The British School of Meditation Blog

Meditation Practise

The other day I was talking to a friend and they asked, ‘What sort of meditation do you practise Helen’?  I said that it varied depending on how I feel that day.
My friend was very concerned about this saying that I should stick to only one type of meditation and preferably the one that they practise.  As this practise is the best.

I gently took issue with this, as I feel very strongly that once we attach labels to our practise, for instance: this meditation today was good, or today my meditation practise was rubbish.  Such labels and judgements remove us from our practise because we have given it a label, and decided it was either good or bad. In my view our meditation practise is neither good or bad, it is neither successful or unsuccessful. It is what it is.

There are a number of different types of meditation, and we can practise whatever we choose that feels right for us.  We might need some training to ensure that we have the technique right, but that is just the technique not the daily practice.  As we travel on our meditation journey, we can feel confident to change the meditation that we might do.   I guess when we start out learning to meditate (and we are always learning) it might be a good idea to just practise one technique to thoroughly get into that practise, but one day you might want a change and that is ok.

The most important part of a meditation practise is to sit down, and do the practise. Daily if you can.
Just accept that some days your mind will wander or that it can be incredibly hard to sit and practise.  Some days you will come out of your meditation and think that was marvellous, other days you will think I don’t know why I bother.   If at the end of each meditation session you just accept that you meditated without judgement, then that is really getting into your practise.
Helen