The Headspace Guide to: Mindfulness & Meditation

by Andy Puddicombe

I struggled with the endless thinking. It felt as if my mind was permanently switched on, going round and round like a washing machine.

They wanted to regain the sense of openness they remembered from childhood,

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.

stretching the boundaries of your imagination,

to define the purpose of meditation,

It’s about training in awareness and understanding how and why you think and feel the way you do, and getting a healthy sense of perspective in the process.

give it time, be patient, and see what 10 minutes a day can do for you.

comes with baggage.

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.