This is called the perfect ten method, created to help you understand what a quiet mind feels like. It takes less than a minute.
How to Meditate Using The Perfect Ten Method.
The perfect ten method is the beginning step anyone can take to instantly discover the benefits of mindfulness meditation. All you have to do is close your eyes and count ten deep, slow breaths. The kicker is, those ten counts need to be perfect. All your attention must be on the numbers, and you must brush away intrusive thoughts. We will discuss some cool strategies to help with that in just a moment. Here are some simple steps to get started with the perfect ten.
Find a quiet place to sit or stand. This isn’t even necessary, you can perfect ten in the checkout line if you want. Put your headphones in for a little more silence, or play some “white noise humming” sounds on YouTube to drown out distractions.
Close your eyes and take a few deep breaths to center your focus inward. This is a great starting place of meditation, which is to turn your attention inside yourself, but not on your thoughts. Feel your belly expand, do a quick “check-up” of how your legs feel, and just start to relax.
Breathe in deeply from the belly (not the chest), say “one” in your mind, and exhale. Do everything you can to make that number your only focus. Picture it as a large statue in a white room if you have to. Hear your mind speak the word as you say it.
Repeat the last step all the way up to “ten”. Make this perfect, without losing focus. This should take you around a minute to complete. Once you have finished with the perfect ten, you can open your eyes, or continue with mindfulness meditation by replacing the counting with “in, out” as you breathe.
The first time you begin the perfect ten method, you’ll make it to about the number two before your mind starts saying, “Hey, what gives! Here’s are a thousand thoughts for you right now you can examine, interact with, and worry about! That’s what you like, right? Screw this quiet peaceful stuff!”
When this happens, you need to just let those thoughts go and focus back in on the numbers. Sometimes, you’ll “snap back into focus” around number seven or eight, and you’ll realize you were thinking about something completely different while your mind ran the numbers on autopilot.
You may go even go over ten, or lose track completely. Start over or try again later. Your only goal with meditation at this point is to make a “perfect ten”, a slow count of your breathing with no distractions.
Strategies to Upgrade Your Experience.
There are many different things you can do to begin understand what it feels like to have a quiet mind. If you’ve never experienced mindfulness before, this might be the hardest step. You may ask yourself, “Am I doing this right?” If you are trying, you are meditating. That’s the rule, so don’t worry.
To first learn how to direct the mind, focus on a constant sound. As you close your eyes, stretch your awareness out around you. Perhaps there is the hum of an air conditioner, a fan, or even the wind. If it’s dead silent, listen to that (it’s insanely beautiful). You can even hum a single note. You’ll notice how your brain calms down for just a few moments when you start listening. Extend those moments.
Pretend you are a mountain, and thoughts are clouds passing by. The goal of meditation is not necessarily to never have an interrupting thought. The goal is to let those intrusive firings of random neurons in your brain to pass right on by, just like a cloud. Just say, “no thank you” and move on with your meditation.
This is a practice, not a skill. That’s an important difference. Some days, you will sit down and have a horrible session, where you just can’t calm down. That’s okay, that will pass. Some days, you will have an amazing meditation session. That’s okay, that will pass too. Your only goal is to practice, not perfect.