There are so many different objects of focus that can be used during meditation, and for those who are just starting out, it can really send your head spinning! This uncertainty is probably the last thing you need at the start of your journey. So how do you know which object of focus to use?
The best objects of focus are those that suit you, that are always available and those that can be easily observed in almost any situation. The breath, the mind and the body’s sensations along with the physical senses provide excellent foundations for focus during meditation practice.
To master your meditation practice, you must learn how to observe the deep and vast ocean that is yourself. These objects of focus provide the diving board through which to do this. To understand why, we first need to take a quick look at some of the different types of meditation practices.
The Different Types of Meditation
There are a variety of different types of meditation that use different objects of focus. The majority of these are outlined below.
| Technique | Focus | Medium |
| Anapana, Samatha, Vipassana (insight), any body scan | The breath, the body (feeling physical sensations) and the mind | Feeling, breath, mind |
| Mindfulness, Zazen | All the physical senses including the mind | Feeling, breath, mind |
| Mantra, Transcendental Meditation | Sound, word or phrase | Sound |
| Loving-kindness, visualisations | Visualisation | Feeling, sight |
| Kundalini | Chakras – visualisation and mantra | Feeling, sight, sound |
| Third eye | Feeling the third eye area | Feeling, sight, sound, breath |
| Trataka. | Gazing at any object (e.g. candle flame) | Sight |
| Yoga Nidra | Physical senses, visualisation | Feeling |
| Kinhin (walking meditation) | Individual steps – alongside the breath, body, and physical sensations | Feeling, breath |
You might notice that there is a pattern – most types of meditation involve this feeling sense, to which the breath and mind is also closely related. This is your ability to know what is happening according to the sensations you are experiencing.
So we are going to focus on those that involve the breath, the mind, the body’s sensations, and the physical senses. Meditation is the process of self-observation – this is exactly what we are doing with these objects – observing ourselves. These objects also fulfil our definition of a useful object of focus:
- The vast majority of people find these objects the easiest and most effective method of meditation;
- They are always available to you, no matter your situation or where you go (you cannot switch off your breath or the physical sensations you feel); and
- Lastly, it is evident that by using these objects we are, in fact, covering most the focal points of the majority of different meditation techniques.
The breath, the mind, the body and the physical senses are at the core of a number of practices including mindfulness, Anapana, Samatha, Vipassana and Zazen meditation. Each of these practices stem from the same ancient texts and are the most common form of meditation we see in the West and for good reason – they’re simple, powerful, and the majority of scientific evidence around the benefits of meditation revolve around the practice of these techniques.
What Do You Do During Meditation?
So these techniques, and in fact most types of meditation, revolve around this concept of being in the present moment, in the here and now, with a balanced and accepting attitude. So at all times, you are training yourself to focus on the reality of now. The only thing that essentially differs between techniques is the medium through which you bring yourself into the present moment.
We have our five physical senses, in addition to our mind, through which we experience the world around us by detecting internal and external inputs:
- Eyes – registers sight;
- Tongue – registers taste;
- Nose – registers smell;
- Ears – registers sounds;
- Feeling – detects the physical sensation of touch, in addition to pain and pleasure; and
- Mind – registers and interprets all the senses in addition to thoughts, feelings and emotions.
We use these senses to alert us to what’s happening now – so these are our doorway to the present moment. During meditation we can focus on anything we experience through these senses, including what’s happening in the mind.
So while you are meditating, you can reach the present moment by focusing on what is happening with regards to:
- The breath – is the breath coming in, or going out?
- The body and the senses – what are you feeling right now?
- The mind – what is the mental state of the mind right now?
Let’s go through each of these in turn.
The Breath
There are many more components to the process of breathing than we realise. As we breathe, our whole body moves, all our organs get pushed around, our blood fills with oxygenated cells, and at the same time, numerous toxins get expelled from our body. By observing the process of breathing, we effectively observe the course of life.
The breath is an excellent candidate as an object of meditation and has been used traditionally for thousands of years. You can only breathe in this moment – so it is a perfect indicator of the present moment. In addition to this:
- It is always with us;
- It is something easy to notice;
- It is a universal object of meditation; and
- It is connected to both mind and body.
You can read more about these benefits in this post here.
Focusing on the breath during meditation can be done in a number of ways. You can practice all of them and choose whichever suits you most:
- Be aware if the breath is coming in or going out – this is the most fundamental level of being aware of the breath.
- Be aware of the length of the breath – if it long or short, even if it is deep or shallow.
- Notice the space, or pause, between each in breath and out breath.
- Be aware of how the breath feels at different parts of the body in terms of the physical sensations and changes it produces – this can include the belly, ribs, chest, shoulders, or even in the area of the nostrils.
- Be aware of the sensation of passage of air through the nostrils
- Notice whether the breath is passing just through the left nostril or the right nostril, or even both at the same time.
- Notice the cool air coming in, and the warm air going out.
Sometimes, due to the nature of our minds, it can difficult to focus on the breath for sustained periods. If it helps you can count your breaths to help improve your focus – counting 1 on the inhalation and 2 on the exhalation. Count to 10 then start again at one. However, try not to do this for more than a few minutes as you don’t want to become dependent on it. You want your mind to naturally come to a place a rest on your breathing. After some practice, it will learn to. As a beginner, counting can help stabilise the mind.
The Body and the Senses
What we perceive through our senses and the physical sensations we experience on the body and are another focal road we can take in meditation.
If you observe yourself very closely, you will notice that at every moment you are experiencing some sensation somewhere on your body. You may also notice that in response to a sound, smell, taste or visual input, a sensation also occurs somewhere on the body depending on how the mind interprets this input. The sensations will be either pleasant, unpleasant or neutral, being an indicator that something is happening or changing. This makes the physical sensations experienced on the body a great opening to the reality of the present moment.
Focusing on the body is usually done via a body scan – scanning your awareness through your body in a systematic way, feeling all the physical sensations you notice along the way.
For example, you can at the top of the head, experiencing any physical bodily sensations that you feel in this area. It can be any type of sensation at all. You might feel tingling, itching, heat, heaviness, lightness, pressure, pain, tension or even nothing at all – it doesn’t really matter what you feel, even if you feel nothing at all. Just note what is happening (or not) in that part of the body and move on.
Move your attention through the rest of your scalp and then through the forehead, the eyes, the area around the eyes, the ears, the nose, the cheeks, the lips, the jaw and keeping moving through the rest of your body in whichever order suits you best. Just be aware and observe all the different sensations that appear on each part of the body. Keep scanning throughout, around 2-3 inches at a time, and don’t linger in any one area for too long. Once you have noticed a sensation on a part of the body, move on to the next part. Again, if there is no sensation, or the area just feel ‘hazy’, just stay there in that spot for several seconds and move on. It doesn’t matter at all.
As you practice, thoughts will arise – this is completely natural. Just let them be and bring your attention back to your body each time you notice your mind has wandered away to a thought. Never try to stop your thoughts. Just keep practicing bringing your attention back without any worry or agitation at all. This is the heart of the practice.
The Mind
Everything we experience in our lives is filtered through the mind. The exact same event, experienced through two different mental lenses (say a happy and angry lens), can be felt completely differently. These are our reactions to how we perceive our internal and external inputs. By focusing on our mind, we are observing our present reactions to what we are feeling in that moment.
As you practice more, you will notice that the mind and body are intimately connected. Most of the time, the mind is reacting to how we are feeling in that moment. Whenever the mind recognises an input, usually from a ‘feeling’ that you have, you will then notice that there is an impulse to act. This impulse is either a desire to move towards or away from something. Most of the actions that we take in our lives are simply a reaction to the sensations we are feeling in our body at that time. So when we observe the mind, we also observe the body, and when we observe the body, we also observe the mind.
We can focus on the mind by observing all the individual changing states of mind, such as desire, anger, sadness, distraction, clarity, dullness or even blissfulness. The main aim here is to simply ask ourselves: “How is the mind?”. Usually these mental states will be accompanied by related physical sensations on the body.
If there is a constant barrage of thoughts, we can simply note that the mind is thinking. Just sit back with awareness and watch where the mind goes next. We carefully and diligently observe how the mind continuously reacts to stimuli, whether internal or external. We observe if these mental reactions are simply in response to some physical feeling we have at the time.
In the case of thinking, we observe how the thinking might be in response to a feeling of stress. Maybe there is an intention to get up and quit your meditation. In focusing on the mind, we just observe how all the thoughts, impulses, intentions, cravings and aversions come and go.
We can do this on its own, by following everywhere the mind decides to go next, or we can do this while also using another object such as the breath as an anchor. We anchor ourselves in the present moment by focusing on the breath, whilst noting every time a mental object arises in the mind. We can also focus on the physical sensations we experience on the body while also being aware of our mental intentions.
It may be clear by now that each of these techniques and objects of focus are intimately connected. This is where the next practice – open awareness, although sometimes difficult to practice – excels.
Open Awareness Meditation
In open awareness meditation, we simply practice staying focused on whichever object comes into our awareness next. This could be a sound, a smell, a thought, or a feeling. Similar to observing the mind, in this meditation we simply observe where ever the mind goes to next, and keep this as our focus. This could be the sound of a dog barking, followed by an intention to get up and yell at the dog, followed by pain in the back, followed by the smell of the neighbours cooking, followed by a thought about what to eat for dinner, followed by an intention to get up and start cooking.
In this practice we let go of all control of the mind. Let it do whatever it wants – just watch what happens, where it goes. You can even focus on the space between whatever the mind cognises next. This practice is an amalgamation of all the other techniques.
It can, however, be difficult to practice sometimes as it requires a fairly stable mind. Once you have gotten fairly established in using the breath and body as object of focus, you can give this one a try.
What Should I Think During Meditation?
The only thing you should be thinking during your meditation, is reminding yourself to come back to the reality of your present moment – whether that be the breath, the body or the reality of the mind. It is about being fully in the experience, and not thinking about it.
Having said that, some thoughts can help to provide your mind clear direction, and act as reminders for the focus of your practice. As such, you can remind yourself at varying intervals of something along the following lines:
- I am simply observing what is currently happening in my experience, with an objective and accepting attitude. This clip using the ‘Blue Sky’ analogy is always a great example of this approach.
- I accept my current experience, and myself, exactly as I am.
What to do About Thoughts While Meditating
Never try to suppress thoughts while you meditate – this will only increase their frequency. Practice focusing on each individual in breath and out breath if you are experiencing an influx of thoughts. Every time the mind wanders, gently and kindly bring your attention back to the breath.
Thoughts will usually naturally subside if you keep up this practice with patience and persistence. When you notice your mind has wandered off with a thought, it can sometimes help just to note to yourself ‘thinking, thinking’, and then gently coming back to the breath each time.
What Should You Not Do While Meditating?
The only thing you should not do during meditation run away from your problems by rejecting the reality of your present experience. However you feel, whether sad, angry, excited, ashamed, or even just tired, just accept yourself exactly as you are.
By doing this, we start untying the knots and tensions in our body and mind. It is the opposite to what we usually do – running away from our problems by distracting or numbing ourselves through whatever diversion we can find, whether it be food, shopping, alcohol, sex or getting lost in our screens. Meditation finally gives us the chance to let go of our baggage. If you’d like to find out more about this process you can read my post on the Neuroscience of How and Why Meditation Works.
Sometimes I also get asked if you should or should not listen to audio whilst meditating…
What to Listen to While Meditating
As a beginner, the best thing you can do is listen to guided meditations that will gently lead you through your meditations. This is great for learning the fundamentals of meditation, in addition to all the different techniques which you can practice.
In general, I would advise not to listen to background sounds if you don’t have to. If you want to simply relax in that moment, then this is totally ok. However, if you want to train your mind to be balanced and calm in any situation, just try to learn to meditate in a nice, quiet place, without the need for external aid. After all, you won’t always have these beautiful sounds in the background to stay calm, especially in the middle of a tough situation. You want to learn to be calm in all situations!
The same could also be said for guided meditations. Once you get some experience with meditation – I would say after about 6 months or so depending on your progress – start throwing in some ‘silent’ meditations, where you only depend on yourself. Again, you’re not always going to have a guide whispering in your ear to take some deep breaths and relax whenever you start getting frustrated or stress.
If you would like to listen to some guided meditations, you can always listen to some on my channel here.