What My Students Have Taught Me About Teaching Meditation

I have learned a great deal about meditation from teachers, books, training programs, and years of personal practice.

But some of the most useful lessons I have learned about teaching meditation have come from the people sitting in front of me.

Students tell you when an explanation makes sense. They also tell you—sometimes without saying a word—when you have made something more complicated than it needs to be.

Over time, I have noticed that many people come to meditation believing they are already failing.

They tell me they cannot stop thinking.

They cannot sit on the floor.

They become restless.

They lose track of the breath.

They have attended classes where the terminology felt unfamiliar or the practice seemed designed for someone who already understood the tradition.

One of the most important things I have learned as a teacher is that sometimes the first thing a student needs is not another technique.

They need to hear:

“You can do this.”

That does not mean lowering the standards of meditation. It means helping someone understand what the practice actually asks of them.

One of my first experiences leading a meditation group was in my hometown. During one session, a woman told me that she had pretty much given up on meditation because she could not “stop thinking.”

She was quite direct about it. She said the whole thing sounded like “a great bunch of malarky.”

I understood what she meant. She had been given the impression that successful meditation meant somehow turning the thinking mind off. I told her that this was not what I was asking her to do.

Thoughts are going to arise. That is part of having a mind. The practice is not to stop them, but to notice them without automatically following every one of them.

I used the image of clouds moving across a wide sky. The sky does not have to get rid of the clouds. They appear, move through, and eventually pass.

In the same way, a thought can arise in awareness without our having to grab hold of it, analyze it, argue with it, or turn it into a whole story.

We notice the thought. We let it pass. Then we return to the breath or whatever we have chosen as our point of attention.

That conversation stayed with me because it reminded me how easily meditation can sound impossible when it is explained as “stopping thought.” Sometimes a student does not need a more advanced technique. They simply need a clearer explanation of what the practice is actually asking them to do.