Meditation is for Everyone

Exercise for the Mind

Have you ever said the words “meditation is not for me?”

I have been where you are. My brain never used to stop. There would be a thought for every thought. Spiraling. I looked at everything in life from ten different angles because I was the consummate rationalist, and for a rationalist, there is always something to rationalize, always something to make sense of. I was not living in the world. I was living in the substrate of my thoughts.

To the point of torment. Nonstop obsessiveness, and when night rolled around, anxiety. I was imprisoned by my own mind, and the prison had no visible walls.

I tried meditation and went through exactly what you probably went through. My thoughts did not stop. I could not empty my mind. I felt, in the specific way that people who try hard at things feel when those things do not work, like I was doing it wrong. The one thing that kept me going was simple advice: do not give up in spite of your thoughts.

Eventually, I understood why.

What would you think if I said “exercise is not for me?”

You would probably think: that is not how exercise works. Exercise is not something you are naturally suited for or not. It is something you do. The final rep, the one that feels genuinely rough, the moment when your body is actively lobbying to stop, is not the obstacle standing between you and your workout. It is surpassing that moment of discomfort that makes your workout a workout.

Meditation works the same way, with one significant difference. Meditation places the moment you must surpass right at the beginning, immediately, in the form of thoughts, emotions, and bodily sensations. Most people cannot get past this opening phase and conclude, reasonably but incorrectly, that meditation is simply not for them. I cannot stop thinking. I cannot stop feeling. I get distracted immediately. I cannot empty my mind.

But here is what is often left untold: it actually is not you.

Every thought, every emotion, every bodily sensation pulling your attention away is a dumbbell in your gym. The distraction is the weight. Returning your attention is the rep.

To do a rep, you first need something to return to. In meditation, I call it an anchor, and almost anything can serve as one. A dot drawn on a piece of paper that you stare at. The vibration of a mantra you hum or chant. The sensation of breath moving through your nostrils. The feeling of each step beneath your feet, which is what walking meditation is. The anchor is simply the fixed point your attention is meant to rest on, and the act of coming back to it, every single time you drift, is the entire practice.

Each time you make that conscious decision to redirect your mind from distraction back to your anchor, that is one rep. And every rep trains the same capacity: the ability to consciously pilot your own attention toward what you actually intend.

I will let you in on a little secret. What people call mindfulness is just meditation with your eyes open, with the “present moment” being the anchor.

A word on breath before you begin. You want a cadence that is under your control, each inhale filling your chest until you feel your diaphragm expand. The breath is not decoration. It is the foundation everything else rests on.

Which means meditation, stripped to its core, is three things: a controlled breath, an anchor for your attention, and the continuous act of returning to that anchor whenever you drift.

You will notice that there is a meditation posture 🧘🏽‍♂️. I personally would posit that this matters much less when you are beginning. You don’t need unique postures when starting out, asides from whatever posture brings you comfort. I meditate laying on my back in the Yoga Nidra pose and it’s been mostly fine. That being said, you will likely explore the wisdom behind the postures, the hand placements, the breathwork details as you deepen your practice.

The question of duration of your meditation has a simple answer and a less simple one. The simple answer is twenty minutes minimum, every day, no exceptions. The maximum is up to you. The less simple answer is that five minutes will not do it, ten will not do it, fifteen will not do it (even if daily). I said what I said. Twenty is the floor, and twenty is just the rookie number.

What happens when you commit to this, when you actually stay with it across weeks and months, I will leave mostly unsaid. Not to be coy, but because the outcome named in advance has a way of narrowing what you are able to receive.

Anything that creates “goals” related to your meditative practice can trap you. Meditation is deeply paradoxical in that sense because the mind is a bastard that tricks itself into thinking that its thinking is unthinking, and then deem itself as having accomplished the goal of remaining in awareness. If you focus on outcome instead the maintenance of a simple process and simply trusting that process, then you will face difficulty.

Otherwise, your individual journey has a shape only you can figure out.

Just do not give up in spite of your thoughts.