how to actually meditate (without making it complicated)

how to actually meditate (without making it complicated)

7 practical techniques for people who want to meditate but have absolutely no idea what they’re supposed to be doing

ayushi thakkar

Oct 20, 2026

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i was one of those people who thought i was terrible at meditating until i started attending yin yoga classes few months ago with

kay mcgeer

(she’s the best). she’d guide us through a few minutes of meditation, and for the first time, it actually felt doable. eventually, i found myself using our class’ practice at home which ended up helping my deep challenges with falling asleep and reduced my vivid nightmares.

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but meditation has a terrible beginner experience when you have no guidance on how to start. the advice usually begins with something along the lines of

sit comfortably and clear your mind

, which sounds perfectly easy to start with until you’ve been sitting with your eyes closed for eleven seconds and are thinking about an email you forgot to answer. then comes the uncertainty about whether you’re breathing correctly or sitting correctly, followed by the doubts on how everybody else has somehow acquired a special ability to concentrate that you missed out on.

it doesn’t help that meditation has accumulated an entire vocabulary of techniques and philosophies that can make sitting in a chair feel like an advanced intellectual pursuit. but the basic practice is fairly straightforward. you give your attention something to rest on, notice when your mind wanders and bring it back. that return is an important part of the exercise, so getting distracted twenty times doesn’t mean you’ve failed twenty times.

research suggests that mindfulness meditation can help with stress and symptoms of anxiety, although the evidence varies across different practices and studies. i’m more interested in its everyday usefulness: learning to notice when my thoughts have wandered off into some completely unnecessary scenario and becoming a little better at deciding whether to follow them.

the interesting part is that meditation doesn’t have to look the same for everybody. depending on whether you’re feeling restless or mentally exhausted, there are several ways to practise it:

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