How to Meditate When You Have No Idea Where to Start

1. What is meditation, exactly?

Like meditation, there’s no single universal definition of mindfulness, but experts generally agree on the gist: focusing on the present moment with openness and without judgment. “If you check in on your mind at any point during the day, you’ll probably notice you're thinking about the past or thinking about the future, or you’re generally planning, obsessing, worrying, and catastrophizing,” says Winston. “Mindfulness is getting in the practice of pulling our minds away from these places to come back to the present moment.” And so, mindfulness meditation is the formal practice of cultivating mindfulness.

2. What are the benefits of meditation?

Here’s where things get a little tricky. The proven scientific benefits of mindfulness meditation are hard to sum up (so much so that SELF has a whole separate explainer on it). The TL;DR is that there are three conditions with a strong and convincing body of evidence to support the effects of meditation: depression, anxiety, and chronic pain. Meaning, a not insignificant amount of meta-reviews and meta-analyses have found that mindfulness meditation can moderately help with symptoms associated with these conditions (or in the case of chronic pain, how people cope with symptoms, at least). For a full breakdown of what we do and don’t know about the health benefits of mindfulness meditation, check out this article.

3. Okay, talk me through the basics. What does meditating look like?

Good news: People often imagine there are a lot of rules around how to meditate properly, but meditation is meant to be flexible and personalized. “A lot of people think you have to sit in a certain way, like cross-legged on the floor, which is absolutely not true,” says Winston. “You can sit in a chair. You can sit on the couch. You can lie down. However you're comfortable.” Winston notes that people also think they have to do it for a certain amount of time—often a long time—but that’s another misconception. A few minutes is fine.

To give you an idea of what mindfulness meditation looks like in practice, consider this basic example: “A very simple way to meditate is to sit down in a comfortable place where you won't be disturbed and bring your attention to your body,” says Winston. “See if you can notice your body breathing. Maybe you feel your breath moving in your abdomen. Maybe you notice your chest moving up and down. Some people notice the air moving through their nose. Then, just pick a spot to focus your gaze on and then stay with it, feeling the breath rising and falling in and out. When you notice your mind wandering away, return your attention back to your breathing and the spot that you’re noticing. Then just do that again and again. If you just did that for five minutes a day, you'd be golden.” It may sound too easy, but that might be all you need to incorporate a fulfilling meditation routine into your life.

4. How do I quiet my thoughts and keep my mind from wandering?

Aaaand here we have the most common misconception about meditation. Despite popular belief, the goal of meditation isn’t a completely blank mind. “Meditation isn’t turning off thoughts but rather learning to meet them with awareness and curiosity,” says Mattingly. The same goes for our wandering minds; you don’t have to keep absolute focus, either. In both cases, the key is noticing.

“When our attention wanders away or other thoughts are coming up, we notice what’s happening and then bring our attention back to whatever it is we're focusing on in our mindfulness meditation, such as our breath,” says Winston. “And then we do that over and over. What we learn to realize is that that's not a problem. That's part of the process.”

That doesn’t mean it’s easy, of course. Paying attention to our thoughts and emotions can set off anxiety, judgment, and other things that feel like they interfere with mindfulness. But with practice, you can learn not to get pulled down into that spiral and instead incorporate these moments into your meditation. “[Meditation] allows us to take a step back and become the observer,” says Mattingly. “When we invite in curiosity, we’re able to notice the changing nature of all emotions and realize that these emotions rise and fall in everyone.”

5. How do I know I’m doing it right?

“Right” and “wrong” aren’t the point of meditation. Like okay, sure, technically there are ways you can meditate “incorrectly,” but they basically boil down to not actually trying. The only thing you need to do is make an effort. “If you sit down and ignore your guided meditation completely and decide instead to use the time to think about your to-do list for a day, you’re not really meditating,” says Winston. “But if you take a moment in the course of thinking about all the things you have to do to bring your attention back to your breathing and try to be present, you’re doing great.”

But in general, Winston suggests not dwelling in this mindset too much. “The really important thing is to be kind to yourself so you don’t turn meditation into another thing that’s wrong with you,” she says. “Try not to be judgmental. It’s not like you’re going to automatically do it perfectly. It’s a process.”

6. How do I make a habit out of it?

Like with building any habit, there isn’t a magic tip out there that will compel you to meditate every day. It takes persistence and commitment. That said, there are things you can do to make it easier on yourself to make a habit out of it. For one, the meditation apps above double as accountability tools; some let you track your progress and send push notifications to remind you it’s time to meditate.

All your run of the mill habit-building tips will serve you well with meditation too. Set a specific goal—instead of deciding you’re going to “start meditating,” decide you’re going to do one guided meditation as soon as you wake up. Start small, set reminders, find an accountability buddy who wants to start meditating too. At the end of the day, keeping a regular meditation practice is about making an effort and, well, doing it.

7. What if I don’t have time?

That’s the great thing about meditation—it doesn’t have to take much time at all. Many guided meditations are five minutes or less. “Everyone has time for five minutes,” says Winston. “Meditation is adaptable and shouldn’t feel like a huge commitment you have to take on.”

Beyond being open to finding small pockets in your day to meditate, you can also build mindfulness into your life. When it comes to mindfulness meditation, there’s formal practice (like everything we’ve been talking about) and informal practice, when you take the skills you’ve learned in your formal practice and put them to use. “You can apply it throughout the day,” says Winston. “You can brush your teeth mindfully or remember to take a mindful breath when something stresses you out or be mindful during your daily walk. There are all sorts of ways we can make room for mindfulness even when it feels like we don’t have room.”