Mastering MEDITATION

Wellness guru Luke McLeod helps to get you in the zone

-  Luke McLeod

How do I know when I’m meditating? Seems like such a simple question, right? Yet when I googled this question I wasn’t entirely impressed with the answers that popped up. Most of what I found were the outcomes of meditation, such as, “I know I’m meditating when I feel less stress.” I don’t think this answer really helps when you’re sitting there with your eyes closed and asking yourself, “Am I doing this right?”

The easiest way to tell whether you’re meditating or not is when you’re feeling and not thinking. This is meditation. You’re experiencing the moment, is another way of putting it.

So instead of “Am I doing this right?”, which is a thought, it’s “I can feel the cool air moving through my nostrils when I breathe in”, which is a feeling. “What is the smell of this rose?” is thinking. Experiencing the smell of the rose is feeling. Notice the difference. Meditation is the intentional act and experience of feeling and connecting with the present moment.

FEEL MORE AND THINK LESS

We often confuse these two, though, as thoughts can very quickly follow a feeling. For example, “Gee that’s a beautiful sunset” is a thought, not a feeling. The feeling happened just before this, when you experienced the visual delight of the sunset.