Want to get a meditation practice going? See how simple it can be to start with this transcribed excerpt from Jon Kabat-Zinn's Mindfulness Meditation in Everyday Life.
So why don’t we take a few minutes and just sit. For those of you who are entirely new to this, it is no different from the raisin, only now there is no raisin; it is just your body sitting here. So see if you can sit in a position that embodies dignity, whatever that means for you. And then if you feel comfortable with it, it is fine if you to close your eyes, but it is fine also if you do not. I usually recommend that you try to establish that dignified posture by bringing attention to the spine and the head and see if you cannot get a sense of head, neck, and shoulders being in some way aligned rather than slumped and doing something comfortable with the hands.
Then without messing with it at all by interfering with it or thinking that you can make it happen better, notice that right through the entire evening that we have been sitting here, there has been breathing going on between your body and the outside world. So now in this moment, tuning into the breath in much the same way and much the same spirit as you were tuning into the raisin and the aspect of that experience with the raisin, just bringing full care and attention to the feeling of the breath moving as it comes into your body and the feeling of the breath as it changes direction and leaves the body, moment by moment, with no ulterior motive, no place you are trying to get to, no feeling state that is more desirable than any other, but to simply see if you can sustain moment to moment at tending feeling of the breath moving in your body without pushing it or pulling it.
