Calm Down: A Zen Meditation Exercise
Here’s a meditation practice from the Zen Buddhism lineage to support you on your meditation journey
Every generic “5 steps to be a better, happier, shinier, more successful version of you” article lists meditation as a key ingredient. Still, knowing about it and practicing it are fairly different things. No wonder my friends often complain about not being able to keep a meditation routine for long. Yet, in these troubled times, meditation can greatly help us calm down and keep our alignment.
I started my meditation practice with Zen Buddhism. The idea of Zen is to sit with complete emptiness, and this exercise is a way to get there. This practice was taught by Kanja Odland-Roshi at Zengården in Sweden, during my first silent retreat there.
First things first: get intentional
It’s all about practice and consistency… and it is hard to keep practicing at something without a clear intention. So first ask yourself: why do you want to meditate?
Meditating is not a “life must” like sleeping and eating. Unless you have a clear reason why you want to meditate, chances are you will drop it, and that’s ok: it would be stupid to keep doing something without intention and alignment.
“I want to meditate because everyone else is doing it” or “I read everywhere it is great” or similars won’t cut it. Are you feeling too anxious and need to calm down? Are you often not present in the here now, unable to enjoy the moment? Are you dwelling on the past or spending too much time in the future? Too stressed, unfocused, out of energy?
Put your mind into it and define what you want. Also, it does not have to be an instrumental reason: “I want it because my soul is asking me for it” is in itself a brilliant reason. And guess what? If you can’t list anything you want meditation for, then it is ok to drop it and do something more relevant to you. Be honest with yourself.
Now, let’s get practical
Just like your body can’t get strong without exercising, your mind can’t clear up without putting effort into it. Practice makes it perfect.
- Choose a period of the day for your practice to help you set a daily routine. Whatever works for you is good.
- Start with only five minutes a day. Small wins are important for motivation. If it is too little for you, then do more, but don’t start with something that is already a challenge from day one: if you start big chances are you will also quit fast as you don't feel progress. Together with clear intentions, gentleness is important to not give up too fast. So pick a duration you can keep up daily without feeling like it is a sacrifice to meditate.
- Sit comfortably, crossed legs, back straight, hands on knees. Breathe in and breathe out through the nose. Fill your belly with air and breathe naturally and fully. Not fast, not slow. Feel what is natural to you, not making you anxious but also not making you sleepy. As you meditate, you are to be awake and attentive.
- As you breathe, count (in silence) at each breath you take. Breathe out one, breathe in two, breathe out three and so forth…. until ten. Once you reach ten, automatically restart. That’s right. Infinite loops from one to ten.
- It’s best if you sit and practice every day, as you build a new habit. But hey it’s your life, and if the idea of something “every day” makes you feel overwhelmed, going for five or six days a week might help your mind relax.
- Progressively increase the meditation period, week by week. It is not necessarily ‘the longer the better’, but between 20 to 30 min per sitting would be great, but at least 15 min per sitting. It always takes some time to quiet the mind, so doing short sittings means you do not manage to get to actual meditation.
“This counting is stupid…”
No, it’s not! The counting from one to ten does two things: it makes sure you know when your mind is wandering because you realize you have stopped counting. It also makes sure you are focused on the counting cycles and not on automatic mode, since you should NOT continue to 11, 12 etc (I promise you, you will go past the count of ten easily if your mind is scattered). In a way, the counting gives us two different ways to catch ourselves if we stop meditating. If any of these two things happen, go back to counting from one. In meditation, we cultivate an attentive mind, not a sleepy mind.
Once you can do at least five days in a row of at least 15 min/day counting one to ten repeatedly without letting your mind wander out of this count, you are ready for step two.
Step 2: start removing the counts
The next step is similar to the example above, but this time you only count from one to ten at each out-breath. Breathe in without any count. Breathe out 1, breathe in silence, breathe out 2, and so forth. And of course, you should start Step 2 already with at least 15 minutes of daily practice.
Little by little, you clear your mind and can just be there, attentive, in silence.
Again, once you can do at least five days in a row of at least 15 min/day counting one to ten repeatedly without letting your mind wander out of this new count, you are done with step 2. Congrats! Now you can remove the count from the out-breath as well.
“This is booooring…”
Well, yes if you are not fully there. It is not exactly easy-peasy, it takes a while to “get it” and till then recommitting to your intentions is crucial.
There’s another thing with meditation: feeling like it is boring often means we are not fully surrendering. For something to be boring, we need to be aware that something else is not boring. This means we are accessing what else we could be doing, which means we are not fully present. You see, when we are fully present in this process, we start feeling funny things in our bodies and hearts. It is challenging, but not boring. Big questions and feelings start to emerge.
Revisit your intentions, recommit, take the challenge. But again, meditation is not a must-meditate-otherwise-what’s-wrong-with-me-nobody-loves-me. Jokes aside, yes there might be other practices that work better for you and your intentions. But to find out, you have to fully try.
More on practicalities
In zen meditation, the practice is done with eyes lightly open. The eyes are relaxed, not focused on anything. Keeping your eyes open ensures you do not fall asleep /over-relax easily. It’s also a reminder that inner silence is there regardless of what is happening outside: we don’t need to remove ourselves from the world to find our stillness. Also, we normally face a wall to meditate, to avoid any kind of visual clutter that could cause distractions (this is part of the Soto school, not all Zen schools go for the wall).
For more on sitting positions and hand positions in Zen meditation, check this.
Zen masters have a wonderful sense of humor. If you would like to know more about Zen, I recommend this book, Nothing Holy about it. No, I don’t make any money out of this book sales, I just really like this book.
There’s nowhere to go but here
Important reminder for goal-oriented minds: meditation is not a linear process. Some days are easier than others. You might start Step 2 and realize it is not working, that you need to go back to all counts for a while. Maybe you remove all counts and after a whole month, you realize you are not attentive, so you do a few days in Step 1 or 2 again before resuming. Everything is right, as long as it is supporting you in your journey. What is not right is to approach it as a linear process, and force yourself to not count even if your mind is wandering all the time. That’s cheating yourself, and no one is impacted by it besides yourself.
So you removed all counts, and the meditation is going smoothly… now what?
If you want to follow Zen meditation, now you need to go to dokusan (private meeting with a zen teacher, given in all zen centers) to get a personal tip on your practice. That is a pretty cool thing about Zen meditation (zazen): after the basics are covered, each person gets a private twist to their personal practice, based on what they are experiencing in their private practices.
These exercises on their own can support you to tremendously increase your ability to concentrate on one single thing and to catch your mind when it gets distracted. That’s a big win for many. And yes this is meditation.
Here is another relevant meditation exercise:
Hi, I am Aline Ra M, spiritual guide, energy worker, and tea lover.