How can I overcome resistance to meditation?

Everyone has times when they might not want to meditate and it's hard to create new habits and maintain them. It might not be beneficial to make yourself sit and meditate if you're feeling lots of resistance toward it. There are other, equally useful ways to work on developing mindfulness that could be better in that moment than strictly traditional seated meditation.

What you'll want to do is support your interests and strengths and build mindfulness by bringing it to those areas. If, for example, walking is something you enjoy, you can take time in your day to do some walking meditation practice. While you're walking you can observe the movements of your body. Allow yourself to look around and notice the environment around you as you move along. Hear the ambient sounds as you walk. Mindfulness is a relatively simple practice of being aware of what's happening in the moment, so if while you're walking you notice that you start to think of something, just note it as thinking and bring your attention back to your observations of the present moment.

You could do this simple practice while you wash the dishes, while you eat, or while standing in line. There are lots of opportunities for you to build your meditation practice in a way that doesn't require you to push through the resistance you might be having when you think about sitting in meditation. Mix it up, explore and see what happens.

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