Dave Kashen walks through a basic meditation routine: set a timer for 5 to 10 minutes, focus on your breath at your belly or nostrils, notice when your mind wanders, and gently bring attention back. He frames it as training your attention like you'd train a puppy.
When they come to you and they go, how do I start meditating? What do I, what do I do? Okay, fine, you've convinced me, because we spent a lot of time on that part. But how would you— what do you actually tell people to do?
Yeah, so the simplest— there's a couple really simple versions. The simplest thing to do is set a timer for 5 or 10 minutes and focus on your breath, and more specifically either notice your belly expanding and contracting as you breathe, or notice the air coming in and out of your nostrils. And what will naturally happen is at some point you will stop focusing on that, and you'll— your attention will get hooked by a thought. No problem. When you notice that that has occurred, bring your attention back to your breath. I.e., your belly or the air coming in and out of your nostrils. That's the most basic practice. And it's not, what people get confused by, 'cause so many people are like, "I'm bad at meditating." It's not that you're supposed to stay focused on your breath for 10 straight minutes. The practice is just the noticing, right? It's a mindfulness, just noticing, oh, you know, by having the intention to focus on your breath, you notice when your attention has drifted And then you just gently bring it back. I like the metaphor of like training a puppy. It's like, oh yeah, it went off. Okay, come on back. Right? You don't go make yourself wrong. It's not, you're not doing it wrong. And if you literally, you know, have 9 and a half minutes of just focusing on different thoughts, but you know, one time you notice that that's occurring and bring your attention back to the breath, that's useful, right? That's the practice. In some way, it's like if it was— if there was a muscle to build, it's the muscle of exerting conscious choice around where you put your attention. Yeah.
