Full Attention
Meditation is not a difficult task that you must force upon yourself; once you experience that inner joy you will spontaneously want to meditate as much as you now look forward to outer pleasures. Nevertheless, it is very helpful to establish a routine to your meditative practice. Just as you eat at certain times of the day, and look forward to eating as those times approach, so too, by developing the habit of meditating at the same time each day your whole being—your body, breath, and mind—will look forward to meditating at that time. You should sit down every day at exactly the same time. Establish a specific time for your practice and do your practice every day at that time.
The first thing you have to learn is to be still.
The first thing you have to learn is to be still. This process begins with physical stillness. According to the tradition that we follow, the asana, or meditative posture, is carefully selected according to your nature and capacity, and you are guided by a competent teacher to keep your head, neck, and trunk straight. After choosing a sitting posture, good students learn to become accomplished in it.
After accomplishing stillness with the help of the meditative posture, you will become aware of obstacles arising from muscle twitching, tremors occurring in various parts of the body, shaking, and itching. These obstacles arise because the body has never been trained to be still. We are trained to move in the external world faster and faster, but nobody trains us to remain still. To learn this stillness, you should form a regular habit, and to form this habit you should learn to be regular and punctual, practicing the same posture at the same time and at the same place every day until the body stops rebelling against the discipline given to it. This step, though basic, is important and should not be ignored. Otherwise, you will not be able to reap the fruits of meditation and your efforts will be wasted.