The Headspace Guide to: Mindfulness & Meditation

by Andy Puddicombe

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...