The One-Breath Meditation
I understand how hard it is to believe in meditation. It doesn’t offer the kind of immediate, obvious payoff that physical exercise does. When you run on a treadmill for 35 minutes, you know you’re burning calories. You sweat, your heart pounds, your muscles ache, you can feel it. It’s real, it’s measurable.
But with meditation, you sit still and nothing seems to happen. No scoreboard, no burn, no finish line. In the beginning, it can feel like wandering aimlessly through a desert, no clear path, no sense of direction. Where am I? Where am I going? Even when we pick up a book on meditation or give it a shot, we carry that doubt in the background. We’re resistant, skeptical, disengaged. So we barely do it. And when we do, we’re distracted.
But here’s the thing: the fact that you’re trying at all puts you in rare company. Even if you're doubtful, even if you don’t know what meditation is supposed to give you, you showed up. That alone is something extraordinary. I was exactly the same. And honestly, you never really “graduate” from meditation. You just move to the next stage of it. Every time you try something new, the resistance returns. That’s how the mind works. It’s part of the machine. It questions, it doubts, it pulls you away.
So start with something simple. Just take one deep breath. Close your eyes. Inhale slowly, and at the top of that breath, think of something big, the absolute, the divine, or just how temporary this whole life is. Then exhale and smile, even laugh a little. Laugh at how serious everything feels, how absurd it all can be. Try to find one small thing to feel grateful for in that breath.
That’s it. That’s one-breath meditation. And it’s already light-years ahead of doing nothing.