 Hello, love bugs and welcome back to my YouTube channel. If you're new here, I'm Sarah and I help teach people how to find inner happiness through fitness and spirituality. And today we're going to talk about meditation for beginners because I too am a beginner and I have been on this meditation journey for about a year and a half and it has been very frustrating. So I want to share with you guys a few tips and tricks that can help you with your meditation journey so that you can get as many benefits out of it as possible. So the biggest thing for me is and I'm sure so many of you that are new to meditating can relate is what am I doing this right? Should my eyes be open or closed? What the hell do they mean by letting your thoughts float by? Am I supposed to sit up? Am I supposed to lay down? Are my eyes supposed to be open? Are they supposed to be closed? What should I be wearing? Should I have music on? Should I be in dead silence? Should I stare at a dot? Should I stare at a candle? Should I stare at the wall? Should it be silent? Should I have meditation music on? All of these things I have struggled with over and over and over again. So believe me when I tell you I get it. I understand the frustration. I understand the questioning and wondering like am I doing this right? I don't get what everyone's talking about because you hear it all the time. Meditation, meditation, meditate, meditate. So good for you. And in this video I'm not going to go over the benefits of meditation. Maybe we'll see that for another video. Let me know in the comments below if you want me to make a video on that. But this is just going to be more of a general how to really get into it and really start meditating so that you can continue to do it without getting so frustrated like me. Like I said, if I had watched a video like this, then I think I would have had more of a step by step to follow. So my first tip is to take the pressure off of yourself. I've read about people comparing this to working out, which you know, on this channel. And it's kind of like someone saying who doesn't work out saying, well, I'm not going to go to the gym because I'm not strong, or I'm not going to go to the gym because I can't lift 400 pounds. When we all know that you have to build the muscle, you have to put the time in, you have to build up your muscle and your strength and continue to do it over and over again. And meditation is the same way. Just think of it as like working out for your mind. You're not just going to go into it and be a meditative rock star because that was something that I was really frustrated with. Like I just wanted to rush to the end. I wanted to be good at it. I wanted to understand it. I wanted to know what was right and what was wrong and what worked for me. And it's taken me a year and a half to finally settle in and understand what does work for me. What works for me might not work for you. I don't know. So the second thing I want you to understand is that there are so many types of meditation and I don't even know what they all are. But there's, you know, I have a friend who can sit down and stare at a wall, eyes open for an hour, dead silent and meditate. I can't do that for a minute. So I have learned that I really like guided meditations and it's, as far as timing, I started with three minutes and then I went to five and then I went to eight. And now I'm up to around 20 and I can sometimes do 25, but there are days when I'll go back and do a five minute or I'll go back and do an eight minute meditation. There's sometimes where I want, I think I'm in the mood to do a 20 minute meditation and halfway through I stop and I stopped beating myself up for that and you need to stop beating yourself up for not being able to do the hour long or Jesus, there's some people that do day long meditations. I don't know if I'll ever get there, but that's okay. I feel like the best way to explain how to start meditating is to take baby steps. It is to experiment. There's, like I said, guided meditations where a voice will walk you through the meditation. That is what I stick to. I love those. If you just want to sit in silence or if you want to put on meditation music and let the meditation take you on a journey, you can do that. You can do yoga meditation. You can do TM meditation, which is essentially repeating a sound over and over again so that your mind doesn't really drift into your thoughts. You can do chakra meditation. You can do intentional meditation, which I really like to do that and I kind of combine intentional with the guided. So say, for example, I did a meditation last week where I wanted to hear from the Holy Spirit. So I will literally just go on YouTube and type in 10 minute guided meditation to connect with Holy Spirit or connect with God or connect with your higher self or connect with your spirit guides, whatever you're looking to do. You can do telepathic messaging meditations, which is something I also like to do where I will set an intention to send a loving or healing message to someone that I love and do a guided meditation for that. There are so many different ways you can do it and you're not going to get it right the first time. You're probably not going to get it right the second or third time either, but I'm here to tell you that it's finally starting to click with me. Even yesterday I meditated twice and I've never done that before. I did a five minute in the morning after my workout and I did a 15 minute at night before bed and I find that it's when I want to do it the least. That's when I needed the most. There's never been a time where I've come out of a meditation except when I allow myself to get frustrated with it that I haven't felt good or I haven't felt better than I did going into the meditation. If you're going through your day and you're feeling frustrated or you're feeling annoyed or angry or just depressed, I know the last thing you want to do is sit down and meditate, but I promise you and I can't even imagine someone getting more frustrated and annoyed with meditation than I have over the past year and a half. But it's amazing. It's totally worth it to experiment with all of these different kinds and just give yourself that grace and allow yourself to understand that like you're not going to be an Olympic lifter. You're not going to be an Olympic meditator. The first 10 times you do it, it's going to take practice. It's going to take time. And I will tell you guys that over the past year and a half that I've been trying to get into this practice, I would do it for a week straight, like every day. And then I wouldn't do it for a month and then I'd do it another day and then I wouldn't do it for three days and I'd do it for like and I would get frustrated like I'm going to meditate every day and then I would and then I get mad at myself. Oh, meditating is not for me. I'm going to let you in on a little secret. Meditating is for everyone. Adults, teenagers, children, men, women. If you're a believer, if you're religious, if you're non-religious, if you're an atheist, like no matter what you identify as, meditation is so good for the mind. It's so good for the soul. And most importantly, it is the best thing you can do to connect with yourself, to slow down in this hustle and bustle society that we live in and with how ricking insane the world is today. I mean, turn on the news or social media or anything, any conversation people have when you're walking down the street or in a grocery store. And I feel like we're just the society of anxiety. Oh, rap name. Society of an anxiety. But we are, we are. And how else do we get out of the anxiety except to slow down? Go inwards, meditate, pray, journal, walk in nature. All of these things that allow us to slow down and be human. And we weren't put on this earth to just work and hustle all day, every day. We were put here to raise the vibration, to be happy, to love and be loved and to enjoy life. And I'm telling you that meditation is a straight line to do that. I felt kind of weird making a video on meditation because I myself feel so new at it, even though I've been in and out for the past year and a half. But as I said to you guys when I restarted this channel about a year ago, I want to bring you along this journey with me. And I want to help you as I'm learning to help myself on this very insane spiritual roller coaster life that I'm on. So I hope you guys really enjoyed it. I hope that you will take the time to try some kind of meditation no matter what kind that is for you and experiment with it. Because at the end of the day, I wouldn't be getting on here. I wouldn't be taking the time to research and to make this video and to edit and to upload it and all those things. If I didn't think it would benefit you. So if you like this video, please let me know. Give it a thumbs up. If you didn't like it, let me know because I want to cater to you and what is helpful for you guys on this channel. So let me know either way. Let me know. Do you meditate? If you don't, why not? Are you going to try it? What type do you think you're going to try? I would just love to know because maybe you guys know of some type of meditation out there that I don't know of. So I love you guys so much. And don't forget, be limitlessly yourself.