The Headspace Guide to: Mindfulness & Meditation

by Andy Puddicombe

At the time I just really struggled with my mind. Not in a straightjacket kind of way you understand, but I struggled with the endless thinking. It felt as if my mind was permanently switched on, going round and round like a washing machine.

Mindfulness means to be present, in the moment, undistracted. It implies resting the mind in its natural state of awareness, which is free of any bias or judgment.

So mindfulness means to be present. It means being ‘in the moment’, experiencing life directly as it unfolds, rather than being distracted, caught up and lost in thought. It’s not a contrived or temporary state of mind that you need to somehow create and maintain. On the contrary, it’s a way of stepping back and resting the mind in its natural state, free from the usual chaos.

Meditation is simply a technique to provide you with the optimum conditions for practising the skill of mindfulness.

If mindfulness is the ability to be present, to rest in the moment whatever you’re doing, and meditation is the best way of learning that skill, then ‘headspace’ could be considered the outcome.

As much as we try to ignore the fact, life can be difficult, stressful, upsetting and even painful at times.

Headspace is not a quality of mind dependent on surface emotions; this means it can be experienced just as clearly in periods of sadness or anger as it can in times of excitement and laughter. Essentially it’s ‘being OK’ with whatever thoughts you’re experiencing or emotions you’re feeling.

By changing the way in which you see the world, you effectively change the world around you.

focusing less on your own worries and more on the potential happiness of others you actually create more headspace for yourself. Not only that, but the mind becomes softer, more malleable,

‘So, the first thing to get straight is that meditation does not make you think! All it does is shine a big bright light on your mind so that you can see it more clearly.

I wondered if perhaps I was beyond help altogether, that no amount of meditation was going to help. It turns out that this is a surprisingly common feeling though, so be reassured if you feel this way too.

meditation, within a mindful context, was not about stopping thoughts and controlling the mind. It was a process of giving up control, of stepping back, learning how to focus the attention in a passive way, while simply resting the mind in its own natural awareness.

‘the sky is always blue.’

As a concept I got it: the sky is always blue. The clouds are our thoughts and when the mind is very busy with all these thoughts the blue sky is temporarily obscured.

It was this idea that the underlying essence of the mind, like the blue sky, is unchanging, no matter how we feel.

The reason this lesson was so important for me – and I hope will be for you – was that I’d always assumed I had to somehow create blue sky. I was under the impression that to experience headspace I needed to make something happen. The truth is, we don’t need to create anything. The blue sky is headspace, and it’s always there – or, rather, here.

‘Happiness is just happiness,’ he went on, ‘no big deal. It comes and it goes. Sadness is just sadness, no big deal. It comes and it goes. If you can give up your desire to always experience pleasant things, at the same time as giving up your fear of experiencing unpleasant things, then you’ll have a quiet mind.’

‘When you experience discomfort in your meditation, whether it’s the restlessness of a busy mind, physical tension in the body, or a challenging emotion, I want you to imagine it’s the discomfort of the people you care about. It’s as if in an act of extraordinary generosity, you are sitting with their discomfort so they don’t have to.’

I managed to keep down the feelings that came after these events for quite some time. But after a year or so they started to come out in other ways, colouring the world around me. When it comes to emotions it’s the case that whatever goes down, must come up.

One of the most important was that the emotion itself is often not the problem. It’s the way we react to it that causes the problem.

Mindfulness is the willingness to rest in that natural state of awareness, resisting the temptation to judge whatever emotion comes up, and therefore neither opposing or getting carried away with a feeling. Meditation is simply the exercise that is going to give you the best conditions to practise being mindful of these emotions. And headspace is the result of applying this approach. Headspace does not mean being free from emotions, but rather existing in a place where you are at ease with whatever emotion is present.

It’s the nature of life for stuff to happen. And when it happens it can be good to know that you’re as well equipped as you can be to deal with the situation. This doesn’t mean that you won’t experience the feeling, because undoubtedly you will. But what it does mean is that the way in which you relate to the feeling will enable you to let go of it more quickly and more easily.

It’s a common mistake to make in meditation, to search for some kind of experience or want to be rewarded with some sign of progress or fruition, but peace of mind or insight will always be illusive if we are trying too hard to find it.

Ironically, any free time I did have was then spent worrying about what I’d done. Sound familiar?

may well be that you feel as though your mind is all over the place, but that’s why you’re learning to meditate.

In retrospect, it is a slightly more gradual process. So maybe it’s more useful to think about clarity in terms of a steady unfolding of the mind, an increasingly direct insight into what’s happening.

when it comes to meditation there’s no such thing as good or bad,

For some reason meditation can look very serious and it can be tempting to start treating it like ‘serious work’. But the more you can bring a sense of humour to it, a sense of play, the easier and more enjoyable you’ll find it.

the areas of the brain which regulate pain and emotion were significantly thicker in meditators compared to non-meditators.

I think it’s best to think of insight as drips of water filling a bucket, rather than any great thunderbolt that might transform your life instantaneously.

‘you’re telling me that when you’re sweeping the courtyard there’s no time to be aware of the action of sweeping? That when you’re pressing the monks’ robes there’s no time to be aware of the action of ironing? The point of training the mind is to become more aware.

‘Where have I been all my life?’

How many of us live our lives in this way? Swept away by memories of the past and plans for the future. So preoccupied with thinking that we’re completely unaware of what’s actually taking place right now, oblivious to life unfolding around us. The present moment just feels so ordinary that we take it for granted, and yet that’s what makes it so extraordinary – the fact that we so rarely experience the present moment exactly as it is.

The research also showed that it didn’t even matter whether the experience was perceived as positive or negative by the meditator, the same beneficial effects in the brain were still recorded. So even when it feels as though it might not be going so well, something positive is happening.

So it’s almost as though by witnessing the discomfort coming to the surface, you are witnessing its departure.

It’s also useful to notice how your perspective can shift – how one day you can get on a crowded train and not be too bothered about it, and yet on another occasion it appears to push every button you have. The good thing about this realisation is that clearly it’s not what’s happening outside of ourselves that causes us the most difficulty, but rather what’s going on inside our own minds – which, thankfully, is something that can change.

Having greater awareness of your emotions means that, if anything, your experience of them will be heightened. It’s just that in being less caught up in them, you will no longer feel as though you’re at their mercy.

Likewise, how could he explain that having everything so good only made him more nervous, because he had that much more to lose.