When I was studying for my Meditation Teaching Certification I came across a wonderful book as part of my studies called Mindfulness in Plain English by Bhante Gunaratana. If you’re interested in Meditation and Mindfulness and you haven’t read this book yet I highly recommend it.

One of the sections covered in the book is about the attitudes you should bring to each practice of meditation in order to be successful. But I reckon these are great attitudes to bring to everything!

Picking your meditation place is very important. And the most important thing to consider when selecting your meditation space is to ensure you won’t be disturbed or distracted.

Once you’re a seasoned meditator you will find you’re able to meditate anywhere you want, whenever you want.

However, if you’re just starting out, you probably need a little help getting the right environment with minimal noise and distractions, and perhaps an inviting and relaxing atmosphere.

Sometimes, despite your best efforts and intentions, you find you just can’t stay awake for the duration of your meditation.

Falling asleep during meditation is quite common, especially for beginners. When first practising meditation, while trying to achieve that balance between focussed attention and relaxation, it is easy to drift too far in one direction or the other.

When you start a meditation practice, it can take a while until it becomes a habit. Until it feels weird NOT to meditate.

While working to make this a daily habit, there are a number of tips you can use to help keep you on track.

Do you sometimes set out with the best of intentions to meditate? You decide you're going to do it, you actually sit down to do it, you take a deep breath and...

Disaster.

Maybe you can't stop fidgeting, or your mind is racing all over the place. You wonder why, this worked fine yesterday. What is so different about today?

The idea that meditation is like training a puppy came from Jack Kornfield, a world-renowned meditation teacher. He wrote:

"Meditation is very much like training a puppy. You put the puppy down and say, "Stay." Does the puppy listen? It gets up and it runs away. You sit the puppy back down again. "Stay." And the puppy runs away over and over again.