Meditation for Non-Meditators

By now you have heard about the wonderful benefits of meditation. We’ll go through those in a minute. You also might have heard meditation described as life changing, essential and transformative. For years, I heard those things, too. It was just hard for me to believe them. I thought meditation just didn’t work for me. I thought I was doing it wrong, and I gave up on it time and again. Until, that is, I learned a method that works for me. And now I’m just one of those annoying people who can’t stop talking about the benefits of meditation.

So if you’re a regular meditator, great. I’ll share the health benefits of meditation, and you can see if you agree. And if you’re not a regular meditator, this post is for you. You can use the health benefits as motivation to try meditation one more time, and I’ll walk you through some different ways to go about it so you can find what does work for you.

As background, meditation is so effective because the mind-body connection simply cannot be ignored. We can eat the cleanest diet and have the perfect workout routine, but if your mind is serving you toxic thoughts and emotions, your body will still feel like crap. Meditation is a way to step out of the rat race of our thinking mind and simply be present. And this will make you happier.

A Harvard study of 2,250 people proved that “a wandering mind is not a happy mind.” They used an app to ask people to rate their happiness at various points of the day and during various activities. The more the people were engaged in the present moment (like during exercise or sex), the happier they were. The more their minds wandered, the less happy they were. This was true even if their minds were wandering to happy thoughts, which surprised me. So a practice like meditation, which trains you to stay present, should theoretically increase your happiness.

So let’s look at some of the studies about meditation to see what has actually been proven. The best documented benefits of meditation seem to be related to anxiety, pain, and stress. Studies have shown that meditation thickens two areas of the brain that control our mood, and that it increases activity of two other brain areas involved in memory and focus. A meta-analysis (which means a study of studies) of 47 trials published in the Journal of the American Medical Association found that meditation significantly improved anxiety, pain, and stress. Participants reported that their overall mental health and quality of life was better after undergoing a meditation program. There was not enough evidence, however, to say that meditation had any effect on positivity, attention, substance use, eating habits, sleep, or weight.

The health benefits from meditation appear to be the result of neuroplasticity. Neuroplasticity is the brain’s ability to grow by making new connections. Indeed, meditation increases the connection between the right and left sides of our brain by thickening an area called the corpus callosum. So meditators are better able to access their creative brain from their logical brain and vice versa. Over time, there even appears to be less cognitive decline in consistent meditators, which supports the theory that meditation can help our brains grow, or at least not decline as quickly.

The most significant finding to the health benefits of meditation? There simply isn’t a downside. There’s no cost, no side effects, and no one needs medical clearance to do it. It has never been shown to make your life worse. And that’s the reason I kept on trying meditation: it can only help, right?

But how do you know where to start?

If you’re like me, you’ve probably set a timer and took a seat, and tried to focus on your breath. Which lasts for approximately one millisecond, right? By then, I’ve got a laundry list of to-dos figured out, I forgot to call Sarah, and what if there IS life on other planets? Trying to meditate was torture. In fact, I know I’m not alone because a study published in Science showed that people would rather give themselves an electric shock than sit alone with their thoughts. (Interestingly, 67% of males gave themselves the electric shock, versus 25% of women, but the point still holds true: we hate doing “nothing.”)

What changed things for me was making meditation into a game where I get more “points” the more I redirect my wandering thoughts back to my breath. Like mind whack-a-mole. So it’s good that my mind wanders so much, because then I can redirect it more often and score more points. Whatever I’m thinking about, I just label it “thinking” and get off the thought train. Again and again and again. And that’s meditation.

In fact, there was a brain scan study that showed just that: meditation is redirection. The study had monks and non-meditators listen to a tone that was repeated 25 times. The non-meditators got bored and their brains fatigued over time. The monks fatigued, too, but they were able to redirect their thought patterns more quickly with each and every tone, as if each one was the first.

Recently, Andrew Huberman, a neurobiologist at Stanford, shared a podcast on meditation that helped me realize that we can actually tailor our meditation practice to whatever we need to cultivate most. For example, if you’re a person who is acutely aware of what’s going on inside your body, focusing on your breath might be a waste of time for you because you’re already internally focused. In that case, it might be better to focus on another object outside of yourself, which helps you increase your external awareness. Conversely, if you find yourself distracted by the outside world, focusing on your breath might be exactly what you need to center yourself and reorient.

So there are different ways to meditate, from focusing on your breath, an external object, or even a word or mantra. And that’s not even considering the vastly different schools of meditative practice such as Transcendental Meditation. But no matter how you do it or what works for you, there is no wrong way to meditate. There are also lots of guided meditations (some suggestions are below) that are equally effective. So if sitting with your breath doesn’t work for you, instead tap into a guided session and see what you think.

As far as a time goal, any amount of meditation is better than nothing, but most of the studies of meditation programs showed that 12 minutes per day every day for eight weeks is beneficial. But start where you can, even five minutes a day, and work up from there.

Here is a list of meditation apps to check out if you’re curious:

Insight Timer

This is the app that I use. It’s free, and there are many guided meditations that you don’t have to pay for. I also like that it tracks your stats, such as how many consecutive days you have meditated.

Headspace

This is a paid app that’s had good reviews for its large selection, ease of use, and even workout/movement meditations.

Calm

This is another app with a very limited free version but a much broader paid version of the app. It has meditations, mind exercises, and sleep stories.

Waking Up

This app is narrated by Sam Harris, a meditation and neuroscience expert. It is a paid app but gives access to information about the theory of meditation as well as guided meditations.

Spotify

If you already get your music on Spotify, there are lots of meditations included. I love anything by Sarah Blondin, but if you search “meditation” you can find one that’s right for you.