Guided meditation for high school students

Welcome and thanks for joining me on this, let's call it a voyage of the mind. So before we begin, posture and breathing make a big difference in meditation. So if you're not already on a nice firm chair with your back straight, pause this recording and go find a nice firm chair with your back straight, ideally in a place that's kind of quiet and peaceful.

So now that you're there, sit with your back straight. Try to put your feet firmly on the floor. When I do this, I like to rest my hands on my lap, palms up, gently curled, so really no effort. Now start to slowly breathe a bit deeper than you were just now and a bit slower, in and out at your own time, but just a little bit deeper, a little bit slower. If you like, a lot of folks like to breathe in through their nose and out through their mouth, but the key, once again, is a little bit deeper, a little bit slower.

And as you do so, start to soften your gaze if your eyes are still open, and when you feel comfortable, gently close your eyes. Now, before we get into the heart of the meditation, I'm going to give you a few reminders. This whole exercise is about exploring your inner being. It's about curiosity; it's about relaxation. There's no perfect way to meditate. Sometimes folks think that they're not doing it right or their mind is wandering too much, and then it causes stress, and that's the exact opposite of what you want meditation to be.

It should be fun. It could even be funny at moments. You should be curious; you should be enjoying it. If there are some random distractions—and there inevitably will be— it could be sounds around you, it might be part of your body that itches or tingles. Don't let it stress you out, just accept it. It's part of the universe; it's just atoms doing what they do. It's the universe doing its thing, and no worries if you need to scratch or adjust part of your body—no reason to stress.

Now, to add to the idea that this shouldn't be a stressful experience, I'm going to ask you to do something that may or may not feel completely natural. I want you to smile right now. Give yourself a good smile, with your eyes closed—just smile. Obviously, we smile when we're happy, but sometimes making a smile can actually make us a little bit happier. It can make us a little bit less stressed. So even if you need to force it, smile. And as much as possible as we go through this meditation, as long as you don't have to force it too much, try to keep a gentle smile on your face the whole time.

All right, now let's get into it. One thing to keep in mind as we start trying to still our minds is to just appreciate that you're alive. You're in this vast mystery we call life, and that you're taking pause to appreciate who you really are. And the beauty of this mystery—this existence, this universe that we share. So as you breathe deeper and slower, your eyes are closed, try to become aware of your thoughts. What are you thinking about? Are they random thoughts? Something you saw on TV? Is it something going on at school? Are you thinking about some test you might have coming up or someone at your school you tend to think about a lot?

Just observe your thoughts. Don't try to fight them, just observe them. And as you observe your thoughts, start to appreciate that you are not your thoughts. You are something different than your thoughts. They're all in there in your head with you, but clearly, you can observe them. You can see them go by. Sometimes we can get lost in them, but I think you're seeing right now that you are not your thoughts. You can actually observe your thoughts.

One metaphor that folks sometimes use is that your thoughts are cars on a road or cars on a highway. Oftentimes, we're in the middle of the highway, and those cars are bombarding us; they're hitting us or we have to dodge them in some way, or they're overwhelming us. One thing to do to observe them is just get out of the highway. You don't have to fight the thoughts; those cars will keep on going by. But now that you're on the median, you're no longer on the highway. You can see them go by, and what you'll often find is when you're observing your thoughts, they start to slow down.

And so if your thoughts start to slow down, great! Really embrace that. Start to realize what that feels like when your thoughts slow down. And then there's even going to be moments when you have no thoughts. For the next few breaths, try that. Try to have no thoughts—just breathe in, breathe out—no thoughts, just stillness, just your consciousness here in this universe. No time, no space; it's all in your mind. No thoughts, stillness.

Now, as you try to keep that state, your mind will inevitably wander. You're going to start thinking about an assignment that you have due soon; you're going to think about something that you have to do this weekend, or someone that you think a lot about. That's okay; don't beat yourself up if your mind wanders. Just remind yourself, just gently nudge it back. Try to get back to the stillness. Say, "Oh look, I got a little bit distracted; I started thinking about something. That's funny. I'm going to get my mind back to the stillness. I'm going to try to slow down those cars."

And so gently breathe in and breathe out, and I'm going to give you a few minutes to just sit there, still breathing in, breathing out, being still with your thoughts. If your mind wanders, no big deal, just try to nudge it back when you can. If the silence starts to get to you a little bit, don't worry; I will be back for sure in a few minutes.

Now that you've had a little bit of time on your own, I'm gonna give you some ideas that just might help appreciate who you really are. A lot of times we get caught up in the day-to-day; we start worrying about test scores or things we have to do or what people think about us. But remind yourself that you are not that. You are not defined by your test scores. You are not defined by your grades, and you are not defined by what people think of you. You are pure consciousness.

You associate yourself with your body, with your thoughts, but they're part of you. They aren't you. You're something deeper, and you're something far larger. In fact, the whole universe, if you really think about it, is a construction of your mind. Your mind has set up the simulation for you to enjoy. In theory, there's a universe out there—sound waves stimulating your ear, photons stimulating your eye, air particles bouncing into your skin. But from that input, your mind creates the reality that you're in.

When you realize that everything you see is a construct, it’s a construct of your mind to make sense of all of that information. You realize that you're a lot more central than you might have appreciated before. And you also realize that the things that you might have been thinking about—things at school, what people think of you, your test scores—those are nice. You should try to do what you can, but they don't define who you are. They don't define your reality.

Think about how vast the universe is—not just vast in space, but vast in time. That puts some of our problems in perspective. A hundred years from now, a thousand years from now, will these problems really be that significant? When you think about where you are on this planet, part of the cosmos, are these issues really that significant? So I'll give you a few more moments to just think about those ideas— to just think about the vastness of the universe and what a privilege it is to be able to participate in it, to see the beauty of it, and how small some of the things that we often define ourselves by really are.

And so now, when you get a chance, gently, with your eyes closed, start to feel and hear the room around you a little bit. Get a little bit more in touch with your body, and when you're ready, open your eyes. And take these ideas, take that stillness with you through the rest of your day. And you should thank yourself for taking the time out for doing this today.

And I encourage you to make it a practice. Some of you might be skeptical: "What would a few-minute meditation do for me?" But I can guarantee you, if you do it day in, day out, if you make a practice of it, do it regularly over a few weeks, a few months, you're going to notice some changes. You're going to see yourself be more open to experience. You're going to see more beauty in more things. You're going to just have a positive energy that people are going to want to connect with.

People are going to be drawn to you, and you'll also see that you're doing better at some of those things we talked about before because you're not stressed about them anymore. You're enjoying them; you're doing what you can, but you're not attached to the outcome. You do your best; wherever the chips fall, that's okay. If things don't turn out the way you wanted, that's okay. You just accept where things are, and then you decide what other actions can you take. Assemble your actions piece by piece so that you can get to another outcome.

But once again, if the outcome is what you want, awesome! If it isn't, accept it and move on from there. So I'll leave you in this meditation. Thank you for joining, and once again, thanks for taking time out for yourself.