A Simple Way to Meditate
Spark #363 - When traditional meditation feels like a big ask.
Most mornings, coffee in hand, I sit on the porch and look at two aspen trees.
That’s my meditation.
No mantra. No fancy breath. Just me and the trees.
I notice the way light hits the bark. Whether the leaves are shaking or still.
That’s the whole practice.
Traditional meditation asks you to close your eyes and focus on your breath, your body, your thoughts. For a lot of people, that’s a big ask to start. You sit down, get distracted, feel like you’re failing, and quit. Then you decide meditation isn’t for you.
Try something else instead.
Pick an anchor for your attention outside yourself. A tree. The sky. The road while you drive. The vegetables you’re chopping.
Let your mind land there. For five minutes. If your thoughts pull you away, come back to the tree, the carrot, the road.
You may notice you can stay with it longer than a more formal meditation. And you’ll build the same thing traditional meditation offers, a sense of being steadier, clearer, calmer, more here.
Heck, you may even enjoy it.
Watch more about my free form practice here:
Traditional meditation has never stuck for me, closing my eyes just invites the to-do list in. But nature always does the trick, something about a fixed thing outside myself. I love your ritual - morning coffee and enjoying the aspens.
That’s exactly how I started meditating. I now call it “drinking coffee meditation,” and recommend it to beginning meditators ❤️