Seven Meditation Methods for Calm and Focus

1.Observe Your Breath

Breath has always played an important role in meditation; it’s a real, ongoing phenomenon in life. Observation allows us to return to the present, feel life, and calm our minds. In moments of emotional upheaval, breath can be a safe haven. By observing your breath, you find a place of safety amidst the storm.

• Method: You can observe the sensation of air entering and exiting through your nostrils, or the rising and falling of your abdomen. If you have difficulty concentrating, you can silently say “in” as you inhale and “out” as you exhale. Don’t adjust your breathing, simply observe it naturally.

2.Feel Your Body

Meditation practice requires a foundation in bodily sensations and experiences. In psychological counseling, to prevent a person’s thoughts from wandering, I often ask clients to check in with their bodily sensations before telling me what they feel.

Feeling the body can enhance your sense of awareness and also reveal an important truth: physical sensations often drive our thoughts, words, and actions. If you think the world is unsafe, it’s because you feel unsafe, not because the thought itself is true.

• Method: Take moments during the day to feel your body—before sleep, upon waking, or between tasks. Gently connect with your body’s sensations. Whether the feelings are pleasant or uncomfortable, give them space to exist.

3.Observe Your Thoughts

The most direct benefit of observing your thoughts is realizing that your thoughts are not you. Thoughts are just thoughts, not lasting worries.

“I am stupid” and “I observe that I’m thinking I am stupid” may seem similar, but recognizing the latter gives us more freedom. We can’t directly track thoughts, but by observing our breath, we can become aware of their appearance.

4.Listen to Sounds

Another effective form of meditation is listening to the sounds around you without analyzing or judging them—simply listen. Whether it’s birds chirping or construction noise, it’s all just air vibrating. Listen to them with equal attention.

As you listen, you may hear the silence behind the sounds, a deep stillness—hearing the “great sound of silence” or emptiness.

5.Give Emotions Space

It’s easy to acknowledge positive emotions, but when we’re in pain, it becomes difficult to recognize and give space to those feelings. Meditation helps challenge our instincts through continuous practice.

Avoiding, ignoring, or suppressing negative emotions might seem effective temporarily, but those emotions often return, sometimes in more harmful ways.

In meditation, give space to all emotions. Acknowledge them, coexist with them, and expand your awareness so that the emotion becomes just one part of your experience, not the entirety of your consciousness.

6.Manage Attention

The external world—through phones, TV, and advertisements—is constantly trying to capture our attention. As we lose control over our attention, we lose connection with ourselves and our ability to manage our happiness, leading to feelings of anxiety, depression, and even a loss of life’s meaning.

There are many ways to practice managing attention, such as refraining from checking your phone or turning on the TV when you’re tempted and instead focusing on your breath. Training your attention is a long-term process, involving cycles of distraction and refocusing, but through continuous practice, you can achieve more mental freedom.

7.Simply Exist

Give yourself moments of just being—doing nothing, with no goal or expectation. Simply exist and be present with yourself. At first, this might feel uncomfortable or unfamiliar because we’re used to focusing on something tangible. However, in time, you may discover the magic in just being. You might realize that the things you’ve been chasing, like peace, joy, and happiness, are already within you.