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Intro to meditation: Class 1 notes

Around the room intros

Name, where you're calling in from, brief description of your meditation history, and what you want to get out of this class.

Focus, goals, and consistency

I want you to get out of this class the things you most want out of it (within reason!). If I were to recommend a goal for most students it would be to establish a regular, useful, self sustaining meditation practice. This means a practice that provides meaningful benefits and that promotes further practice over time. "Self sustaining", not merely sustainable: while the short and medium term benefits of meditation are very good and more than justify the practice on their own (dayenu!), the long term benefits of serious practice are astounding. You don't have to take my word for it, and you don't have to pursue these longer term benefits. But a practice that self sustains will make it more likely that you realize those benefits down the road, if that's what you want to do.

Some of you have past meditation experience. If you do, you're no doubt familiar with how meditation can give rise to so much self judgment, particularly for high-achieving, ambitious types of people. Ugh, I just can't keep my attention on the breath. I suck at this! .... I can't even hit my 10 minutes per day goal. I'm hopeless! If you don't have past meditation experience, you can probably relate to this in your other aspirations (diet, exercise, work, journaling, musical practice, calling your mother, etc.).

"Self sustaining" and "regular" don't imply "perfectly consistent". I'm not terribly consistent in my own practice, and I know many advanced practitioners who are similarly inconsistent. All else being equal, more consistent practice will yield better results. But better to keep going for several years, consistently-ish, than to hit exactly XX minutes per day for 3.5 months then rage-quit. The tool I've found most useful for long-term consistency is self compassion. More on that in a bit.

Group sit: "just sit"

5min group sit, unguided. Just sit and observe what happens. Followed by around the room observations and reflections.

I generally prefer we stay cameras-on throughout the class. It's ok if you want to opt out of this, but please consider having your camera on at least for the group sits. It's helpful to me as a teacher.

What is meditation?

There isn't a single definition I'd consider to be "the" definition. But for today, we can think of it as perceiving and accepting what is happening in the present moment. In future classes, we'll explore what this means in practice. While some of the techniques we'll study don't match this definition superficially, they all serve this purpose in one way or another. If you don't understand why we're doing something and are curious, just ask.

All of the techniques we'll cover in the class come from one or more Buddhist traditions (and are shared by non-Buddhist traditions, too). But we won't spend any time on Buddhist doctrine or metaphysics, nor much at all of what you'd call "spirituality". This class is 100% compatible with whatever religious, cultural, or metaphysical traditions and attachments you're likely to have. While by default I won't say much about the history or Buddhist significance of what we'll cover, feel free to ask if you're curious.

Self compassion

Self compassion is one of the most important behaviors for the meditator. For the beginning meditator, I think it's the most important. As with any challenging task, as you meditate, you will often try to one thing only to have something else happen. You wake up and intend to sit. But the day "gets away from you", and before you know it, a week has gone by and you haven't sat once. Or you sit, intending to focus on the breath, only to find yourself reliving an embarrassing moment from middle school.

That's ok! Remember today's framing of what meditation it: perceiving and accepting what is happening in the present moment. Notice that what you intended isn't what happened. Forgive yourself if necessary, don't dwell on it, and appreciate that you've been given yet another tiny clue towards understanding what your mind is really doing. You'll also feel a lot better.

You have nothing to gain by calling yourself a failure, fixating on misalignment between intention and outcome, or similar reactions.

Here's a useful trick: if you are judging yourself harshly, take the the third person view. If your friend were going through exactly what you are, what advice would you give them? How would you address them or be there for them? Many of us are harshest on ourselves, not others. So try to treat yourself like an other when it serves you.

Self compassion is important enough that I will (perhaps annoyingly) hammer this point every single class.

(The Buddhist notion of "right effort" is relevant here, but it's beyond the scope of this class.)

Recommended book: Self-Compassion by Kristin Neff

Group sit: concentration on breath sensations

5min group sit, guided. This practice is sometimes called "breath meditation", but I prefer the wordier, more accurate name above. The Pali term is ānāpānasati (lit. "mindfulness of breathing"). The instructions are simple:

  • Before you begin, choose a small region of the body you will attend to for breath sensations. Most people choose the triangle formed between the shelf above the upper lip and the tip of the nose. Nostrils, inside and out, are included. Another popular choice, useful if you're congested, is the belly.
    • I'll give instructions assuming the "triangle", since most people use this. And I highly recommend it.
    • If you want to do something other than these two, let me know. It's ok, but we should talk a bit about it to make sure the instructions are clear.
    • In any concentration practice, we'll refer to the thing you're attending to as your "object" (of attention).
  • Notice the sensations in the region of interest that come from the breath. You'll also notice other sensations (e.g. blood flow); that's ok. At first, you may not find much here. Keep paying attention. There is a lot to find.
  • At some point (maybe very quickly), you'll find your attention is elsewhere. Gently return your attention to breath sensations.
  • Repeat until the bell sounds.

That's it! Some tips and elaborations:

  • You may find yourself "following the breath" more as a concept than as actual sensations. That's fine. Just keep looking for sensations.
  • Upon distraction, when I say return to return to the breath "gently", I mean it. See above re. self compassion. This is not a failure of yours—after all, did you have a choice in the matter of being distracted? You did not. You are blameless.
  • I like to appreciate the distractions. You are training your mind to find stability on its object. How can you train stability without instability to correct? Just as you can appreciate the opportunity to lift a weight one more time or to take one more attempt at a tricky phrase on a musical instrument, you can appreciate the distraction as an opportunity for practice.
  • If you're new to this, be ready to be distracted a lot. It's fine. Much of it will pass in time, and some of it will never pass. Accept what is happening in the present moment: the distraction, your intention to return to your object, and the gentle mental motion back to the object.
  • We'll go deeper into this practice next class.

Optionally, you can start your sit with Culadasa's "transition to practice" exercise, taken from The Mind Illuminated (we'll talk more about this book next class):

  • Begin by letting your field of awareness be everything (using all senses) in the present moment. When you feel that you are relatively stable with this, proceed.
  • Narrow your attention to physical sensations (of any sort) in your body. When stable, proceed.
  • Narrow your attention to only those physical sensations that have to do with the breath. This could be air moving past your nostrils, your abdomen rising and falling, or even the subtle stretch of an elastic waistband. When stable, proceed.
  • Narrow your attention to just those breath sensations in the region you chose for this sit. Now begin the practice as described above.

By "relatively stable", I mean to imply a low bar. This exercise shouldn't take long. I know some people who take several minutes to do this, even as much as 10+, but I recommend moving faster. When I'm dialed in, I usually take two breaths per step. Maybe aim to keep it under a minute. (To "move faster" doesn't mean try harder. It means have a lower bar for what counts as stability.)

Posture, environment, and other practical considerations

  • Posture
    • For the most part, don't over think it. Cushion, chair, fancy prayer bench—they all work just fine.
    • If you can make it reasonably comfortable, prefer to have your hips slightly above your knees and your back not touching a seat back.
    • Take some moments to dial in your posture at the beginning, and then DON'T MOVE. Really! We'll talk about why in greater depth later in the class.
      • Obviously, don't injure yourself. But the vast majority of pain during meditation is psychogenic and not injury-causing. If I tell you this and you believe me, you'll still be surprised how true this is when you realize it.
    • For sitting on a cushion, half- or full-lotus is a good, stable platform if you can get into the position (I can't). For sitting non-lotus cross-legged on a cushion, placing pillows under your knees at a height so that they just barely compress under your knees' weight can prevent knee pain in longer sits. I usually have to gently fold small cushions for this trick to work. If you didn't follow that description, I can show you.
    • I usually sit in a chair or on this one specific ottoman that's the perfect height for me. It's one of the ones we have in my office's quiet room, and I liked it so much I bought one for home use.
  • Environment
    • In general, the quieter the better (exception: I like occasional bits of noise for open awareness practice, which we'll cover in Class 5)
    • Sometimes I'll turn off noisy appliances like my air purifier
    • Silence everything else on your phone if you a phone app as a timer
    • If you live with others, ask them to understand that this practice is important to you and their non-disturbance is appreciated
      • You can repay them with the extra kindness and equanimity you'll have from sitting regularly
    • If you can't get an "ideal" environment, don't sweat it. You can make a lot of progress in pretty poor conditions.
      • "This is good material for my equanimity practice" is the meditator's way of saying "this sucks"
  • Timer recommendations
    • A meditation timer must do two things:
      • End with a sound that does not require your input to stop making sound
      • Never, ever fail to make that sound at the requested time
      • All other features are optional (and some are just distractions)
    • Insight Timer is my preferred tool for silently timing one-off sits. Turn off all the welcome screens, social features, etc. Just use it as a timer.
    • I don't like using my phone's built-in timer app because of requirement (1) above
    • Various apps are good for guided sits. I used Headspace for years. Insight Timer has guided meditations, too. You can find some great guided meditations on YouTube; I'll give some recommendations later in this course.
    • For meditation retreats specifically, there's Impermanence. Since I wrote this app, let me know if you suggest any changes. It's rough and not very user-friendly, but it's reliable.
  • Company
    • Sitting with others is fantastic. Do it if you can. The importance of sangha—the Pali word for "meditation community"—is under-appreciated.

Closing around the room

There isn't any homework for this class, but I strongly recommend you try to sit every day. Aim for 30 minutes per day if you can. It's ok if you don't have time. But try to really interrogate this—you probably do have time! Better to admit this to yourself, facing reality honestly, even if it doesn't lead you to actually sit more. You can do any practice you wish in your daily sit. I recommend doing whichever practice we covered in the previous class. Though once the class is over, I really recommend sticking to one practice for awhile (at least several months).

We'll close with this question each class: What is one thing you will focus on in your practice this coming week?