Here's a simple, but highly effective meditation I ran across while surfing the web. The URL of the website I found it on escapes me (I should have bookmarked it---maybe it will appear to me during a meditation :), but as soon as I find it I'll give credit where credit is due.
The meditation is a counting meditation. All you do is sit quietly and count from 1 to 10 as you breathe. Think 1 as you inhale, 2 as you exahale, 3 as you inhale, 4 as you exhale, etc. Do this until you reach 10 and then reverse and count back down to 1. Now repeat. Sounds simple, no? Umm....not exactly. The catch is that you keep the focus solely on your breathing for a whole 10 minutes. Ha!
Personally, my flabby, untrained mind makes it all of from 1 to 10 and back twice before I become distracted by a myriad of other thoughts (when this happens, just shift the focus back to counting and breating to get yourself back on track). I think this meditation seems like an excellent way to observe the thoughts of the beginner's mind, as well as a good tool for teaching it to stay focused. If you decide to try it, I would recommend using a 10 minute timer (cell phone alarm) to bring yourself out of the meditation. Otherwise, you'll start entertaining thoughts like, "How much longer?" or "Has it been 10 minutes yet?" There will be plenty of other thoughts to distract you anyway, believe me ;)
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