No matter what we’re involved with in our daily lives concentration is an extremely important skill. Each of us need to focus on so many things in our daily lives whether it’s work, study, prayer, meditation, exercise, staying mentally sharp, teaching, chores, etc…  Focusing and holding your concentration for various time periods is a must. Advanced practitioner of meditation also need to develop solid concentration skills for spending longer time periods to focus on their “mantras” (key words or phrases to help in spiritual/mental cleansing). 

The first exercise I teach is a counting meditation where we count backwards from 100 to 1 out loud in a slow rhythm maybe one count per second. We sit in a comfortable position preferably a half-lotus position with left foot under and the right foot on top with the sole pointing to the sky. Keeping our back straight, head straight we place our left palm over our right spaced about 1 inch apart and position out hands just below our navels. Sitting cross legged or in a chair is also acceptable if one’s not comfortable in the half lotus position.

As we count aloud we focus on each number in our mind and if we happen to make a mistake we start over. We make no exceptions to this rule because we’re taught never to cheat ourselves and in this we stay honest to our goals. No one will ever know if you cheat but anyone who doesn’t practice sincerely is only damaging themselves by cheating and we can’t cover that up, your soul always knows the truth.

Idealy this meditation should be done twice a day for a month to build up your ability to focus, since it’s a very short meditation it’s easy for novices to do. If you find your mind drift off or miss the count start over as explained but don’t worry about doing good or bad because good and bad is not important at all and leads to distractions that are not helpful. There’s no judgements our progress, just use the experience to learn from.

BTW it’s good to find a regular place to mediate instead jumping from place to place, however I will do this meditation anywhere I feel I need to focus before a stressful situation or a place I know I’ll need to be on my toes.

Practice this for a month and post any questions you may have here and I’ll answer them ASAP.

If you want martial arts or meditation training or have question about this or advanced meditation practice you can reach me through my school American Hapkido & Martial Arts. 

Shalom, 

Stuart Rosenberg