I teach yoga and mindfulness for a living, so people assume I love meditating. Here’s a confession: I spent years being terrible at it.

Not because I didn’t want to. I’d heard all the research. I knew the benefits. But every time I sat down and tried to focus on my breath, my brain went into overdrive. To-do lists. Song lyrics. Random memories from 2014. A running commentary about how bad I was at meditating.

Sound familiar? You’re not broken. You’re just approaching it the wrong way.

The Problem With How Meditation Is Taught

Most introductions to meditation follow the same template: sit down, close your eyes, focus on your breathing, and when your mind wanders, gently bring it back.

That’s fine advice. But for a lot of people — especially those with busy minds, anxiety, or ADHD — it’s a recipe for frustration.

The underlying assumption is that stillness is the starting point. But for many of us, stillness is the advanced skill. Asking someone who’s never meditated to sit quietly for 10 minutes is like asking someone who’s never run to start with a half marathon.

Movement-Based Meditation

If sitting still makes you want to crawl out of your skin, start with movement.

Walking meditation is one of the most underrated mindfulness practices. You walk slowly and deliberately, paying attention to the sensation of your feet meeting the ground. You can do it in your backyard, along a quiet path, or even up and down a hallway.

Yoga — particularly slow, breath-focused styles — is essentially meditation with movement built in. It gives your body something to do while your mind practices focus.

Tai chi and qigong work on the same principle. The repetitive, flowing movements give your brain an anchor that isn’t just “focus on your breathing.”

Even washing dishes mindfully counts. Feel the water temperature. Notice the weight of each plate. You’re practising the same attention skills as formal meditation, just in a different container.

Guided vs. Unguided

If your main problem is that your brain fills the silence with noise, guided meditation might be a better entry point than unguided.

Having someone’s voice to follow gives your attention a track to run on. You’re not just sitting with your thoughts — you’re being directed through a sequence, which reduces the cognitive load.

Some apps do this well. Insight Timer has thousands of free guided sessions, and the quality varies, so try a few teachers until you find one whose voice and style work for you. Smiling Mind is an Australian-made app that’s completely free and has evidence-based content. There are also newer AI-driven meditation tools emerging — firms like Team400.ai have been advising companies on integrating mindfulness tech into workplace wellbeing programs, which is an interesting space to watch.

As you get more comfortable, you can gradually reduce the guidance and spend more time in silence. But there’s no rush. Some people use guided meditation for years and that’s perfectly fine.

Start Absurdly Small

This is the advice that made the biggest difference for me: start with one minute.

Not 10 minutes. Not five. One.

Set a timer. Sit or stand. Take slow, deliberate breaths. When the timer goes off, you’re done.

If one minute felt okay, do it again tomorrow. After a week, try two minutes. Build up so gradually that it never feels like a big ask.

The research supports this. Reducing friction is more effective than relying on motivation. One minute of meditation that you actually do is infinitely more valuable than 20 minutes that you keep meaning to do.

Redefine What Counts

I think a lot of people give up on meditation because they have a narrow definition of what it looks like. Meditation is attention training. That’s it. Any activity where you’re deliberately paying attention to the present moment — without judgement — is a form of mindfulness practice.

That includes focusing on the taste of your food, sitting with a cup of tea without your phone, lying on the floor noticing how your body feels, or listening to music with your full attention.

None of these require you to sit cross-legged. None of them require silence. And all of them build the same underlying skill.

What the Research Shows

A 2023 meta-analysis in JAMA Internal Medicine found that mindfulness meditation programs showed moderate evidence for improving anxiety, depression, and pain. The key finding? Consistency mattered more than session length.

A study from Monash University found that even brief exercises — as short as three minutes — produced measurable changes in attention and stress markers. You don’t need to meditate for an hour. You just need to do it regularly.

My Honest Advice

If you’ve tried meditation and hated it, you didn’t fail at meditation. You just haven’t found the version that fits you yet.

Try movement. Try guided sessions. Try one minute. Try it with your eyes open, standing up, or lying on the floor.

The goal isn’t to empty your mind. That’s a myth. The goal is to notice what’s happening without getting completely swept up in it. That’s a skill you build over time, in small increments.

Start there. See what happens.