It only takes a couple of minutes.

A daily meditation practice can take as little as a couple of minutes. Yes, you read that right, two minutes. Meditation happens as long as you’re sitting still and focusing on something to hold your concentration.

Most people I talk to think they need to do longer, but if you’re just beginning, see the two minutes as a starting point. Keep it simple to start.

Just as one trains for a marathon, we must start slowly and build up the strength and stamina to do more over time. Adding one minute more per week or even every other week is the slow and steady way to go.

Oftentimes, my clients say they can’t meditate because they can’t clear their minds. On the contrary, clearing the mind is not the goal of meditation, but rather the goal of meditation is to befriend the mind and to see it as a constant, thought-churning machine. Rather than seeing it as a nuisance, embrace your mind for what it is.

Your mind “thinks”40,000 - 60,000 thoughts per day. So rather than seeing this as a problem, embrace the inevitability. You will keep thinking, and you will do so all the time.

So how do you stay focused when the mind is always chattering?

Try this: Recall the last time you were at home in one room, and two people were conversing in another room. You may be able to hear snippets of conversation, but you’re not invested in the conversation. The voices remain in the background, and you remain in the other room or foreground.

Treat your thoughts the same way - holding them in the background of your mind. The chatter is there, but they are not the focus of your attention. Although your thoughts are always there, you’ve consciously decided to disengage from them.

So what is the key to drawing your attention away from your thoughts? Focus. Essentially you discipline your mind into doing something else. The discipline of following the breath.

Inevitably, the mind just wants to think - that’s how it’s made. In yoga, the Sanskrit term for this is called Chitta Vritti - mind chatter, or monkey mind.

So if you train your mind to think about the movement of the breath instead (to distract and trick it), then you focus its attention on your purposes.

The principles of meditation are simple - but they are not easy. That’s why there is discipline involved. And that’s why marathon runners train for weeks, months, and years. - every day and all the time. And that’s why when you first start off, you reach your proverbial finish line by training every day. Simple, right? I want to say yes, but not exactly. Creating the discipline to continually focus on the breath in those delicate two minutes. And when your mind wonders (and boy, will it!), bring it back to the breath every single time. Return and return and return to the breath. See the mind wondering as an opportunity, not as something wrong. The mind wandering away is not deficient but a positive. It’s a rare opportunity to witness the mind in its purest form. And from there, keep guiding it back to the breath with compassion and kindness.

Ranya Anabtawi, Empathic Yoga founder has been practicing meditation since 2010 and teaches many guided and silent meditation practices. Book your session here.