The Headspace Guide to: Mindfulness & Meditation

by Andy Puddicombe

The more I spoke to people about the benefits of meditation, the more I found that many desperately wanted to find a way to relax, but were uncomfortable with the religious element that robes automatically imply. They simply wanted to find a way to cope with life, to deal with stress – in their work, their personal life, and in their own minds. They wanted to regain the sense of openness they remembered from childhood, that sense of appreciation in actually being alive. They weren’t looking for spiritual enlightenment, nor were they needing therapy. They just wanted to know how to ‘switch off’ when they got home from work, how to fall asleep at night, how to improve their relationships, how to feel less anxious, sad or angry. People wanted to know how to control their cravings, to give up their addictions, to get a bit more perspective on life. But most of all they wanted to know how to deal with that nagging feeling that all was not quite as it should be, or could be – that feeling that there must be more to life than this. The integration of meditation into everyday life was key to my decision to stop being a monk and to live instead as a lay-person.

While the transition from monk to clown may not sound like the most obvious one, there are perhaps more similarities than first meet the eye. The application of moment-to-moment awareness into physical activity was to prove invaluable, in more ways than I could ever have imagined. Think of a circus act, whether it’s juggling, tightrope, acrobatics or trapeze, all of them require the perfect balance of concentration and relaxation. Try too hard and you make a mistake. Don’t try hard enough and you fall off or slip over.

Often in life we get so caught up in the analysis, the dissection of every possible outcome, that we miss an opportunity altogether. Of course, some things require careful consideration, but the more we live mindfully, in the moment, the more we start to get a sense of what feels right. Whether you think of it as a gut feeling, intuition, being guided, or just knowing for yourself that it’s the right thing to do, this can be an incredibly liberating discovery.

As you’ll soon discover, the practise of meditation is about much more than simply sitting down for a set period of time each day. Although it may be a key component, it is just one part of a broader system of mind training that incorporates three distinct aspects. Each aspect is equally important and, in order to get the most out of your meditation, the other two aspects also need to be learned. Traditionally, meditation students were taught first how to approach the technique, then how to practise it, before finally learning how to integrate the techniques into their everyday lives.

In order to get the best from this book, and consequently the many benefits of meditation, you don’t need to choose just one area of your life that you’d like to focus on. At least not at first anyway. Meditation is much broader than that and the qualities that arise from it tend to inevitably impact those areas of life where it’s needed most. However, it’s useful to know how other people use meditation, to appreciate its full potential. For many it’s the all-round stress buster, an aspirin for the mind. In short, a way of getting some headspace each day. For some, it’s the foundation of a broader approach to mindfulness, an opportunity to touch base with what it means to be present and in the moment throughout the day. For others, it might be part of a personal development plan towards greater emotional stability, or integrated into a spiritual path of some kind. And then there are those who turn to meditation as a way of improving their relationships with partners, parents, children, friends, colleagues and associates. Meditation is also used in much more specific ways. Ever since the UK National Institute for Clinical Excellence (NICE) approved the use of meditation (or mindfulness as it’s known in the medical world), it’s been used to treat a wide range of stress-related health symptoms. These include, but are no means limited to, chronic anxiety, depression, anger, addiction, compulsive behaviour, insomnia, muscle tension, sexual dysfunction and PMS. Away from the med...

In recent years the advancement of MRI technology, together with sophisticated brain-mapping software, has meant that neuroscientists are now able to observe the brain in a whole new way. This means that they’ve been able to discover exactly what happens to the brain when we’re learning to meditate, and also some of the effects of long-term practice. At first it was assumed that it was simply the activity of the brain that changed during meditation, but multiple studies have shown that the structure of the brain itself can change, in a process known as neuroplasticity. So, in the same way that training the body can make a particular muscle thicker and stronger, so training the mind with meditation can make the area of the brain associated with happiness and wellbeing thicker and stronger.

Mindfulness is the key ingredient of most meditation techniques and goes far beyond the formal aspect of sitting down with your eyes closed. 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. Sounds nice, doesn’t it? This is in contrast to how most of us live our lives, which is to be constantly caught up with all the little (and big) thoughts and feelings, and to be critical and judgmental of ourselves and others.

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. Take a moment to imagine what it might be like to live life this way. Imagine how it would be to drop all the baggage, the stories, the arguments, the judgments and agendas that take up so much space in the mind. This is what it means to be mindful.

As I heard this story unfold I felt increasingly ashamed of my grumbling, moaning and complaining in life – of always wanting things to be exactly as I wanted them to be, and not being satisfied unless I got my way. How could I get so upset about the train being late, or being woken up in the middle of the night, or a disagreement with a friend? Here was a man who had suffered in a way that I could only ever imagine, and yet who still seemed to have this extraordinary sense of calm and presence about him. I asked him what he’d done since losing his family and he described how he’d moved to this new area. He said that having no family, no home and no money had forced him to think very differently about life. In the end he’d chosen to live in a meditation centre, where he spent most of his time. I asked whether he thought that his time spent meditating had changed the way he felt about what had happened. He replied that it hadn’t changed the way he felt, but had instead changed his experience of those feelings. He said that while he still felt a great sense of loss and sadness at times, he perceived it differently. He described how he’d found a place beneath those thoughts and feelings where there was a sense of peace, of stillness and of calm. He said that it was the one thing that could never be taken away from him, that no matter what else happened to him in life, he would always have this place within himself to return to.

You can keep living as you always have done, if that’s what you want to do. Mindfulness is about learning how to change your experience of that lifestyle.

By focusing less on your own worries and more on the potential happiness of others you actually create more headspace for yourself.

The first part of the training would be understanding how to approach the technique. This means discovering the dynamics of the mind and how it’s likely to behave when you practise the technique. Only then would you be introduced to the actual meditation techniques. But there was a third aspect too. Having gained a sense of familiarity with the technique, the emphasis would be on the integration of that quality of mind into everyday life. In the rush to bring meditation to the West, two of these aspects have been largely neglected. And without those two pieces of the jigsaw puzzle, the essence of meditation is lost.

The road He began by asking me to imagine I was sitting on the side of a very busy road, with a blindfold around my head. ‘Now,’ he said, ‘maybe you can hear the background noise, the cars whizzing by, but you can’t see them because you have your eyes covered, right?’ I imagined myself sitting on the grass verge of a motorway (the M4 as it happens) and nodded in agreement. ‘So,’ he went on, ‘before you start to meditate it can feel a bit like this. Because of all the background noise in the mind, all the thoughts, it means that even when you sit down to relax or go to bed at night, it still feels as though this noise continues, yes?’ It was hard to argue with this, because it did indeed feel as though there was always a certain amount of background noise or restlessness in my mind, even when I was not consciously aware of the individual thoughts. ‘Now, imagine taking the blindfold off,’ he continued, ‘For the first time you see the road, your mind, clearly. You see the cars racing by, the different colours, shapes and sizes. Maybe sometimes you are attracted by the sound of the cars, at other times more interested in their appearance. But this is what it’s like when you first take off the blindfold.’ He started laughing to himself. ‘You know,’ he said, ‘sometimes it’s at this point that people learning meditation say some very funny things. They start to blame their thoughts and feelings on the meditation. Can you believe it?’ he asked mockingly. ‘They come and see me and ...

I returned to my room and thought about the significance of what I’d heard. 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. In my own case, the mind had been so busy with thoughts, and for such a long time, that I’d almost forgotten what blue sky looked like. But it was more than that. It was this idea that the underlying essence of the mind, like the blue sky, is unchanging, no matter how we feel. When we’re in a bad mood or feeling rough for some reason, then the cloud is simply more obvious, more distracting. There might be just the one thought in the entire sky, but it seems to demand every last bit of our attention. 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. This changed everything for me. Meditation was no longer about trying to create an artificial state of mind, which I’d imagined headspace was. Neither was it about trying to keep all the clouds at bay. It was more a case of setting up a deckchair in the garden and watching as the clouds rolled by. Sometimes the blue sky would peek through the clouds, which felt nice. And, if I was able to sit ther...

The wild horse Sometime later I found myself living in a much busier monastery, which served the needs of the local community and received a lot of visitors. We were still given many hours a day to meditate in a formal way, but the emphasis at this monastery was more on the practice of awareness in everyday life – in other words, the practice of mindfulness. Having previously had the luxury of moving seamlessly from one meditation session to the next, I’d grown accustomed to my mind settling quite quickly when I sat down to meditate. But now the sessions were often sandwiched between other activities, such as gardening, cooking, cleaning and paperwork. Often this involved working with others, having conversations and discussions about all sorts of things. Some of these conversations were monastic in nature and others were, how shall I say, less monastic. What I discovered very quickly was that this type of interaction made for a very different type of meditation session afterwards. Rather than sitting down and the mind immediately settling as it had before, it was now often very busy. Falling back into my old habits of trying to control the mind (never underestimate the strength of this tendency), if my mind hadn’t settled within five minutes or so, I started to resist the thoughts. And in resisting them I created yet more thoughts. I’d then panic about the fact that I was creating more thoughts and in doing so create even more thoughts! I was fortunate enough to have a ve...

The reversal With all this good advice, it wasn’t long before my mind really started to settle down. There were still days when the mind was busy, but I was becoming increasingly comfortable with watching the thoughts as they passed by. The thoughts were somehow easier to deal with and I’d taken the analogies of the road and the blue sky to heart. However, when strong emotions arose in the mind or I started to feel physical discomfort, I had a hard time just sitting with it. I found it almost impossible to be unbiased in these situations. When I felt happy and blissed out I wanted to hold on to that feeling for as long as possible. But when unpleasant feelings arose I couldn’t help but resist them. I’d lost count of how many times I’d been told that resistance was futile, that it only made the situation worse, but I just couldn’t help myself. This went on for some time. I saw it as a kind of heroic battle with the ego and, being quite stubborn, refused to back down. I didn’t yet have the awareness to see that the only battle I was waging was against myself. Eventually I had to concede that I was getting nowhere and so once again I arranged to see my teacher. As I explained the situation to him, he nodded away as if he’d heard the same thing a hundred times before. ‘It’s the same for everyone,’ he began. ‘We’re attracted to the things we like and we become attached to these things. We don’t want to give them up for anything. The only problem is, the more we chase after them...

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. For example, I feel angry and respond to it with more anger, stoking the coals, keeping the fire of anger burning. Or I feel worried and I start to feel worried that I feel worried. By stepping back and getting a little bit of perspective (something I could never have done without meditation) I was able to see the original emotion for what it was. And by simply being aware of it, it was as if it had its moment in the sun and was more willing to move on. So often we shut down when unpleasant feelings arise, we don’t want to feel them or be around them. But by reacting in this way we only give the emotion a greater sense of importance.

Traits Traits are those emotions that seem to define a character. It might be ‘cheerful Amy’ or ‘moody Mark’. These traits can reflect our upbringing, social conditioning, and the experiences that have shaped us along the way. It’s as if they are part of our genetic code and they tend to feel very ‘set’ in nature. Because of this, many people are not even that aware of their own traits. Take a moment to think what your traits might be. You might consider what your view of life is like. Does it feel as though life is working with you or against you? Does life feel like a pleasure or a chore? For meditation to be effective, it doesn’t matter which it is – although you may well find the former a considerably more enjoyable way to live. And what about your friends, family and work colleagues? I’m sure you can think of people at either end of the ‘perspective scale’. At one end you’ll have the person who’s capable of putting a negative spin on just about anything – winning the Lottery, finding love, getting a promotion. They might get very angry sometimes, or simply moan and grumble their way through life. At the other end of the spectrum, there are those who appear so overwhelmingly cheery that you find yourself asking ‘Is this person for real?’ Of course, sometimes they’re not ‘for real’, but there are undoubtedly some people who seem naturally happy and content in life. So these emotions can be compared to character traits. States ‘States’ however refer to those fleeting emo...

After all, it’s very difficult to separate thought and feeling. Do your thoughts define the way you feel? Or does the way you feel define your thoughts? 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.

For the purpose of Take10, I’m going to suggest that you use the breath as your primary support. There are many reasons for this, some of which I’ll go into in more detail later, but first and foremost the breath is undoubtedly one of the most flexible meditation objects. Unlike chanting or staring at a candle, you’ll be able to do this anywhere, even in public, without anyone else knowing what you’re doing. The breath is with you wherever you go. And if it’s not, then meditation is the least of your worries! But there’s also something comforting in focusing on a physical sensation, as it helps to draw the attention away from the realm of thought and into something a bit more tangible. Now for some people this is enough. Simply to sit each day, observe the breath, let the mind settle, and allow all the tension to work its way out of the system. And as I said earlier, there’s nothing wrong in using meditation in this way, it’s just that you won’t be getting the full benefit. In order to get the very most from meditation, you’ll probably want to integrate it with your everyday life. And in order to do that, you’ll need to add the second component – clarity. This way you get to see what’s causing the tension in the first place, you get to understand how and why you feel the way you do in certain situations. It’s the difference between ‘responding skilfully’ to situations and ‘reacting impulsively’. So, rather than getting to a point of stress and then needing to unwind, you c...

Over the years I’ve heard many ways of describing this process, but I think the analogy I’m going to share with you now works best. Imagine a very still, clear pool of water. The water is quite deep, but very, very clear. Because the water’s so clear you can see absolutely everything at the bottom, making it appear shallow, even though it’s actually very deep. Now imagine sitting by the side of this water and throwing small pebbles into the middle. Start off quite slowly, just throwing them every now and then. You’ll notice that each new pebble creates a ripple on the surface of the water, and that it takes a little while for the water to then settle again. If you then throw another stone in before the water has completely settled, you create a new set of ripples that merges with the last. Now imagine throwing one stone after the next and seeing the entire surface of the water all stirred up at the same time. When the surface of the water looks like this, it’s almost impossible to see anything in the water at all, never mind anything at the bottom. This image reflects the surface of our minds in many ways – at least until we get round to training in some way. Each new thought, like a pebble being thrown into the water, creates ripples on the surface. We’ve got so used to throwing these pebbles, so used to the disturbance on the surface of the water, that we’ve forgotten what still water looks like. We know it’s not quite right as it is, but it’s as if the more we meddle wi...

The thing to remember about clarity is that what needs to become clear, will naturally become clear. Meditation is not about rooting around in the recesses of the mind, digging up old memories, getting caught up in analysis and trying to make sense of it all. That’s not meditation, that’s thinking – and we all know where thinking has got us up to now! Clarity arises in its own time and its own way. Sometimes clarity will mean becoming more aware of the thinking process. At other times the awareness might shift to the emotions or physical sensations. Whatever happens and whatever you become more aware of, allow it to happen naturally. So, instead of resisting it because it’s unpleasant or uncomfortable, or trying to hasten its departure by delving into analysis, just allow it to happen in its own way and at its own pace.

The theatre Pretty much everything we do in life is judged in terms of good or bad, better or worse. But when it comes to meditation there’s no such thing as good or bad, and there’s a good reason for this. Another way of describing meditation is to use the word ‘awareness’. So, if you’re unaware, then you are not meditating badly, you’re not meditating at all! It doesn’t matter whether you’re aware of lots of thoughts or of no thoughts. Nor does it matter whether you’re aware of pleasant feelings or unpleasant feelings. The skill is simply to be aware, that’s all. One teacher of mine used to repeat this like a mantra. He’d say, ‘If you’re distracted, then it’s not meditation. Only if you’re undistracted is it meditation. There’s no such thing as good and bad meditation, there is only distracted or undistracted, aware or unaware.’ In fact, he used to liken it to going to the theatre. Imagine you’re watching a play of several acts. Your only role is to sit back, relax and watch as the story unfolds. It’s not your job to direct the performance, neither is it your job to get up on stage and start interfering with the story being told. It might be a story of love and romance, of action and bravado, or of mystery and intrigue. Or it might have elements of them all. The show might be fast moving and leave you breathless, or it might move at a very sedate pace, leaving you relaxed and at ease. The thing is that no matter what happens, your only job is to watch the play unfold. To...

Take10 – introduction Having spent some time looking at how best to approach meditation (and how to avoid some of the most common mistakes), it seems only fitting to turn our attention to the technique itself. Some aspects of this ten-minute exercise will appear quite familiar, as they’re similar to the short two-minute exercises you’ve already done. Although by now you might be itching to get started, I’d strongly recommend that you read the following section in full before you sit down to do Take10. While the first page may appear to have all the necessary information, it is in fact just a summary – a useful list of the key points to remember. You might like to have this near you the first few times you do the meditation, just in case you forget the order of things. But remember you can also access the guided version by visiting the website at www.getsomeheadspace.com/headspace-book/get-some-headspace What follows the summary is a more detailed explanation of the four sections. The first section is just taking care of the practicalities and getting yourself ready. The next section is about taming that wild horse, bringing the mind to a natural and comfortable place of rest. Following that is a short section where you’ll be focusing on the rising and falling movement of the breath and then freeing your mind altogether while you just sit back and enjoy the silence. Finally, there is the part when you make the conscious effort to carry that sense of presence and awareness i...

The dot-to-dot day Do you remember those dot-to-dot drawings from your early days at school? The ones that mapped out a picture with very small dots? In fact, they were so close together that all you needed to do was join the dots to feel as if you’d created some kind of masterpiece. This idea of dot-to-dot is a simple way of demonstrating how mindfulness can be so much more than just an isolated meditation exercise done once a day. Take a blank piece of paper and try drawing a straight line very slowly across the page. Even if you’ve got a very good eye, my guess is that there’ll be at least a few wobbles along the way. If you haven’t got a steady hand, the wobbles might be considerably greater. Let’s say that this line symbolises your continuity of awareness throughout the day. When you’re aware, you tend to have a sense of calm, of focus, of direction. And remember, even if you’re not necessarily experiencing a pleasant emotion, you’ll still have a sense of space around the emotions, some increased perspective, and some emotional stability. However, much like the line you drew across the page, for most people this idea of continuity of awareness tends to look very shaky. Perhaps you wake up feeling great, thinking it’s the weekend. But then you realise it’s actually a weekday and plunge into depression. You get up, trip over the cat, swear out loud, and go to the bathroom. Eating breakfast, you cheer up a little and you start to think that it might not be such a bad day...

Exercise 7: eating meditation This exercise is also available as a guided meditation on the Headspace website. Sit down at a table, preferably alone, and free from any external distractions. Don’t worry too much if there are external sounds that are out of your control as you can build these into the exercise, in just the same way as you did with Take10. Before you pick up the food to eat, take a couple of deep breaths – in through the nose and out through the mouth – to allow the body and mind to settle a little. Next, take a moment to appreciate the food. Where has it come from? What country? Was it grown or was it manufactured? Try and imagine the different ingredients in their natural growing environment and even the types of people who would have been looking after the crops or animals. Over time we’ve become completely disconnected from the origins of the food in our diet. That may not sound particularly important, but in terms of having a broader sense of mindfulness around food, then it can be really very helpful. As you do this, notice if there is any sense of impatience in the mind, of just wanting to get on and eat the food. Perhaps you’re thinking of all the things that you need to ‘get on and do’. Whatever the reaction, it’s most likely just conditioned behaviour, a habit, but one that you may well find surprisingly strong. Now without going on some kind of guilt trip, take a moment to appreciate the fact that you actually have food on your plate. We can somet...

Exercise 8: walking meditation This exercise is also available as a guided meditation at www.getsomeheadspace.com/headspace-book/get-some-headspace As you begin to walk, notice how the body feels. Does it feel heavy or light, stiff or relaxed? Don’t rush to answer the question, but take a few seconds to become aware of your posture and the way you’re carrying yourself. Without trying to change the way you’re walking, simply observe how it feels. Much like the breath, the walking process is so automated and conditioned that you won’t even need to think about it. So just take a moment to observe it, to notice it. It’s quite common to feel self-conscious when you do this, but the feeling usually passes quite quickly. While you won’t need to think about the process of walking, you will need to be aware of what’s going on around you, so take care to notice cars, other people, road signals and the like as you’re doing the exercise. Begin by noticing what you see going on around you. It might be people walking past, shop window displays, cars, advertisements and all the other things you’d expect to see around you in a busy city. If you live in the countryside, it’s more likely to be fields, trees and animals instead. Notice the colours and shapes, the movement and perhaps the stillness too. There’s no need to actually think about what you’re seeing – simply to see it and acknowledge it is enough. Take about thirty seconds to do this. Then turn your attention to sounds – what can ...

If you watch professional athletes, performing at their very highest level, you’ll notice that they spend a lot of time ‘in the zone’. Sometimes they may slip in and out of it, but when they’re truly performing at their best, it’s as if nothing could disturb their focus. It’s not an inward-looking focus, blocking out the sights and sounds around them. It’s a focus that is perfectly balanced between an awareness of their own physicality and movement, and the changing environment around them. And it’s not just the level of focus that seems to be perfectly balanced, so too is their level of effort. This doesn’t mean they’re applying maximum effort, but rather a sustained naturalness in which they appear to move gracefully and effortlessly. It’s as though they are putting in much less effort than anyone else, and yet performing that much better.

Exercise 9: running meditation This exercise is also available as a guided meditation at www.getsomeheadspace.com/headspace-book/get-some-headspace Before you get ready to go out running, try to get a sense of how you’re feeling. What’s going on in the mind? Are you feeling anxious, confident, or perhaps completely indifferent? If you have the time and inclination, you can even take a couple of minutes to sit down and allow the mind to rest before you begin. If you do this each time you may start to notice a pattern that will help you to respond more skilfully. As you get changed into your running clothes, begin to notice the physical sensations in the body. Perhaps the legs feel heavy from a previous run, or the shoulders tight from sitting at the computer. Or perhaps there’s a general feeling of lightness in the body. As with the sitting technique, this process isn’t done with any sense of judgment or analysis, you are simply building up an awareness of how you feel. Before you leave, take a good few deep breaths. This will help you to focus and give you a greater sense of being grounded. Breathe in through the nose and out through the mouth. Once you’re running you can return to whatever pattern of breathing feels most natural for you. Try to do this at least four or five times before you head out. As you begin to run, at the same time as keeping a strong awareness of everything that’s going on around you, bring your attention back to the body. How does it feel now that...

Back in the Soviet days, every apartment block had a ‘babushka’, an elderly woman who would sit at the front of the building and monitor all the activity within it. During the apartment block bombings, this tradition was fully resurrected in all buildings, with the babushkas keeping an eye out and reporting anything unusual to the police.

Exercise 10: sleeping meditation This exercise is also available as a guided meditation at www.getsomeheadspace.com/headspace-book/get-some-headspace Before going to bed, make sure you’ve been to the bathroom, locked the door, turned off your phone and done all the other things you usually do before going to bed. If you find it helps, you could even prepare a few things for the morning or make a list of things you need to do the next day. Having got ready for bed, lie flat on your back under the covers, as if you were about to go to sleep. If you find it more comfortable, place a thin pillow under your head. It doesn’t matter if you usually sleep on your front or side, this exercise is best done lying on your back and you can always flip over afterwards. As you lie there, take a moment to appreciate the sensation of sinking into the bed, the feeling that your body is being supported and that you have reached the end of the day, with nothing more to do. Once you’re lying comfortably, take five deep breaths, breathing in through the nose and out through the mouth, just as you do in the core technique. As you breathe in, try to get a sense of the lungs filling with air and the chest expanding. As you breathe out, imagine the thoughts and feelings of the day just disappearing into the distance, and any feelings of tension in the body just melting away. This will help to prepare both the body and the mind for the exercise ahead. Step 1: Begin by checking-in, in the usual way, n...

What the research shows 1 Meditation related to self control Researchers investigating the effectiveness of mindfulness found that after just five days of meditating for a very short time, participants showed increased blood flow to the area of the brain that helps to control emotions and behaviour. After eleven hours of meditation had been completed, actual physical changes in this part of the brain had occurred. Perhaps unsurprisingly then, in preliminary studies mindfulness has been shown to be effective in the treatment of drug addiction, smoking and eating disorders. In one such study, binge eating decreased by over 50% in just forty-two days. 2 Mindfulness improves performance under stress Neuroscientists at the University of Pennsylvania investigated whether mindfulness could help offset the loss of mental performance of Marines in stressful situations. In the words of the lead researcher, ‘Building mind-fitness with mindfulness training can help anyone who must maintain peak performance in the face of extremely stressful circumstances, from first responders, relief workers and trauma surgeons, to professional and Olympic athletes.’ 3 Meditation can halve the time it takes to get to sleep Researchers from the University of Massachusetts Medical School developed an effective approach to sleep which incorporated meditation as an integral component. The study found that 58% of diagnosed insomniacs reported significant improvements and 91% of those using medicatio...

Remember, we’re only talking about ten minutes of your day. There are truly very few people in the world who don’t have ten minutes to spare in the day. This is not work, some additional chore (although, strangely, people often perceive it that way), these ten minutes are your time to relax. They are probably the only ten minutes in your entire day when you have absolutely nothing to do at all except be aware. How could that be considered a chore? We’re so used to doing something that we find the idea of doing nothing somewhat alien or boring at first. You don’t need to think of meditation as ‘working on yourself’, it’s simply ten minutes out of your day to allow the body and mind to unwind, while becoming more familiar with the idea of being present, of being aware.

Meditation is a skill and, like any skill, needs to be repeated on a regular basis if it’s to be learnt and refined. There is something about the momentum that builds up when you sit to do it every day which simply cannot be replicated. It’s the same when starting a new exercise programme. It requires a regular commitment to build up enough momentum for it to become part of your daily routine, almost without needing to think about it. By doing it at the same time each day, it helps you to develop a very strong and stable practice. Neuroscientists investigating the benefits of meditation and mindfulness reiterate the importance of repetition in their findings. They say that the simple act of doing the exercise day after day is enough to stimulate positive change in the brain. In fact, they consider this vital in establishing new synaptic relationships and neural pathways. What this means is that new patterns of behaviour and mental activity can be created and, just as importantly, old patterns of mental activity can be let go of. As so much of our mental activity is habitual, the implications of this are nothing short of life changing. 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. No matter how you might feel on any particular day, try...

Trusting your own experience The thing with meditation is that it’s difficult to quantify or judge. As I mentioned earlier, there really is no such thing as good or bad meditation, just aware or unaware, distracted or undistracted. So if you were to judge it would have to be on that basis. But don’t feel you have to rate it compared to another session or, even worse, against someone else’s experience – meditation is just what it is. Trust your own experience and don’t just rely on other people’s opinions. This is part of making meditation a practical reality in your life. To paraphrase one very famous meditation teacher, don’t just do it because I say it works. Try it for yourself and see if it makes a difference for you. Do it consistently and honestly and be the judge of whether it made any difference. If it did, you’ll have a little more confidence in continuing to do it and perhaps even doing it for a little longer each day. If it doesn’t seem to make a difference, give it some more time. Doing it just once or twice is like switching on the kettle when you are trying out some new coffee. You need to at least wait for the kettle to boil, to pour out the water and taste the coffee, before you can really say whether it works for you or not. This is why I usually recommend doing it for a very minimum of ten days before you completely rule it out.