Have you heard how valuable meditation is for your health?
But it’s either a paradox — or a Catch 22 — that people who might benefit the most from meditation often find it ridiculously hard to do.
I know, sounds silly. What’s hard about sitting?
I’m not exactly sure what my hangup is, but I suspect it comes from years of performance anxiety (I grew up with the expression “anything worth doing is worth doing well” tacked to the kitchen bulletin board). So sitting for 20 minutes (even just focusing on the breath) drove me crazy because I never knew if I was doing it “right.” Not Zen ;).
But I’m happy to say that I have discovered the benefits of meditation with training wheels!
Stop thinking so much!
What I’ve discovered is that focus is the thing for me; time spent focusing is time not spent letting my thinking/monkey mind have its way.
So my little training wheels meditation practice is to listen to classical music while watching a slide show of beautiful nature pics. Right now, I do 10 or 15 minutes of this every morning and evening, and I try and do a longer sitting on the weekends (I actually created a 35 minute movie courtesy of my iTunes library and 340 pics I downloaded from Flickr).
What works for you may be something completely different, but to get a sense of what I’m talking about, open one of my favorite tunes in one browser window or tab, and then open one of my favorite slide shows in another browser or tab.
If you’re so inclined, plug in some headphones and make the slideshow full screen. Then just sit back, take some nice slow, deep breaths, and relax!
Other cool tools
There are a couple of other devices I’ve been using regularly as part of my neurofeedback efforts that can be used to support a meditation practice. The first is HeartMath’s emWave PSR, which measures heart rate variability.
This portable device (they also have a desktop version) measures your heart rate via your thumb’s pulse. HeartMath has a technique they teach, but I find that doing my music & pics slide show works just as well (maybe easier).
The other tool I’ve used at the doc’s is Resperate. The literature promotes it as a device to help lower blood pressure, but it’s also a great guided meditation session (you synchronize your breathing to the device’s music).
It’s a start!
As with training wheels, eventually I expect to graduate to “deeper” and unassisted meditation practices. But I can tell that even my mini-practice is providing benefits.
So if you’ve been thinking of meditating, but find the idea daunting, give training wheels a try!
Weight Maven is written by Beth Mazur. Beth believes that obesity is more symptom than cause and that the real problem is our Western diet -- especially sugar, refined grains, and industrial oils. Beth writes about nutrition, ancestral health & food policy. And cats! 
I like the concept of the classical music and the beautiful pictures. I haven’t tried it, as I have just read about it. I too have tried to meditate and don’t quite get it. Thank you.