Do I have to do yoga to meditate?

 

 

"Go within every day and find the inner strength, so that the world cannot blow your candle out."

    –Katherine Dunham

 

 Meditation seems super interesting to you, but yoga.. not so much. Is it possible to get benefits from meditation without having to do yoga?

Yoga and meditation are often practiced together; in fact there’s a school of thought that the main point of yoga is to get the body ready to sit for long periods in meditation. The word “yoga” is often translated as “union”, and the uniting of the mind and the body is a common way of thinking about it, so in that regard they can work well together.

But there’s absolutely no requirement to do yoga along with a meditation practice - and especially when you are new and working on building a habit you want to have as few barriers to practice as you can. I think it’s easy to get caught up in how we think something should look, or focus on having all the perfect conditions before starting something like meditation but it’s just not necessary.

Do I think yoga is good? Yes, absolutely. Do I think doing yoga before sitting down to meditate is good? Sure. Do I think not doing yoga means the meditation isn't right? Nope, not at all. 

I love the way both yoga and meditation make me feel after I’ve done them - I’ve never regretted rolling out my mat or sitting and meditating… but sometimes it’s really really hard to find the motivation to do these things!

So if you do yoga and meditation - yay! If you aren’t interested in yoga but want to give meditation a try… also yay! If you can spare five minutes to sit and count your breaths don’t complicate things by making yourself do a bunch of other things first.

The beauty of meditation is that you can literally do it anywhere, in your everyday clothes, and with nothing special needed. So just do that for a bit, and if you feel like adding other things in later, worry about that later! For now just remove all obstacles to experimenting with meditation and don’t stress about finding a forest to sit in or a cute cushion to park your bum on.

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You'll find a load of free guided meditations over on Insight Timer. 

I've also made a video about this topic on YouTube.