Meditation Does Not Have to Fit Inside a Box

I have practised several different forms of meditation throughout my life. I have experienced Sufi meditation, Buddhist meditation, visualisation, slow and rapid breathing practices, and different forms of sitting meditation. Some practices have worked better for me than others, and what I have learned through that experience is that I personally do not want to put meditation inside a box where everybody must follow the same ritual for their practice to count as meditation.

There are established forms of meditation that involve sitting or lying down, closing the eyes, controlling or observing the breath, changing the position of the hands, repeating particular words, using visualisation or maintaining attention for a particular period of time. I understand those methods, I have practised several of them myself, and I know how useful they can be. However, I have also learned that meditation can become part of ordinary life when we deliberately bring our attention back to what we are doing in the present moment.

You can experience a meditative state while washing the dishes if, for those few minutes, you are genuinely washing the dishes. You are feeling the water, paying attention to what your hands are doing and allowing yourself to remain with that activity rather than mentally travelling through tomorrow's problems. The same can happen when you are cooking, kneading bread or working in the garden. When I am gardening, I can become completely focused on the plant in front of me, the condition of the soil, whether it is dry, what is growing around it and even the worms underneath it. I am not trying to solve everything else happening in my life at that moment. My attention is there.

This does not mean that thoughts suddenly disappear. Thoughts will come. For me, part of the practice is learning to acknowledge them without allowing every thought to take me somewhere else. I can recognise that something needs my attention and mentally say, “I hear you. I see you. I acknowledge you, but I do not need to deal with you at this particular moment.” Some things belong to later today, some belong to tomorrow, and some do not require my attention at all. Gradually, I can return my attention to what I am actually doing.

Eventually, there are moments when I realise that my mind has become quiet. I am no longer consciously trying to empty it because my attention has naturally settled into the present activity. That, for me, is one of the most useful parts of meditation.

My own meditation practice has changed because my life has changed. There was a time when I could spend two or three hours meditating, and I genuinely enjoyed doing that. At the moment, I do not regularly practise meditation for that length of time. Life became considerably busier while I was completing my master's degree and building my business, and I allowed some of those longer practices to disappear from my routine. I could simply say that I do not have time, but that would not be completely honest. I can find five minutes. I can find ten minutes. If I organise myself properly, I can also find an hour.

So I have started using those smaller periods instead of waiting for the perfect circumstances to return. Sometimes meditation is five or ten minutes of deliberate quiet. Sometimes it is sitting properly in meditation. Sometimes it is being completely present while doing something ordinary. I am slowly teaching myself again that being busy does not mean that every available moment has to be filled with another responsibility.

You can even begin in the morning by opening your curtains and looking outside. If there are houses immediately in front of you, look upwards. Find whatever part of the sky you can see and spend a few minutes looking at it. Pay attention. Do your morning gratitude if that is part of your practice. You do not need to turn it into an elaborate ritual. Give yourself ten minutes in which your responsibility is simply to be present.

I am also returning to meditation because of the work I do with other people. If I am going to sit with someone while they are trying to gain clarity about their own life, I need to continue creating clarity within mine. Running a small business can be intense because so many different responsibilities sit with the same person. Meditation is therefore not something I want to teach while neglecting it myself. It is part of how I continue taking responsibility for my own state of mind.

Breathing is part of that practice as well. During sessions, there are moments when I will stop and breathe before continuing a difficult conversation. I sometimes encourage the other person to take that moment too, but I do not want to prescribe one perfect way of breathing to everybody. I want people to discover what helps them regulate themselves and become more conscious of what they are doing.

One of the simplest practices I use in my own life is giving myself three seconds before I respond or make a decision. I do not always remember to do it. Sometimes I react quickly and afterwards realise that I forgot my three seconds. That does not make the practice useless. It reminds me why I practise it.

Meditation, for me, is therefore not about becoming perfect at being calm. It is a practice of attention. It is repeatedly learning how to come back to what I am doing, what I am feeling and what is actually happening now. The particular method can change because our lives change. What matters is finding a practice that genuinely helps us become present rather than forcing ourselves to perform somebody else's idea of what meditation is supposed to look like.