Quick urban meditation tips for unlikely places
Quick meditation tips for beginners living a rushed life in the city. These meditation suggestions are quick, easy and won’t draw too many stares…
Before you start tearing your hair out or doing something you’ll regret, take a deep breath, count to 10 and back again and step AWAY from the situation. Nothing to see here…
That simple act of taking a deep breath and clearing the mind is the basis of meditation. So if you think meditation involves too much ommmming or you can’t dedicate a whole 20 minutes a day to self care or mental well-being, it’s not a problem.
Everyone can meditate. In fact the last time you sat out in the sun and just closed your eyes and allowed the warmth to beat down on your face, you meditated.
Meditation brings about a change in the way we think. It can completely change how we function in daily life. Stressful situations become easy to manage, and people around us notice the difference.
Here are some meditations that even tired little pooks can do in the midst of a busy day, without needing to sit cross-legged or utter a single om.
Basic meditation tips – breathing exercise
Before you try out any of the following quicky meditations you need to have a grasp of the basics of meditating. All you need to do to enter into a meditation is the following:
- 1. Stop for a moment, close your eyes and breathe
- 2. Focus on your breathing, notice your breath in and your breath out
- 3. Now count as you breathe, start on the in breath as 1, out 1, then in 1,2, out 1,2, then in 1,2,3 out 1,2,3 etc all the way up to 10. If you find a thought entering in your head and interrupting the counting breaths, it’s okay. Stop and go back to 1.
- 4. Once you can count from 1 to 10 without your mind interrupting you, then allow yourself to come back to the real world.
This is a simple meditation, and might take a bit of practice but ultimately it allows you to take control of your mind and stop those annoying wonderings about why the boss is acting strange, or whether you should have spent all that money on that puce top…
You can expand this meditation to move from counting to affirming positive things such as “I am calm”, “I am confident”, “I am loved”, “I am happy” on each breath, and feel free to make something up that suits your needs, as long as it is positive and supportive.
Walking meditation exercise – do it anywhere
A walking meditation is a recognised form of meditating by all practised meditators, and is something that can be slotted into your everyday life. You can do a walking meditation on the way to work, round the supermarket, even up Oxford Street. All you need for this meditation is to be walking somewhere.
A walking meditation involves a waking mindfulness, and all you need to do is be aware of your walking, allow a natural rhythm to unfold and notice each step as your feet rise and fall. Allow all other distractions and thoughts to leave and just focus on your breath and your steps.
As you take each step match it to an in and out breath, and so to either counting or taking it a step further (no pun intended) to affirmations. Obviously try not to talk to yourself if you want to avoid strange looks, personally I couldn’t care less!
Toilet meditation exercise
As it is generally frowned upon to take too many breaks whilst at work/college, other than the obligatory lunch breaks, fitting in a quicky meditation when the going gets rough may seem unlikely.
However taking a toilet break opportunity can kill two birds with one stone. As you sit on the bowl, let your mind relax and focus on your breathing. You can easily take 5 minutes to refresh your mind this way, providing your attention is not required on the task at hand!
And it makes weeing brilliant!
And don’t forget to flush!
How to meditate on the go
This may seem another unlikely place to attempt to meditate, especially with all the tinned music on other people’s headphones and the loud mobile users – but this is really an ideal opportunity to let go, especially if your journey is longer than 10 minutes.
It’s worth some preparation for this one, so set your mobile/watch alarm to the time you want to stop the meditation. You can also invest in jingly-jangly meditation music or ‘sounds of nature’ (ensuring that they’re playing at the right volume on your headphones so other travellers don’t sit wondering what on earth you are listening to – thunder and rain is a good one for that!) Sounds of bees, birds, sea, dolphins, the countryside are all good to meditate to.
Allow your mind to focus on the sounds you are listening to for a moment, and then bring your attention to your breathing.
Practice the counting breath meditation, and if you like, add in the affirmations. If you have time you can add in a visualisation connected to the sounds you are listening to.
Meditating on the way to and from wherever you’re going really helps you manage your day so that you are energised and ready for whatever grand adventures lie ahead – but you’re also calm enough to let go of any grotty work stuff before you get home for the night!