A Comprehensive Sitting Meditation Guide (Including 20 Powerful Tips to Improve Your Practice)

Overview: This comprehensive guide to sitting meditation provides instructions on how to sit in meditation and 20 tips to make your sitting practice more effective.

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Whether you’re new to sitting meditation or a long-time meditator, I’m confident you’ll find tremendous value in this guide.

This meditation guide is part of a series:

Part 1: How to Tune Your Breath
Part 2: Sitting Meditation: How to Sit in Meditation [You are here]
Part 3: Best Meditation Postures
Part 4: Zhan Zhuang Standing Practice
Part 5: Meditation Tools

Let’s dive in …

How to Approach This Guide

First, to get the most out of this sitting meditation guide, a beginner’s mind is essential.

Regardless of what you’ve read or heard about sitting meditation, if you approach this guide with the beginner’s mindset, you’ll derive significantly more benefits.

What is Sitting Meditation?

Okay, so what exactly is meditation?

Meditation is the art and skill of paying attention.

Right now, at this moment as you read this, a lot is happening:

  • A barrage of thoughts is flying through your mind (Should I keep reading this? Does this make sense? What am I going to eat next?)
  • Various sensations are pulsing through your physical body.
  • Waves of feelings are coursing through your emotional body.

And that’s just in your inner terrain.

In your external environment are sounds, moving objects, invisible electromagnetic waves from the device you’re reading this on, and so much more.

But are you aware of all of this moment-to-moment information? Are you paying attention to your thoughts, feelings, sensations, and behavior in the here and now?

One function of sitting meditation is to help us pay more attention to what’s happening inside of us.

Who Can Benefit From Sitting Meditation?

Jon Kabat-Zinn, a pioneer in the field of Cognitive-Based Mindfulness Therapy, defines mindfulness as:1Kabat-Zinn J. Wherever you go there you are: Mindfulness meditation in everyday life. New York, NY: Hyperion; 1994.

“Paying attention in a particular way, on purpose, in the present moment, non-judgmentally.”

You may not need meditation if, from moment to moment, you’re already fully present and aware of your thoughts, feelings, sensations, and environment without judgment of yourself or others.

Why? Because, if you’re already fully present and aware, you’re already meditating (even if you don’t call it “meditation”).

So do we need to practice sitting meditation? For most of us, the answer is yes.

Sitting meditation helps us observe our behaviors and internal terrain so we can make adjustments as needed. Sitting helps us still our minds and return to ourselves.

Paying attention is one of the most vital skills we can learn—something that touches every area of our existence.

meditation instruction alan watts

17 Powerful Benefits of Sitting Meditation

For our intellectual minds that need “scientific validation” for the things we do, here’s a list of benefits of meditation from current research:

  1. Reduces stress levels2Khoury, B. et al. (2013). Mindfulness-based therapy: A comprehensive meta-analysis. Clinical Psychology Review, 33(6), 763-771. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cpr.2013.05.005
  2. Enhances immune function3Davidson RJ, Kabat-Zinn J, et al. Alterations in brain and immune function produced by mindfulness meditation. Psychosom Med. 2003 Jul-Aug;65(4):564-70. doi: 10.1097/01.psy.0000077505.67574.e3.
  3. Grows gray matter4Lazar, S. W., et al. (2005). Meditation experience is associated with increased cortical thickness. Neuroreport, 16(17), 1893-1897. doi: 10.1097/01.wnr.0000186598.66243.19
  4. Makes the brain more plastic5Davidson RJ, Lutz A. Buddha’s Brain: Neuroplasticity and Meditation. IEEE Signal Process Mag. 2008 Jan 1;25(1):176-174. doi: 10.1109/msp.2008.4431873.
  5. Provides better focus and helps regulate attention6MacLean KA, et al. Intensive meditation training improves perceptual discrimination and sustained attention. Psychol Sci. 2010 Jun;21(6):829-39. doi: 10.1177/0956797610371339.
  6. Improves regulation of emotions7https://psychcentral.com/news/2013/06/23/meditations-effects-on-emotion-shown-to-persist#1
  7. Slows down brainwave patterns8Kerr, C. E., Sacchet, et al (2013). Mindfulness starts with the body: Somatosensory attention and top-down modulation of cortical alpha rhythms in mindfulness meditation. Frontiers in Human Neuroscience, 7, 17965. https://doi.org/10.3389/fnhum.2013.00012
  8. Strengthens discipline and self-control9Friese, M., Messner, C., & Schaffner, Y. (2012). Mindfulness meditation counteracts self-control depletion. Consciousness and Cognition, 21(2), 1016-1022. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.concog.2012.01.008
  9. Reduces anxiety10Goldin PR, Gross JJ. Effects of mindfulness-based stress reduction (MBSR) on emotion regulation in social anxiety disorder. Emotion. 2010 Feb;10(1):83-91. doi: 10.1037/a0018441.
  10. Promotes better sleep11Black DS, O’Reilly GA, Olmstead R, Breen EC, Irwin MR. Mindfulness Meditation and Improvement in Sleep Quality and Daytime Impairment Among Older Adults With Sleep Disturbances: A Randomized Clinical Trial. JAMA Intern Med. 2015;175(4):494–501. doi:10.1001/jamainternmed.2014.8081
  11. Increases compassion12Northeastern University College of Science. “Can meditation make you a more compassionate person?.” ScienceDaily. ScienceDaily, 1 April 2013.
  12. Lowers blood pressure13Goldstein CM, et al. Current perspectives on the use of meditation to reduce blood pressure. Int J Hypertens. 2012;2012:578397. doi: 10.1155/2012/578397.
  13. Reduces physical pain14https://medicalxpress.com/news/2011-04-demystifying-meditation-brain-imaging.html
  14. Enhances creativity (divergent thinking)15CAPURSO, V., Fabbro, F., & Crescentini, C. (2014). Mindful creativity: The influence of mindfulness meditation on creative thinking. Frontiers in Psychology, 4, 78653. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2013.01020
  15. Strengthens immune function16Davidson RJ, Kabat-Zinn J, et al. Alterations in brain and immune function produced by mindfulness meditation. Psychosom Med. 2003 Jul-Aug;65(4):564-70. doi: 10.1097/01.psy.0000077505.67574.e3.
  16. Elevates mood17Moss AS, et al. Effects of an 8-week meditation program on mood and anxiety in patients with memory loss. J Altern Complement Med. 2012 Jan;18(1):48-53. doi: 10.1089/acm.2011.0051.
  17. Controls anxiety18Orme-Johnson DW, Barnes VA. Effects of the transcendental meditation technique on trait anxiety: a meta-analysis of randomized controlled trials. J Altern Complement Med. 2014 May;20(5):330-41. doi: 10.1089/acm.2013.0204.

Okay, we get it. Meditation is good for us.

Now, let’s look at how to sit in meditation…

How to Sit in Meditation

Psychologist Jon Kabat-Zinn writes in Full Catastrophe Living:

We call the heart of the formal meditation practice “sitting meditation” or simply “sitting.” … Mindful sitting is different from ordinary sitting in the same way that mindful breathing is different from ordinary breathing. The difference, of course, is your awareness. To practice sitting, we make a special time and place for non-doing. We consciously adopt an alert and relaxed body posture so that we can feel relatively comfortable without moving, and then we reside with calm acceptance in the present without trying to fill it with anything.

Important elements related to sitting meditation include your posture, the quality of your breath, and your mental state.

Basic Posture Guidelines for Sitting Meditation

Ultimately, for basic sitting meditation, you want to sit in an upright, relaxed posture. Sit without collapsing your head, shoulders, or chest.

It’s best to sit at the edge of a hard chair initially.

Keep both feet firmly on the ground, shoulder width, and parallel to each other. The crown of your head gently extends upward.

Place your hands open on your legs, near your knees—wherever they naturally reach without pulling your shoulders forward.

Gently press your tongue on the top of your palette, behind your teeth.

Your eyes are mostly closed but open enough to allow some light in. If your eyes were open, you would be looking straight ahead. (If your eyes are looking down, it will eventually cause you to drop your head, which we don’t want.)

I’ll address the details of sitting postures, including cross-legged positions, in a subsequent guide.

Basic Breathing Guidelines for Sitting Meditation

Place your awareness on your breath. The biggest mistake many meditators make is that they try to control their breath, which leads to unnatural breathing and internal tension.

Instead, just witness the act of breathing. Where is your breathing located in your body? How deeply are you breathing?

Instead of “following the air” as many people do with breathing exercises, watch the process of respiration.

Observing the breath without trying to change it will help you restore natural breathing over time. Initially, just notice if your breath is audible, coarse, or rapid.

Placing your mind on your breath will help you quiet the breath. In quieting your breath, it will help quiet the mind.

Basic Mind Qualities for Sitting Meditation

The qualities of mind conducive to sitting practice include:

Aware: This quality enables us to stay present and to observe.

Alert: This helps you avoid falling into what the traditions call “oblivion” where you “check out” during meditation practice.

Active: This quality also helps you stay fully engaged in the process of contemplation.

Calmness: This quality helps you steady the breath and quiet the mind thereby avoiding distraction from one’s thoughts.

Relaxed: This quality relates to the state of both the body and the mind. Like calmness, staying relaxed helps reduce mind chatter.

Neutral: This quality means that we’re nonjudgemental. In a neutral state, we also don’t get emotionally triggered.

All of these qualities of mind help reduce the two “affliction” found in the meditative traditions: distraction and oblivion.

A One-Minute Sitting Meditation

There are many different kinds of meditation. Here, for those interested, we’ll run through a simple observational meditation. (Remember to maintain a beginner’s mind.)

The idea is to gently focus your attention on one particular “object.” That object can be your breath, a repeated sound (mantra), your stream of thoughts, or awareness itself.

We’ll use the breath for this exercise.

Sit in an upright posture as described above. Get comfortable and relaxed. If you’re going to do a longer sitting meditation, it’s helpful to invest a few minutes just “settling in” before you lower your eyelids.

Then, turn your attention to your breath. Listen inward. Notice how your body naturally breathes—inhale, exhale, inhale, exhale.

Instead of tracking the air (“in through the nose…”), keep your attention on the process of breathing itself.

Without attempting to control your breath, witness your body breathing itself.

If you notice your attention wander, bring your awareness back to your breath. At this level, meditation is the process of catching yourself in a mindless state and returning your attention to a mindful state.

Notice how it feels to breathe. Maintain your attention on the feeling of breathing. How far down into the body does your breathing go?

End this sitting meditation after a minute or two.

Then, notice how you feel. Get up slowly.

20 Meditation Tips to Troubleshoot and Build Momentum

Now, if you’ve already experimented with sitting meditation, here are a series of tips to help improve your practice.

Tip #1: Learn How to Tune the Breath

If you want to become proficient at sitting meditation, it’s highly instructive to learn the qualities of proper breathing. This is foundational for deeper meditative practices.

These qualities represent natural breathing, sometimes referred to as womb breathing. These qualities are:

  1. Quiet
  2. Deep
  3. Steady
  4. Slow

While we can’t force these qualities (as that would be unnatural), we can bring them back into us by understanding the principles and using conscious awareness.

See this guide on how to tune the breath.

Tip #2: Stretch Before You Sit

The physical elements of sitting meditation are incredibly important and usually understated in meditation instruction.

If you open your body and learn to adopt the best posture for sitting, it will immediately increase your contemplative capacities.

Even if you’re going to sit for only five minutes, it’s useful to do a few basic stretches that address the hip region, lower torso, and neck/shoulder region.

Tip #3: Stand Before You Sit

Even though I began practicing various forms of meditation 30 years ago, it wasn’t until I was introduced to Qigong over 15 years ago that I began to gain deeper insights into meditation.

Through practicing qigong and training in various internal martial arts, I began developing deeper body awareness, becoming conscious of structural alignment and the movement of energy within the body.

In particular, the standing meditation called Zhan Zhuang was and continues to be the most powerful and practical of these practices in my experience. I would recommend it to anyone.

If you learn how to stand in the proper alignment first, sitting meditation becomes infinitely more accessible.

Tip #4: Walk Before You Stand

One of the main obstacles to self-mastery is our cultural obsession with moving fast. This neurotic tendency makes sitting meditation more difficult.

If you’re feeling edgy, instead of sitting, go for a walk. Walking meditation is especially practical during the day when the mind is highly active.

Become aware of your pace, as it will often mirror the speed of your thoughts.

By placing your awareness on your pace, your cadence will eventually slow down, and with it, your mind will become more still.

Remember not to try to slow your pace. Just observe it like you observe your breath in sitting meditation.

Tip #5: Sit for Shorter Amounts of Time

Instead of trying to meditate for longer—say, for 20 minutes—stop your practice earlier.

If you leave your sitting meditation practice wanting more, you’ll return to it repeatedly.

Even sit or stand for only 30 seconds to a minute if 5 minutes is a lot for you.

Tip #6: Stop Trying to Meditate

The Achiever part in us is always trying. Trying creates tension.

It takes effort to get into the correct posture and one’s will to sit down to meditate. But then, you have to let go of this effort too.

Learn the Taoist principle of Wu Wei. In Buddhism, it’s called the Middle Way.

Wu Wei translates as nondoing, nonaction, or nongoverning. Applying this principle to your sitting meditation is highly beneficial.

Tip #7: Meditate at Different Times

Try meditating as early as possible in the morning or late at night.

From 11 pm to 6 am is the period most conducive to falling into a meditative state.

In Taoist practices, they call midnight the height of yin (stillness) while midday is the peak of yang (activity).

If you wake up in the middle of the night, instead of checking your phone and hijacking your circadian rhythm, try meditating.

Tip #8: Pay Attention to Your Behavior After Sitting Meditation

Do you jump right into your next activity? Or do you continue to move slowly, consciously, and deliberately?

Just observe what you do. Also, pay attention to how you feel and perform throughout the day.

  • Do you notice less emotional reactivity?
  • Are you staying any calmer in stressful situations?
  • Are you more focused at work?
  • Are you more aware of your internal dialogue?

By paying attention to changes in your daily experience, you’ll anchor in the benefits and therefore be more likely to continue with your practice.

Tip #9: Meditate on an Empty Stomach

Whenever possible, avoid eating before you meditate.

Even if you don’t feel your body’s internal energy yet, a lot is happening inside our bodies all the time.

Food blocks the body’s energy and, as a consequence, it will disrupt your sitting meditation.

Tip #10: Sit in a Technology-Free Environment

Whenever possible, meditate in an environment free from technology.

The more sensitive you become to your body’s subtle energy, the more aware you are of the harmful effects electromagnetic frequencies (EMF) have on your biofield. Hint: it’s highly disruptive.

If you’re going to do sitting meditation in the morning, when possible, do so before going near any WIFI or Bluethooth-enabled technology including your mobile phone.

Tip #11: Use an Interval Timer

Interval timers are used in certain forms of fitness and strength training.

An internal timer allows you to set an alarm that goes off at whatever intervals you choose. For example, if you’re going to do sitting meditation for 20 minutes, you can have the alarm go off every 2 minutes or 5 minutes.

This bell will remind you to return your attention to your meditation in case your mind starts wandering.

For over a decade, I used the Insight Timer app.

Just be sure to keep your phone on Airport mode with Bluetooth disabled.

Tip #12: Avoid Using Guided Meditations

Although I realize that guided meditations are very popular, I don’t advocate them.

They are fine for newbie meditators who are just starting. Guided processes are great for getting initial instruction. I offer one too called The Mastery Method.

But if you continue to foster sitting meditation using guided audio programs like those on Headspace, you’re doing yourself a great disservice, in my opinion.

Why? Because you’re listening to form (words), which is distracting you from actual meditation.

That is, you’re not cultivating a contemplative mind. You’re just being guided through a process that easily becomes a form of hypnosis or a trance state. Arguably, this is not meditation.

Tip #13: Experiment with Brainwave Entrainment

While I don’t recommend voice-guided programs if you’re serious about sitting meditation, brainwave entrainment technology is a different story.

Brainwave entrainment programs use binaural beats, isochronic tones, and other soundwave technology to help bring your brainwaves into specific states of consciousness.

I experimented with most of the popular brainwave entrainment programs (that existed a decade ago). By far, Profound Meditation Program 3.0 from iAwake Technologies was the most effective in my experience.

You can download a free 20-minute track to use for your sitting meditation.

Eventually, if you continue to cultivate your practice, you’ll probably stop using these types of programs too. However, they can help you achieve a deeper state of meditation and sit for longer—especially when you’re establishing your daily practice.

Tip #14: Be Mindful of Self-Deception

It’s all too easy to fool ourselves with our sitting meditation, convincing ourselves that we’re making progress when we’re not.

I did this for many years in my 20s. I convinced myself I was becoming “more spiritually evolved,” when I was just checking out on a couch pillow every morning.

American Buddhist meditation teacher Pema Chodron confesses that she would “check out” during her compassion meditation training.19Pema Chodron, Good Medicine: How to Turn Pain into Compassion with Tonglen Meditation, 2001. She did this for ten years even though she was considered to be an “expert” in her community.

The mind’s capacity for self-deception is infinite.

Tip #15: Watch Your Parts

If you get frustrated during sitting meditation, watch the frustrated part.

If you get sleepy, watch the lazy part. (Or go to sleep.)

If you get itchy, watch the part that wants to scratch the itch.

If you catch yourself thinking about a problem, watch the analytical part.

We have many parts or archetypes within our psyche. But we are not these parts.

When we observe these parts, we differentiate ourselves from them. This “space” enables us to stay neutral and aware.

Tip #16: Establish a Sitting Meditation Routine

The benefit of establishing a sitting meditation routine is that it can reduce mental effort.

That is, once you establish a sitting practice, you won’t have to think about it. (Should I sit now? Do I need to sit?)

Most people prefer to establish a meditation routine in the early morning. As I mentioned above, meditating late at night is excellent too. Doing both is even better.

But figure out what works best for you and establish a basic routine.

Tip #17: Establish a Physical Space for Sitting Meditation

It’s also helpful to establish a physical environment for regular sitting meditation.

This environment should be quiet, orderly, and clean. The more clutter you have in your physical environment, the more clutter you’ll have in your mind.

If your environment is always inherently noisy, you can use earplugs or a noise-canceling headset—or both!

This room or area of a room can become a “sacred space” for cultivating your sitting practice. In doing so, it can be an anchor to help you enter a meditative state.

Tip #18: Change It Up

Test different methods for yourself until you find something that works for you.

Make your sitting meditation practice something practical, something that relaxes you and leaves you feeling refreshed.

Some days you may prefer to walk or stand instead of sitting. Be flexible.

Turning sitting meditation into a chore—something you “have to do”—fosters aversion.

Deriving physical, mental, and emotional benefits from meditation will drive you toward it.

Tip #19: Observe Nature Instead of “Meditating”

Because humans transmit sitting meditation instruction from mind to mind, we tend to complicate what’s, in truth, a natural and straightforward process.

Whenever possible, go for a walk and observe nature. Gaze at trees, plants, grass, or the sky.

If you can become fully absorbed in nature as a healthy child can without mental instruction, you are already meditating.

Tip #20: Lighten Up …

Finally, be kind and gentle with yourself.

Seriousness and frustration create and feed internal tension. High expectations will detract from your meditation practice and give you an excuse to quit in the future.

The more light and free you feel when you meditate, the more value you’ll derive from your practice.

Cultivate a Living Method, Not a Dead One

One last point I think is often overlooked in instructions for sitting meditation.

Ancient Taoist and Buddhist schools make a distinction between a “living method” and a “dead method.”

A living method is something that’s integrated into an individual’s daily life and way of being.

A dead method is something that’s performed mechanically as an automatic routine.

A Chan Buddhist proverb states: “Study the living word, not the dead word.”

For most of us, meditation becomes a dead method. (For many years, it was for me.)

Sitting meditation becomes something people do in the morning or evening. This practice is separate from the rest of their lives and how they behave.

The real purpose of sitting meditation is to lay the foundation for cultivating a meditative state throughout the day.

A Powerful Guided Sitting Meditation

The video clip below is an excerpt from one of the lectures of philosopher and author Alan Watts. While I generally don’t recommend guided meditation recordings, this particular one is worth listening to, in my opinion.

Outside of D. T. Suzuki, Watts is mainly responsible for making Eastern philosophy (including meditation) accessible to the West during the ‘50s and ‘60s. He was a prolific writer and was equally engaging in his lectures.

Read Next

Read other in-depth guides in this meditation series:

Part 1: How to Tune Your Breath
Part 2: Sitting Meditation: How to Sit in Meditation [You are here]
Part 3: Best Meditation Postures
Part 4: Zhan Zhuang Standing Practice
Part 5: Meditation Tools

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