely HAVE to use the restroom, I will...but I do not bring my phone with me or check it before, during, or after my bathroom visit. (That, in and of itself, is a practice. Give yourself grace!).
Your starting meditation session length is fifteen minutes, which means you can either set your alarm fifteen minutes earlier than usual as not to disturb your current daily schedule/routine, or you can simply decide that the first fifteen minutes after you wake up belong to you.
It does not need to happen at the exact same time on the clock every day. Most of us don’t wake up at exactly the same time every day, anyway. On weekends I wake up at one time, weekdays another, and if you work nights, your morning may technically happen in the evening. What matters is the window of time: those first fifteen minutes after you become conscious that you have awakened.
The ideal sequence is extremely simple:
- become conscious that you’re awake
- silence your alarm if it's going off
- immediately open your meditation timer or guided meditation
- press play
I’ll often set everything up the night before because the temptation to check something is STRONG. Instagram, Facebook, YouTube, your bank account, the stock market, your messages, whatever it is...the world is sitting there waiting to get into your consciousness. But you know what?
The world can wait fifteen minutes for you.
If mornings genuinely don’t work for you because you work a night shift or have another schedule entirely, then forget the word morning. I mean the beginning of your day. Whenever you awaken to begin your active period, that is your window.
Ancient yogis have long talked about the 4 a.m. hour as being a particularly potent spiritual time, and if you happen to find yourself awake then, great, enjoy yourself. But for a sustainable daily practice, I care much more about you meditating when you wake up than I do about forcing your life around an auspicious number on a clock.
If you choose to begin meditating daily, THAT is auspicious enough. Trust. The magic is in the repetition.
Choose Your Focus and Your Posture
When I talk about choosing a focus, that means we're choosing the "anchor" that we'll be using to build your awareness muscle.
When you first begin your daily meditation practice, I do NOT recommend walking in with the immediate intention of manifesting something, healing something, changing your reality, fixing your body, opening your third eye, or doing any number of the incredible things meditation can eventually support. Those are all wonderful supplemental uses of meditation, but they are not the foundation.
Think of someone entering a gym for the first time with very little physical conditioning. If I were their trainer, I would not immediately get them into some highly specific glute-building program on day one. First, we condition the body, we build general fitness, and then we have a foundation underneath whatever more specific thing we want to do.
Meditation is the same way.
At the beginning, we’re strengthening your ability to witness one phenomenon consistently over time, and that phenomenon becomes your focus, or your anchor.
Your focus may be your breath, your heart center, a body sensation, a mantra, open awareness, or any number of things.
I prefer the heart center for an enormous number of reasons, both scientific and mystical, that are explained elsewhere for the purposes of keeping this overview succinct. Suffice it to say, my experience with the heart center is that it combines simplicity (important) with unmatched power (equally important), as it is simultaneously the most activated and repressed power source at this time in human history.
Focusing on the heart center gives a beginner something incredibly simple to witness, and it can also take you all the way. You do not outgrow the heart center as long as you are in human form.
If you choose to experience the heart center, simply place your awareness in the center of your chest and begin developing a relationship with that space physically, emotionally, somatically and energetically.
That is your anchor.
Stay with one central focus for 30 days at a time.
I mean that literally. Pick one and stick with it!
We choose to keep one focus because meditation is a practice, not a quick fix, and we’re developing skill in understanding, recognizing, conjuring and relating to the energy of that focus, while also strengthening our ability to witness in general.
I think of it like supplementation, or physical training. If you have a foundational fitness goal, you don’t take creatine one random day, rhodiola rosea the next, caffeine the day after that, then forget the whole thing for three days and wonder why your body isn’t adapting. Yes, all of those things may fall somewhere under the gigantic umbrella of health and performance, but if there is no consistent foundation underneath them, you’re hopping around without building relationship with any of it.
Your daily meditation is the foundation of all other meditations you may choose to engage with.
If another meditation excites you, great! Do that later in the day. Tack another fifteen minutes onto the first fifteen, or stack another session somewhere else in your schedule. But that first meditation of the day is your practice, and for thirty days, I recommend keeping the focus consistent.
When should you change the focus before thirty days?
Don’t.
Stick with it for thirty days. 😂
If you fall in love with some other supplemental practice, add that practice later in the day, or make it your next thirty-day focus when this cycle is complete.
Part of the medicine here is removing the mind’s ability to redesign the entire meditation experience every morning. Once the mind gets a taste of meditation, it will absolutely attempt to co-opt it by telling you what to meditate on, when to meditate, how to meditate, whether you’re doing it correctly, whether today’s practice is boring, whether you should switch techniques, whether you should stop early, and whether the whole thing is working.
Committing to one focus for thirty days takes a lot of that negotiation off the table, and the mind may get very frustrated because it can’t change the subject of awareness at its whim...but that is exactly the medicine we’re looking for. ☺️ We’re creating structure that the mind can finally rest inside of, and eventually...give way to something deeper. Much deeper.
So what is the difference between focusing and witnessing?
A lot of people think meditation is "focus," and it’s actually not—at least not at the beginning.
Focus arises as a byproduct of witnessing.
When you start, you witness.
Then, over time, an incredible capacity for focus begins to develop. Then, the focus opens back into witnessing, and then the two begin feeding one another. But you do NOT start by clenching your mind around an object and exerting your willpower to hold it there.
That is concentration.
Witnessing is different.
Witnessing is relaxed, receptive and open. You notice what is occurring without needing to CONTROL it.
I associate concentration with projective masculine energy and witnessing with receptive feminine energy. We begin with the receptive feminine energy. We open, we notice, and we allow what is occurring to occur without resistance.
That naturally builds and stokes the masculine energy and your ability to concentrate over time, but we don’t force that stage. Focus grows from witnessing.
What exactly is "open witnessing?"
When you meditate, you are NOT gritting, straining, clenching, controlling or trying to manufacture an experience.
You are watching the experience happen without judgment.
Your body sensations arise, you watch them. Your breathing changes, you watch it. Thoughts go by, you watch them. Emotions appear, you watch them. A guide (hi, it's me!) may give you a cue or a prompt that takes your attention somewhere, and you watch that happen too.
Whatever occurs, you witness the process without needing to control it.
Internally, you’re relaxing, surrendering and allowing the animating force of your body to step to the forefront.
When we try to control the meditation before we’ve learned how to witness organically, we put our patterns and resistance right back at the forefront of the experience. It’s like exercising with bad form. If you repeatedly practice a physical movement with terrible form, you’re not simply failing to develop the skill, you’re actively training the wrong pattern.
Meditation is the same way.
Our goal is to remember our identity as awareness, and ultimately understand the truth that all is well, not merely as a concept, but as a living, felt reality.
Open witnessing is how we begin building that relationship.
What posture should you use?
Lie down flat on your back.
I recommend this for beginners, and I recommend it even if you have thousands of hours of meditation under your belt.
When I meditate for the first fifteen minutes of my day, I do not get out of bed. I remove the pillows from behind my head, roll onto my back, take a sip of water to wake myself up, and often grab a cold stone from beside my bed and place it against the bare skin of my chest. Stones run cold, and that little shock of cold first thing in the morning wakes me up very quickly!
Then, I meditate.
I do not recommend Lotus pose, and I don’t even require sitting upright.
Lotus has its place, but it's taxing on the body without a pre-developed asana practice, it gives the mind another reason not to meditate that day, it creates a barrier to entry, and it is absolutely unnecessary for developing a profound meditation practice.
It has also become so psychologically associated with the performance of meditation that I think it can easily make the meditation itself performative. And yes, you can absolutely perform for yourself while completely alone. 😂 Being alone does not remove performance from our lives.
I want the opposite.
I want real you.
That’s one reason I love meditating flat on my back in my own bed first thing in the morning, because there's very little opportunity to become the character of someone who meditates. It’s just me, morning breath, and the urge to dip my consciousness into the waters of divinity (I know, I know. I'm a poet).
The ancient yogis cared about the spine being aligned, and that makes sense to me, but I also have scoliosis, so allow me to assure you that your spine does NOT need to be "perfectly straight."
What we’re looking for is comfort and alignment to the best of your ability. Your central nervous system includes your brain and spinal cord, so stretching and aligning them is wonderful, but I also want the body relaxed enough that it is not spending your entire meditation complaining about posture.
Comfort is queen. -Davidji
If you have pain, scoliosis, limited mobility, disability, pregnancy, injury or any other circumstance that changes what comfortable alignment looks like for you, adapt. Adapting will NOT reduce the efficacy of your meditation practice, and jamming yourself into Lotus will NOT increase it.
Get comfortable, align your head and spine as well as your body naturally allows, and don’t get so comfortable that you fall asleep.
And if you do fall asleep, enjoy your nap, wake up, and then meditate...because sleep and meditation are not the same practice.
Set the Container and Meditate
Start with fifteen minutes.
Fifteen minutes is perfect, because it gives you enough time to settle in and drop beneath the initial noise, but it isn’t such a gigantic chunk of time that meditation immediately becomes inconvenient or intimidating.
You may begin craving longer sessions very quickly, and if you do, wonderful, give yourself more time. But personally, I prefer fifteen-minute sessions, even several times a day, rather than making the foundational practice one giant marathon.
Set a timer.
This is non-negotiable for me.
A timer creates a container and trains the mind: this is when we enter, this is when we exit.
It also holds us accountable to the practice. Meditation is a ritual, but it is also a discipline.
Use whatever timer works for you. I like the Insight Timer app simply as a timer, because it can begin and end the session with something gentle, and you can even add a sound in the background if that helps you. Your phone timer works too, although depending on the sound you choose, that can be a fairly violent way to return to Earth. 😂
Whatever you use, I want the ending to be gentle. We’re creating a clear demarcation between your meditation session and the rest of your day, not setting off a fire alarm in your nervous system.
Get into your posture first, then start the timer.
Once it begins, gently bring your awareness, your witnessing power, your attention, to whatever focus point you selected.
Remember, you are not forcing yourself to focus, but you do have a focus. Your focus is simply the anchor that gives your witnessing somewhere to return.
If you’re using the heart center, place your awareness in the center of your chest and watch.
Watch it physically. Watch it emotionally. Watch it somatically. Watch the chest rise and fall. Watch whatever sensation lives there. Watch thoughts pass by, and every time you discover that your attention has wandered away, return it gently to that point again.
Thoughts, sensations, noises, emotions and distractions are all part of the meditation experience. We are not controlling the experience to "make it successful," we are simply showing up with our full attention.
A metaphor for life, by the way. ;)
What happens when thoughts appear?
Thoughts WILL appear. If thoughts don’t appear, I’m concerned, and you should probably contact me so we can talk about what planet you’re from. 😂
A thought will appear, it will take you on a ride, you'll completely forget that you’re meditating, and suddenly you’ll find yourself mentally somewhere else entirely.
Then, you’ll notice.
Return to your anchor.
You may do that sixty times a minute. You may do it for your entire session. It doesn't matter.
Everyone begins at a different fitness level, and awareness is highly variable from person to person, and even from day to day. You may meditate for over a decade and still have mornings where the entire session is you, watching yourself being dragged around by thoughts.
Your meditation experience, your spiritual nature, your spiritual prowess, your sensitivity, none of that is contingent upon the number of thoughts that appear.
When a thought comes up, don’t judge it. Notice it. It's not personal, it's not automatically true—it's simply a thought. Don't psycho-analyze the thought or begin questioning it and engaging with it. Give it a millisecond of acknowledgment and return to your anchor.
And baby, sometimes the thought will be a REALLY good one. Creatives know this experience well. Something brilliant comes up during meditation, and suddenly you want to stop everything, write it down, build a company around it, and change your entire life.
Don't.
There is absolutely a time and place for meditation sessions designed to reach deeper into consciousness, reveal ideas, receive guidance, develop something, access your multi-millionaire life, whatever your thing is.
The first meditation of the day is not for that.
Think of thoughts like sirens—not ambulance sirens—the hot ones that tempted Odysseus. They will seduce you out to sea just to recapture your awareness and the fuel of your attention. Your job is simply nod, acknowledge, and return to your navigation.
That is, as a matter of fact, EXACTLY how we build the witness muscle.
What counts as doing it correctly?
You showed up.
That’s it.
If you stayed awake, went through the full 15 minutes, and engaged the practice in good faith, you meditated correctly.
When the timer goes off, I like to bring my attention back into the body, take one, two or three deep cleansing breaths, and then I’m done.
Go live however you like.
What does daily repetition actually change?
Power.
And not "power" in the sense that you’re trying to become "better," because I believe you’re ALREADY worthy of all the love you could ever receive, no change required.
What increases is your capacity for life. Voltage. Equanimity. Self-control.
Daily witnessing brings you closer to your truest essence, your authenticity, your energy, your creativity, your magnetism, and especially your JOY.
You begin accumulating more electrical charge.
Imagine that you've had one hundred percent of your awareness available to you this entire time, but you've only been able to access a tiny fraction of it. Meditation is like the Limitless pill, or like CPH4 in the movie Lucy. It increases your ability to be present inside of your own life, to witness it clearly and respond to it uninfluenced, rather than constantly being dragged through your life by habit, thought, and patterning.
That "presence" you develop through meditation comes with a whole host of abilities the ancient yogis called siddhis.
They’re real.
Questions You May Have
I can’t clear my mind. Am I bad at meditation?
Absolutely not. Let me “clear” that fear from your mind right now. 😉 Meditation has nothing to do with “clearing your mind.”
Meditation is about experiencing the mind with SO much non-judgmental awareness that eventually, you hit a frequency where your thoughts change. Later in your practice, you hit another frequency where they change again, and eventually, you arrive at a frequency beyond the realm of ordinary thought.
That is why this is a daily practice.
Expecting to enter a “beyond thought” state in your first meditation is like sending somebody who has never power-lifted into a competition and expecting them to hit their life-long personal best on day one.
It just ain’t gonna go well.
You’re training.
My brain never stops thinking. How am I supposed to meditate?
Would it shock you if I told you that your brain isn’t the thing that “thinks,” anyway? We’ll talk about that another time. 😏
Meditation is simply the witnessing of what is, and thought is part of what is.
During a session, you are observing yourself, being yourself. If you’re a thinker, you’re going to observe yourself thinking.
Eventually, you’ll begin to notice the gap between the thoughts, the flavor of the thoughts, the patterns of the thinker, and the You who is observing all of it.
You’ll notice the bridge, eventually you’ll cross the bridge, you’ll become The Witness, and then you fall in love with the thinker.
Exciting, I know!!
But yes, you are supposed to think during meditation. That is a perfectly natural part of the process…and it is a process.
I keep getting distracted. Does that mean the meditation isn’t working?
No, that means the meditation is working perfectly, and if you noticed that you became distracted, that’s even more impressive!
Half the time, I don’t even realize that I got distracted, and I’ve been at this for years. I’ll suddenly find myself a million miles away in some completely wacky hypothetical situation my mind concocted, and then I’ll remember that I’m supposed to be meditating. I return to my anchor.
That return is the practice.
Think of it like going to the gym. You show up and do the workout, and then one day in the future you look at yourself and go, “Hell yeah!”
Meditation is the same.
One day you will emerge from a meditation session genuinely different from the person who began it.
I don’t feel peaceful when I meditate. Am I doing something wrong?
Not at all.
Meditation is open witnessing, and for a lot of us, we might even be slightly horrified at what we discover when we first begin. I’m joking…sort of. 😅
A lot of us have buried shit deep.
When we begin witnessing ourselves with non-judgmental awareness, the body, emotions and mind take that opportunity to begin surfacing things that have been sitting under the surface the whole time (usually the very things keeping us stuck, dissatisfied, sad, frustrated, apathetic, etc.).
That can be jarring, and sometimes it can go on for a while, especially if we don’t permit ourselves to behave differently with the new information we’re learning about ourselves.
If things begin arising that you want or need to talk about, notice that, and then, outside of your meditation practice, bring those things to the appropriate resources and support.
You do not have to feel “peaceful” in order for meditation to be working.
You are developing a relationship with yourself as the witness of yourself, and relationships require practice.
Meditation is boring. What do I do with the boredom?
When boredom appears, witness it, notice it, give it an internal smile because it amuses you, and return to your anchor.
That’s it.
You don’t need to “fix” boredom or make the session more entertaining. Whatever passes through, give it a silent high-five and continue doing your thing.
Eventually boredom transforms in its own good time.
I feel restless or irritated when I try to be still. Should I stop?
No, and you’re in great company. You probably have a brilliant, fast-moving mind, and meditation may be especially valuable for you.
Keep practicing.
Restlessness and irritation will shift and transform.
That impulse to end the session and go do something “productive,” get some stimulation, look at something, accomplish something, or entertain yourself is just the momentum of patterns that have been running uninterrupted for a very long time.
If you can ride that wave and keep returning to your anchor, there is something wonderful on the other side of it.
How do I know whether meditation is actually working?
You don’t, so keep going.
We have unrealistic expectations for nearly everything in our lives, because we’re used to the mental realm (our thoughts) and technology (our phones and our entertainment)—worlds where things transform instantly.
Welcome to the physical world. 😅
Meditation works with the physical nervous system: your patterning, your habits, your awareness, and your relationship with yourself, and those things require repetition. They’ve been built by not just YOUR lifetime, but by the thousands of ancestors who preceded you.
I don’t recommend tracking “whether meditation is working.”
Show up every day.
Then one day, and I don’t think it will take very long, you’ll be somewhere in the middle of your ordinary life and realize something has changed.
You have more capacity. Your thoughts have a different flavor. Something that would have destabilized you doesn’t hit the same way anymore. You can hear your own instincts. You can feel your own impulses. You feel more present, and maybe somewhere in there, you begin to realize that you are incredibly worthy of love, and that anything is possible for you.
That’s when you’ll know.
Do I need a special room, candle, incense, crystal, cushion, music or meditation app?
I love this question. 😂
No.
You need yourself, and something that marks time: ideally, with an audible sound or vibration so that you can close your eyes, go inside of yourself, and then be brought gently back when the session is complete.
That being said, the more fun you can make this, the more fun you’ll have!
If you want to make meditation into a ritual, do it. If there’s a certain room, candle, incense, crystal, cushion or piece of music that genuinely helps you connect more deeply with yourself, beautiful.
My only caution is performance.
Once we begin becoming the character of A Person Who Meditates, we risk putting more energy into the identity and appearance of meditation than into developing The Witness.
That’s one reason I like raw-dogging it by lying flat on my back in my own bed first thing in the morning. I know for sure I’m getting Mandy (real Mandy).
Use ritual when it connects you more deeply with yourself, and be willing to drop the ritual when it becomes a costume.
Can I meditate in bed or lying down?
Yes and yes.
I meditate almost exclusively lying down, and very often in bed.
What if I fall asleep?
Take a nap, wake up, and then meditate.
Sleep is wonderful, but it is a different practice.
If you regularly fall back asleep, take a sip of water, put something cold on your chest, wash your face, go pee first if you absolutely need to, or drag yourself out of bed and meditate lying on the floor.
And if you genuinely cannot remain awake for fifteen minutes after waking, it may also be worth getting serious about your sleep health.
What if I have very little time?
Ask yourself whether reducing your sleep window or changing your schedule by fifteen minutes is worth it to you in exchange for building this practice.
If the answer is yes, set your alarm fifteen minutes earlier.
You do not need an hour.
You need fifteen minutes.
Do I really have to meditate every day?
Yes.
And you will miss days because life happens, something genuinely requires your attention, you’re traveling, your schedule gets weird, or you simply miss.
Give yourself total grace when that happens.
Missing a meditation is not failure, and even missing many in a row is not failure.
Just come back.
But also, remember: meditation is not asking you for intense physical exertion, or some giant feat of mental willpower. It is meant to be a loving witnessing of yourself that gives rather than takes.
If you find yourself constantly avoiding it because you’re “too tired” or “too busy,” become curious about that. Typically, that’s just the patterned mind trying to run the show.
Notice it, and come back.
Can I meditate more than once a day?
Absolutely.
Meditation is completely stackable.
I recommend starting with one fifteen-minute session in the morning and then, if you feel inspired, add another fifteen minutes at lunch, after work, in your car, in a break room, wherever you can fit it.
You don’t need to get into Lotus pose and announce to everyone that enlightenment is currently underway. 😂
Just meditate.
Should I use a guided meditation every day?
Not necessarily.
If you do choose to use a guided meditation for your foundational morning practice, I recommend staying with the same one for about thirty days at a time, unless you’re following a deliberately curated journey where the guide has designed a consistent through-line.
You can absolutely use the meditation at the bottom of this page for your first thirty days.
But some of the deepest meditation experiences I’ve ever had have happened flying solo, with nothing but myself and a timer, and there will probably come a point when you feel ready for that too.
You don’t need me, or any other guide, in your ears forever.
Should I use the same recording for 30 days if the focus stays the same?
For your foundational morning meditation, my recommendation is yes.
There is some flexibility if the focus (your anchor point) stays the same, but remember, your daily practice is not about treating whatever symptom is loudest that day, it’s about building fitness.
Use the same recording or the same basic practice for thirty days, and if you want to explore other meditations for other intentions, stack them somewhere else.
Keep the foundation stable.
What is meditation in one sentence?
Getting to know yourself as The Witness.
What is meditation not?
Meditation is not clearing your mind, manifesting, altering reality, astral projection, lucid dreaming, or trance.
It’s not a drug, a panacea, a one-and-done treatment for anxiety, panic attacks, or depression, or proof-of-spirituality.
It is a state of being, and once cultivated, it becomes a way of life that extends far beyond the ding of your timer or any dogma.
What is the difference between meditation, concentration and channeling?
Meditation, as I teach it, begins with open witnessing. It is the training of your awareness muscle – the constant return to a selected anchor (often called dharana in yogic framework).
Concentration is projective, and comes later (dhyana in yogic framework). This is still meditation, but it’s a later stage. With concentration, you direct attention and exert tremendous focused power on something, but it happens without effort as a byproduct of your prior training. For those who have never meditated, they’re unlikely to have the willpower or attention span to do this.
Channeling is something else entirely. With channeling, you allow something in, whether that is information, frequency, vibration or some other experience. Some people are natural channels, others cultivate the skill.
Meditation begins with receptivity, but unlike with channeling, you remain in the witness perspective, rather than taking on the energy, form, or emotion of something else.
You open, you notice, and you remain aware – as the witness.
Over time, meditation naturally becomes concentration. Once you develop an intimate relationship with awareness and understand what your attention actually is, you become incredibly capable of moving and directing that attention.
You can take a topic, idea or intention and focus on it so profoundly that it begins to open itself to you.
But you do not force that stage.
Focus grows naturally from witnessing.
A note for seasoned meditators: If you’re familiar with classical yogic terminology, you may notice that I’m using the English words meditation and concentration a little differently than a strict translation of dharana and dhyana might suggest. That’s intentional. Dharana is traditionally described as concentration: the binding or returning of attention to a chosen point. But for a beginning Western meditator, sustained concentration usually isn’t available yet. What they are actually practicing is the return: attention wanders, awareness notices, and attention comes home to the anchor again. I call that stage meditation because it more accurately describes the practice I’m asking a beginner to perform. As that capacity strengthens, attention begins to remain with its object more continuously and effortlessly. Classical yoga calls that deepening continuity dhyana; in the language I use here, I describe its felt capacity as concentration. I’m not redefining the Sanskrit terms so much as translating the developmental experience into language that makes practical sense to the Western mind. In essence: dharana = practicing the return; dhyana = attention gaining continuity; true directed concentration becomes possible because the witness muscle has already been trained.
Why is witnessing so important?
Because witnessing is at the foundation of all life.
In my experience, if you strip everything away, all is witnessing and being witnessed.
We witness one another. We all want someone to witness us. We move through time leaving our mark, and without a witness, there is no meaning.
Meditation teaches you to become the witness of yourself.
Once that identity becomes available to you, everything starts to make more sense. Alignment changes, you transform, and your own energy, instincts, creativity, authenticity, magnetism, joy and destiny become increasingly visible.
That is Power.
Why does meditation need consistency instead of novelty?
For the same reason exercise needs consistency, nutrition needs consistency, and intellectual expansion needs consistency.
Meditation is a practice.
We are strengthening and building something.
It is a discipline.
Why meditate before consuming media?
Because the first thing we dip our waking consciousness into in the morning has enormous influence over the tone of the day.
If you can dip your consciousness into your own awareness first, you enter the world from yourself. The power that comes from that is insane.
If the first thing you do is dip your consciousness into someone else’s patterns, opinions, fears, desires, comments, notifications and algorithms, you begin the day somewhere outside yourself. You now enter the world as a cog in a machine, rather than the electricity that powers that machine.
Give yourself fifteen minutes first.
Is meditation spiritual?
Life is spiritual, if you believe in that sort of thing.
Meditation is the practice of understanding yourself as pure, unadulterated intelligence, and it also creates observable effects in the body, brain, attention and mind.
It does not need to be spiritual unless you want it to be.
Do I need to believe anything for meditation to work?
Absolutely not.
What if I’m already an experienced meditator?
Then you already know the power of a daily meditation practice.
Cheers. 🥂
A Brief Note on Mental Health
Meditation cannot replace therapy, psychiatric care, medical treatment or prescribed medication, and meditation can sometimes begin surfacing experiences, memories, fears, traumas and emotions that were buried very deep beneath habits, patterns and routines.
It is not uncommon for people to begin meditating and suddenly start remembering or experiencing things that they had tried very hard not to feel.
If that happens to you, bring it into your waking life and seek the appropriate care.
Let meditation complement your journey, not become the one and only panacea.
Do not try to meditate yourself out of depression or psychiatric conditions, and do not use meditation as an excuse to isolate yourself and attempt to fix yourself alone, in private.
Meditation is about tapping into your essence and allowing complete, non-judgmental awareness to uncork your joy.
Meditation for more life, not less.
If you have been diagnosed with schizophrenia or another condition involving hallucinations or psychosis, if you have experienced psychosis before, or if you have a strong tendency toward dissociation or self-isolation, talk with your healthcare professional or therapist about beginning or intensifying a meditation practice, and continue checking in with them about what you experience.
Just because you witness yourself in meditation does not mean that you have to witness yourself alone.
Your First Daily Meditation
There is no perfect way to meditate, so show up, have fun, don’t take it too seriously, and remember how very worthy of love you are.
Get comfortable, press play, and begin.
Ready to play.
That’s it. Go live your beautiful life.