A talk, then a guided practice at the end. Music underneath
I could not meditate for twenty years. Too fidgety, mind like a firework. If that is you, stay to the end.
A 23 minute talk, with a guided practice at the end.
I gave up at 27 after about three minutes. I started again at 40, at rock bottom, because every book I picked up told me to and I got tired of turning the page. Here I go through what meditation is not, the three kinds I actually use, focus, awareness and intention, and then we do all three together. Not once do I ask you to stop your thoughts. That was never going to happen.
Treat me to a coffee, keep the podcast free, and get my Weekly Calm every Sunday. It is all on stevenwebb.uk
Thank you for sitting with me.
Steven
Who this is for
Anybody who has concluded they cannot do this.
I could not meditate for twenty years. Too fidgety, mind like a firework. If that is you, stay to the end.
This one went out on both podcasts, so it is a talk first rather than a meditation. The practice comes at the end and covers all three kinds.
What happens in this episode
First, what meditation is not. Not silence. Not bliss. Not a peaceful utopia. If you want to feel lovely for half an hour, run a bath and light a candle, and it will work better.
Then the honest bit. I gave up at twenty seven after about three minutes. I started again at forty, at rock bottom, because every book I picked up told me to and I got tired of turning the page. Nine people walk into a windowless room and say it is raining. At some point you fetch a coat.
Then the three kinds I actually use. Focus, holding one thing, the breath or a candle or a count. Open awareness, letting everything come and go and doing nothing with any of it. And intention, setting what you want to carry into the day.
Then we do all three together, briefly, with no attempt to stop anything.
How to get the most from it
Twenty three minutes, and about seventeen of that is talking. The practice is at the end and works on its own once you know it.
Not once am I going to ask you to quieten your mind, because it was never going to happen and it was never the point.
Then use the gaps you already have. Traffic lights. A queue. Thirty seconds of any of the three.
Questions people ask
Why is a talk on the meditation feed?
Because the people who most need to hear it are the ones already here, quietly assuming they are doing it wrong. It went out on Stillness in the Storms the same week.
Which of the three should I start with?
Focus. It is the most obvious when your mind wanders, which makes it the easiest to practise. Most of my guided meditations use all three in that order anyway.
Are you any good at this now?
No, and that is rather the point of the episode. Ten years in and my mind still goes everywhere. What changed is that I stopped treating that as failure.
Read along
The transcript
It follows the audio. Press any line to jump there.
mindfulness · overthinking · personal-story
Read the transcript
Welcome to this week's podcast, How to Meditate Even If You Think You Cannot. Now then, this podcast
is... On both of my podcasts, Stillness in the Storms podcast, and also Inner Peace Meditations. So if you're
listening to this on Inner Peace Meditations, and you're expecting, as normal, a guided meditation, this is going to be
a guided meditation at the end, but only after I explain the first part about understanding meditation and the second
part, the three forms of meditation and then I'm going to give you a guided experience. And I want to
do this because So many people believe, just like I did for probably 20 years, that I couldn't meditate the
meditation is too hard for me because my mind's too active. I'm too fidgety. I just cannot shut off my
mind. I cannot focus on one object. Things like that. All those different things that used to come up into
my mind, I just want to get rid of some of those common myths and I want to prove by
the end of this podcast that anybody can meditate. So if you think you cannot meditate, stay till the end
and if you still think that, message me. Head over to StevenWebb.uk and message me. I want to hear
from you. I want to hear from you anyway. I love hearing from my listeners. I love hearing from you.
Anyway, just before we start, thank you to all my supporters, people that treat me to a coffee and donate
towards the podcast. That's the way in which they really keep going. They're not cheap to host. They're not cheap
to produce and edit and get done. But I do really appreciate I don't have a sponsor. I choose not
to because it's for you and you guys helped to pay for it. So thank you from the depth of
my heart. I really appreciate that. Let's get on with today's show. So demystifying meditation and making it
accessible. Really, I just want to tell you, firstly, meditation is not about silence in the
mind. It's not about some peaceful utopia. It's not about finding this inner bliss or
communicating with aliens. It's not about without I don't know, just becoming some magical lotus
flower or anything like that.
The real meditation is about a deeper insight. It's about understanding how you work, how your body works, how your
mind works and getting a deeper insight to what you are and what you're not. You know, going beyond the
narrative of the ego. But if you want to just do meditation to be relaxed and feel lovely and fluffy,
you know, run a bath, light some candles part on some good music. That's much more beneficial. And if you
want to use meditation as a self-help growth thing, buy some self-help books. But if you want to really use
meditation to have a little bit more inner peace in life... And to have a deeper insight, to understand how
the mind works, to have more control over how you respond and how you stop reacting to things and how
you stop making things worse in life. And you want to know how your how your emotions and your mind
and body and all connect. Then meditation is for you, really. Now then, I'm not going to judge the other
forms of meditation that... Try to communicate with aliens or do all those other things. It's just none of them
I find that helpful when it comes to finding real, genuine freedom from suffering. And that's what I set out
to on my meditation journey. Every single book that I read told me I had to meditate. That really annoyed
me because I couldn't meditate. I turn over another page. Right? We think you should meditate. Practice mindfulness. I was
like, no way. I can't do that. My mind does not shut off. And if you spend five minutes with
me or just 10 minutes with me, you'll notice that I go from one subject to another. I'm looking at
a branch in one moment and talking about the tree. And then I'm talking about council. Then I'm talking about
my mind is literally boom, boom, boom, constantly one thing after another. I don't mind that. It's fun.
It's entertaining sometimes. But it used to drive me insane. I just wanted some inner peace. I just wanted some
quiet. And especially when my thoughts were really intrusive and really leading to really
painful thoughts. And I just wanted to shut them off. The truth is, we don't want to stop all the
thoughts. We want to stop the thoughts that we don't want. And that's the truth. And the mind has evolved
to think. That's what it... Evolved to do. It's what it's going to do. Your heart is there to pump
blood around your body. Your liver is there to filter the blood. Your your muscles there to tense and let
go when it's needed. Your mind, your brain, the physical brain side is evolved to think.
It's evolved to protect you. It's done a really good job so far. It doesn't know right or wrong. It
just wants to protect you and keep up the same habit
and let you get through life in the best way possible based on what you've already done. That's the narrative.
That's the story. Then if you want your mind to really shut off, the only time that really happens and
it doesn't Actually happen. You just don't have no awareness of your mind thinking. That's in deep sleep. All the
other time, your mind's going to be thinking stuff up. Just the same as you think stuff up and then
you have the feelings arise. So meditation, that's all perfectly normal. So meditation,
what that gives us is a sense of control over that and what we do with it so The more
we sit down to meditate, the more we realise how chattery our mind is, how much our mind is like
monkey mind is sometimes explained. You know, if I sit down to meditate, immediately my my mind just
bombards me with thoughts. And they're not even that important that They're just annoying, like, what you're going to have
for tea? You're feeling hungry. What you're going to do next week? You haven't posted that card. You haven't replied
to that email. Just check Facebook. You need to do all these things. Oh, why don't you write a story?
Why don't you do this? And it comes up all these brilliant ideas and all these things you don't do.
And also the things that lead to feelings that we really do not enjoy. And the thing is, it's just
one after the other. The average person has something like 40 or 50 thoughts every minute. That's about 50. I'm
not doing maths in my head. It's 56 000 per day, apparently. Something like that anyway. I did not do
that in my head. I already knew that figure actually um Unless there's a mathematician listening and you know I've
got that totally wrong. But it's so many thoughts per minute. So meditation is not about getting rid of them.
It's about
becoming aware of the thoughts and what to do with them and whether to get on them or not. So
the three types of meditation. Number one, focus meditation. Now when I say there's three types, there's lots of other
types. But these are the main three types. I'm not going to cover mantra um transcendental or anything like that.
I'm going to cover the main three types that I use on the Inner Peace Meditations and the ones that
have made the huge difference in my life. And being paralysed, being... You know, overthinking I
I have Adhd. I have dyslexia. And trust me, my mind is like, you know, just on fire all the
time. Even trying to go sleep and things like that. So these are the three I use. It's a focused
meditation. It's concentrating on a single point, like a breath or a mantra. You could just go, right,
literally I'm breathing in, I'm breathing out. And you can count it or you can look at a candle or
you can just do anything that you're really focused on that one single point. And
the everyday application for this is practicing during routine activities like walking or um you know,
waiting in line or you want to bring back some focus and calmness to a present situation. Just, I'm going
to breathe. I want to calm this moment down. And the other one is awareness meditation the
Being aware of your thoughts and surroundings without judgement. So just taking a breath. You go, okay.
Focus on my breath. Now I'm just aware of my breath. Ah, there's a feeling. I'm aware of that. Ah,
there's a sound. I'm aware of that.
Ah, there's an I'm aware of that. And just becoming aware of it but without doing anything with it. That's
just awareness meditation it's almost It's very similar to mindfulness. You can be out walking and you're just seeing everything
around you and you're just aware of it but you know you don't have to do anything with it. And
you can practice this during anything like doing dishes or mopping the floor or going for a walk. Anything
really. Even just walking the dog. You can be really mindful like the dog is. We often think the dog's
mind form has got nothing in its head. Trust me. The dog's probably thinking about its food and everything as
well. You know, I want to get home. It's gold on food my food. So the third one is intention
meditation. And that's setting intentions for how you want to feel or what you want to achieve. And
I use this meditation to A, be productive sometimes. I pretend in the morning that I've got a table and
I bring the most productive people in the world and the ones I admire and the ones I really think
are doing a really good job. There's normally somebody like Gandhi or um a couple of really good politicians that
I admire, things like that um now some Mandela and people like that. And my doctor and people And I
go around the table and I say, what should I work on today? And I allow each one of them
to answer me. My doctor tells me to eat healthier, do some exercise. Gandhi says, you know, be a little
more caring. Open your heart a little bit more. It's nearly always the same answers. It's nearly always... But it's
really important to set that intention for the day um You can also have loving kindness intention where you're just
opening your heart to the suffering in the world by opening your heart and including someone else in your love.
You can imagine sat next to someone on a bench and that person's in the same bubble as you and
just imagine loving them um So that's like setting setting an intention. And they're the three main
meditations that I use. And in just a moment, we're going to do it. I'll do a guided meditation with
all three of those because nearly all of my meditations, especially on Inner Peace Meditations, normally have all three involved.
I always start off with a focus, focus on something and then open our awareness because the more open we
become, the more curious we become, the more playful and the more... We're able to absorb ideas and
learn more. And then just leave it with some intention, like may I be happy? May I be loved? May
I be at peace? And it just gives that intention for the next few hours or the day. So I
hope that makes sense, right so We're a good few minutes into this podcast I just want to settle down
and And the reason why I've done this podcast is because I get quite a few emails about I find
meditation really hard and things like that. I do as well. I find meditation really hard even now. And I've
been an avid meditator for, what, 10 years now? I started when I was first 27. I
did it for about three minutes and I gave up completely because my mind would not shut off. I started
it again when I was 40 and that's when I hit rock bottom. And every single book told me to
meditate and I was like, can't do it. In the end... Yes, I gave it a go. The thing is,
if one person comes and tells you, you should try this, you can go, okay, maybe there's something If two
people tell you, you can go, okay, there probably is something in it. But if every book, if everybody's telling
you that there's something in it, there must be something in it. So I had to give it a try.
So let's do a little guided meditation. And we're going to start off with focus, then we'll do awareness, and
then we'll do intention.
So, just allow your body to relax. Maybe wiggle your bum get comfortable. Wiggle your
shoulders and get comfortable. And
just become aware of your breath.
And focus on the air going in through your nose. The
way your chest rises.
And the way it changes direction and just falls. And the air comes back out.
And then it repeats.
Then bring your focus to your body. Allow your body to relax.
Allow your shoulders, neck and your face to relax.
Now I want you to really home in on sound. We're
going to focus completely on sound. You
can hear the sound of my voice. You
can hear my words. The gaps between them.
You may be able to hear some humming somewhere in the background in your house.
Perhaps you're out in nature and you can hear something.
Don't miss a single sound.
Really narrow down each single sound. The beginning, the middle, the end. But
don't do anything with the sound. Just allow it to happen.
And what this focus meditation does is just trains the mind to do one thing.
Just listen.
Just listen.
And the mind will want to
wander and go off into the story and do other things. And just bring it back. And the more you
do it, the more it will learn to focus. The
wandering is normal. That's perfectly normal. It happens all the time. If your mind didn't try to wander and do
something else, I would be a bit concerned.
And now open your awareness. Instead of really focusing on the sound, just allow the sound to come in.
Allow your awareness of your breath at the same time.
Open the awareness to the temperature of the room you're in.
And you're just allowing more and more to come in. And you're allowing this moment to be exactly what it
is. You're not changing or doing anything with it.
You're neither enjoying it, but you're not loathing it either. It's one of those things that you're just accepting.
And you notice you can be aware of your breath.
You can be aware of your thoughts
You can be aware of the taste in your mouth.
But you're not any of those. You're not the taste in your mouth. You're not your thoughts. You're not your
breath anymore and you are your feelings.
Because if you were any of them, you couldn't be aware of them.
And now we'll move on to intention intention So in a meditation with intention, we have something we'd like
to manifest or bring to our... Feelings or to the day ahead. So in the morning
we might have the intention of being grateful. Finding a couple of things to be grateful for. And we
can do that now. Think of something to be grateful for. Something in your life that if you woke up
tomorrow and it wasn't there, you would miss it.
Then imagine bringing that back into your life now. What it's like to have it.
And the feeling of joy in your body and the warmth.
And think of something else that if you lost it today and
it's not there, what does it feel like not to have it?
It could be something big like your house or your car or it could be just your pillow.
And again, imagine what it's like to have your pillow back or your house or your car.
And another way we can use intention is to hold an intention for the day. So maybe you've got a
hard day ahead of you where you might have to go to work or...
You've got the kids all day because they're off school. Whatever the reason for your hard day, you might say
an affirmation to. I've
got a tough day ahead, but I've got this.
I'm strong and I can get through today.
And just having a mantra like that or an affirmation like that sets the intention of belief.
And then we can do the loving kindness. May I be loved. And imagine what that feels like to be
loved completely.
May I be happy.
May I be well.
Then we go the other way around. May I be well.
May I be happy. And
finally, we'll end the intention with may I be loved.
And just bring your awareness back to your breath and
that's a real fast tour of the three different types.
Focusing singly on something or just opening your awareness to be curious to this moment
or setting an intention.
And it doesn't matter what you choose to do, when you choose to do it. You could pull up to
the traffic lights and you could go, just what can I hear?
You could be in a queue and just say, may I be loved? May I be happy? May I get
to the front of the queue? We can always set that intention as well.
So if you just shake your arms and open your eyes and if you had them closed and just become
aware of the room you're in and... I just want to thank you for listening to this podcast because I
know it's a bit different on Inner Peace Meditations. They're literally just meditations to help you with something
in particular. And Stillness in the Storms is a podcast that it's just me talking about different things
and how to get a little more inner peace when we need it most. And by uploading this podcast
to both podcasts Or this podcast episode to both podcasts.
Hopefully some people from, or if you've listened to one and not the other, you might cross over and listen
to the other. But I just wanted to let you know that you can meditate. Even with the most busiest,
craziest minds, you can meditate. And not one time did I try to get you to quiet in your mind.
Not one time did I try to get you to stop your thoughts. It's just not going to happen.
It's not going to happen.
So thank you. I'm Steven Webb and thank you for listening. Thank you for being part of this journey. And
I don't know if I'll do another podcast that jumps over both of them, but maybe I will. You can
contact me on StevenWebb.uk. Just go to that website there. You can support the podcast. You can see other links.
You can read my blogs. And again, you can contact me. Thank you. And I love you.
