For the past 75 days, I’ve been reading and doing my best to try one meditation practice per day, from Matthew Sockolov’s ‘Practicing Mindfulness’, and while I admit that I didn’t fully execute each and every one, I did the majority, and added them to my daily meditation. Unlike some things in life, where excess may lead to harm, the more one meditates, the better one gets.
Sockolov offers practical and easy meditation practices, and this book is good for anyone new to meditation. While most are designed for ten to fifteen minutes of focused practice, I found that a big-ask for the beginner. When I started out, I was at two minutes a day – for over four decades I’d been trained to occupy every single minute of the day with action or thought. That doesn’t go away the instant you decide to start meditating. I took it a couple of minutes at a time for a couple of weeks before I gradually increased – maybe an extra minute after a few days, then two extra minutes – until I began to be comfortable with the stillness and the silence.
Many of the meditations that Sockolov describes can be whittled down to a few minutes for those still not quite comfortable with a longer practice. I found these a decent supplement to my daily 20 minutes, and they offer a helpful entry point for anyone looking to start simply, and for those looking to bring the practice into everyday life.
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