I have never found the phrase clear your mind particularly helpful.
The second somebody tells me not to think, my brain seems to take it as an invitation to present every thought it has been saving since approximately 2004. Did I answer that email? What are we having for dinner tomorrow? Why did I say that strange thing in 2017? Should I clean the fridge?
Within thirty seconds I am no longer meditating. I am developing an administrative strategy.
Part of the problem is that meditation has acquired an image of somebody sitting perfectly still, eyes closed, apparently thinking about absolutely nothing. If that is what success looks like, most of us are going to conclude fairly quickly that we cannot do it.
Fortunately, that is not a particularly useful description of meditation.
The word covers a wide range of practices, but many involve giving attention to something specific, such as breathing, a sound, a physical sensation or what is happening in the present moment. Mindfulness practices usually add the idea of noticing what is happening without immediately judging it.
For the purposes of an evening in which you have no interest in becoming enlightened, I think we can make it even simpler.
Choose somewhere for your attention to rest.
Notice when it leaves.
Bring it back.
That is enough to begin.
YOUR MIND WANDERING IS NOT THE BIT YOU GOT WRONG
One of the quickest ways to make meditation unpleasant is to spend the entire time checking whether you are doing it correctly.
You sit down and almost immediately start monitoring yourself. Am I relaxed yet? Why am I thinking? Is my breathing too fast? How long has it been? Surely, I should feel calmer by now.
The problem is not that thoughts keep appearing. Brains are fairly committed to producing them.
Research into mindfulness and mind-wandering describes meditation as involving awareness of spontaneous thought alongside repeatedly redirecting attention, rather than achieving a permanent state in which thought disappears. Studies do suggest that longer periods of mindfulness practice can change patterns of mind-wandering, although the research uses very different methods and should not be reduced to the idea that good meditators simply stop thinking.
For us, the useful part happens much earlier than that.
You are listening to the rain and realise you have been mentally composing an email for the last forty seconds.
You noticed.
Come back to the rain.
Five minutes later you are thinking about something somebody said at work.
You notice again and come back.
Nothing has gone wrong. In fact, that moment of noticing is the only part you really need.
YOU DO NOT HAVE TO MAKE YOURSELF UNCOMFORTABLE
There is also no particular virtue in adopting a position you hate.
If sitting cross-legged makes your hips hurt, do not sit cross-legged. If closing your eyes makes you more aware of everything going on in your head, leave them open. If sitting completely still makes you want to climb the walls, move.
You can sit on the sofa, lie on the bed, lean against the kitchen counter or walk slowly around the garden. In the evening, I am particularly fond of lying down because I am not trying to prove anything to anybody. If I fall asleep, I am prepared to live with the consequences.
What matters more is choosing something that does not require constant effort.
For some people that will be breathing, but it does not have to be. You might notice the feeling of your back against the sofa, your feet on the floor, the weight of a blanket or the temperature of the air on your face. An external sound can work just as well: rain, a fan, traffic in the distance, the hum of the dishwasher or one layer of music.
You can also keep your eyes open and look at something. A candle flame works nicely in the evening because it changes constantly without demanding anything from you, but a plant, a mug or the light on the wall will do exactly the same job.
The object is not important.
It is somewhere to come back to.
YOU CAN DO IT WHILE YOU ARE ALREADY DOING SOMETHING
Formal meditation is not the only way to practise paying attention.
You can make tea without looking at your phone and notice the sound of the kettle, the warmth of the mug and what the drink tastes like. You can stand in the shower and pay attention to the water instead of mentally attending tomorrow's meeting. You can walk slowly outside and notice the feeling of each step without trying to turn it into exercise.
That is not identical to every formal meditation practice, and I do not want to pretend that centuries of contemplative traditions can be reduced to paying close attention while washing your face. It does, however, use a similar basic skill: noticing where your attention has gone and bringing it back to what is happening now.
For somebody who dislikes the idea of sitting down specifically to meditate, that may be a much easier doorway into it. You do not need another activity added to your evening if the evening already feels full. Use the one you are already doing.
TWO MINUTES IS PLENTY
The other problem with meditation is that we immediately turn it into a project. We decide that if two minutes might be useful, twenty must be better, preferably every evening, tracked on an app until an innocent experiment has become another streak we are frightened to break.
You do not need to do that.
Two minutes is enough to find out whether you like a particular way of paying attention. If it feels good and you want to continue, continue. If you get bored after ninety seconds, you have still spent ninety seconds doing something different with your attention.
There is no minimum amount required before the evening counts.
If you want to try it tonight, get comfortable wherever you already are and choose one thing you can easily hear, see or feel. You might notice the rain outside, the weight of your body against the chair or the movement of a candle flame.
Stay with it until your brain wanders somewhere else. At some point you will realise that it has. Bring your attention back, then repeat that whenever necessary until you have had enough.
You do not need to slow your breathing, force your body to relax or wait for a particular feeling to arrive. You may finish feeling calmer. You may simply finish knowing exactly what your dishwasher sounds like.
Both are acceptable outcomes.
IT IS ALSO FINE IF MEDITATION IS NOT RELAXING FOR YOU
This matters because meditation is so often presented as harmless relaxation that people can assume an uncomfortable reaction means they are doing it wrong.
For most people, meditation and mindfulness practices appear to carry relatively few risks, but negative experiences do occur. Reviews have reported experiences including increased anxiety, low mood and intrusive or distressing thoughts in a minority of participants, and the research into adverse effects is still less developed than the research into potential benefits.
So, if sitting quietly with your eyes closed makes you feel considerably worse, you do not need to push through because somebody on the internet told you meditation is good for you.
Open your eyes. Stand up. Put the light on. Choose something outside yourself to pay attention to instead or decide that meditation is not what you need this evening.
That is not failure either.
This is especially worth remembering because some relaxation practices can make people more aware of thoughts, memories or physical sensations they were not particularly interested in examining at nine o'clock on a Tuesday night.
The aim here is not to win against your own nervous system.
AND IT DOES NOT HAVE TO FIX YOUR SLEEP
Meditation is often recommended for sleep, and there is some evidence that mindfulness practices can improve sleep quality in certain groups. The overall evidence for treating insomnia with mindfulness alone is much less convincing, however, and major sleep guidelines have not considered it strong enough to recommend as a stand-alone insomnia treatment. Cognitive behavioural therapy for insomnia has much better evidence behind it.
I actually find that rather reassuring. You don’t need to meditate because you are trying to make yourself sleep. You can do it because spending two minutes listening to the rain feels nicer than spending those same two minutes thinking about tomorrow.
If sleep follows, lovely. If it does not, the two minutes were not wasted.
I THINK THAT IS THE VERSION I PREFER
I like meditation much more when it stops being something that is supposed to transform us.
You do not have to empty your mind, become exceptionally calm, sit in a special position or maintain a daily practice. You do not need to emerge from the experience feeling wiser than you did when you started.
Sometimes you can simply sit somewhere comfortably and give your attention one place to rest.
It wanders.
You notice.
You come back.
Then, whenever you have had enough, you carry on with your evening. That is meditation enough for tonight.