Dear Stressed Out:

Good for your friend for suggesting meditation. From my experience, there are as many types of meditation as there are ways to have sex. … In other words, a lot!

Meditation, at its most fundamental, is sitting quietly, listening to your internal dialogue with yourself and tuning out the world for a bit. Meditation has been scientifically proven to have health benefits like lowering stress levels, improving general all-around health and decreasing feelings of anxiety and panic. Unlike most things we enjoy, it’s hard to imagine any negative aspects of meditating … and there are many different ways to do it.

But don’t go by those old 1970s movies where people are doing “transcendental meditation” and chanting a mantra. This is 2004 baby, and meditation is for many of us a part of our daily routine (right after brushing our teeth and before our morning shower, right?).

Some types of meditation focus on repeating a word or phrase to yourself as a way to focus your attention inward. Other types encourage you to focus on a candle flame, or a point in space, or a place on the wall to center yourself.

Most of us have a hard time just sitting still for a few minutes and need some help chilling out: By having a focus, it’s easier to quiet ourselves down. Many of us need something like meditation (or yoga or prayer) to quiet down and pay attention to what we are thinking and feeling. Living in a society that encourages us to do something (or buy something or drink something or eat something) when we feel anxious or worried, it’s hard just to be ourselves and do nothing. It sounds easy, but for most of us it isn’t.

Many people have great ideas about starting to meditate, and set goals of 20 or 30 or even 45 minutes twice a day. Good luck! Having unrealistic expectations like this may doom you to fail; it’s just too much for most of us. Why set yourself up to fail by expecting long meditations from the start?

Instead of starting with 20 minutes or more, why not start with five minutes or less?

It’s more important to start meditating and to keep doing it than to do it for any specific length of time. If you want to start with one minute a day, see how that feels. You can always go up to two minutes tomorrow and three the next day. Set yourself up to succeed by starting small.

Many people don’t really have a clue what meditation is, but there is no shortage of ways to learn about it. You can find a teacher, or you can check it out in books or audiotapes or videotapes. Meditation need not have any religious or spiritual component, it can just be you sitting there listening to your breathing and noticing the thoughts that run through your head. Walking meditation is another form of meditation: This can be a good way to start when it’s hard to sit.

Louise Hay, a San Diegan whose book, You Can Heal Your Life, is a worldwide bestseller, says on one of her audiotapes that meditation is when you sit and listen without talking. You just listen and see what you get.

I meditate myself, but certainly don’t feel I am an authority on it so I consulted with several meditation teachers. One of them offered me two simple meditations that the Dalai Lama (Richard Gere’s meditation buddy) spoke of as helpful.

First, spend five minutes at the beginning of each day remembering that we all want the same things (to be happy and to be loved) and we are all connected to one another.

Second, spend five minutes at the end of each day breathing in and out. When you breathe in focus on cherishing yourself, and when you breathe out focus on cherishing others. If you think about people you have difficulty cherishing, extend your cherishing to them anyway.

If you’re interested in finding out more about meditation, you can look on the Internet, in a local bookstore or in the phone book under “meditation” and see what you get. There is even a gay Buddhist meditation group here in San Diego that you can email at sdgaybuddhists@cox.net.

Follow your intuition and check it out if it beckons to you. The worst that can happen is you have a few more minutes of peace, serenity and relaxation than you usually do … not such a problem!