The Headspace Guide to: Mindfulness & Meditation

by Andy Puddicombe

When you first catch one of these horses,’ he continued, ‘you need to remember that they are used to running free. They’re not used to standing still for a long time, or being forced against their will to stay in one place.’

‘Your mind is like this wild horse when you sit to meditate,’

long as there’s resistance, there’s no room for acceptance.

And as long as we don’t have acceptance, there’s no way of having a peaceful mind.’

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.’

if you are focusing on a pleasant sensation try gently to maintain the attitude of sharing it with others as you focus on it.

by replacing the thoughts with simple awareness, something had happened, something had changed.

when you’re more aware there is very little room for these unpleasant emotions to operate.

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.

to let emotions come and go,

I struggled to find any permanent emotion. I just found thoughts and physical sensations that were coloured by the feeling.

Neuroscientists can tell us with amazing accuracy what’s happening physiologically, and behavioural scientists can interpret that data to give us a rational explanation for why we feel the way we do. But although this is helpful and interesting, does it change the way you feel?

Sometimes this gap between what we understand intellectually, and our actual experience of emotions in everyday life, can appear as an enormous chasm.

a life without emotions,

the filter of emotion creates the illusion of how our world looks at any one time.

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.

being mindful of these...

Headspace does not mean being free from emotions, but rather existing in a place where you are at ease wi...

this exercise it helps to adopt an open mind, one that is curious and interested in the nature of the emotion itself, rather than simply labelling the emotion as good or bad through past experience.

the idea of gentle curiosity: watching, observing and noticing what happens in the body and mind as these emotions come and go. Remember, the objective here is headspace, a sense of ease with whatever emotion is present.

We need to find a way to be aware of our emotions, to experience, acknowledge and live with them, and yet not be at their mercy. Mindfulness and meditation show us how best to do this.

With the passing of time and with increased perspective, the experience of emotion can look very different.

when you start to meditate you inevitably start to become more aware of how you feel

meditation was simply a snapshot of my everyday mind

to experience the ultimate fruit of meditation – that of enlightenment.

‘enlightenment or bust’

kind of attitude, where I was always focusing on a future goal rather than resting in the moment and enjoy...

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 alway...

The qualities you bring to your own approach will always reflect your upbringing and your character.

gentle curiosity.

I was in far too much of a hurry to apply any gentle curiosity,

The idea that I could make the soup and enjoy myself at the same time hadn’t even occurred to me.

trying to get to the end of everything and not really paying attention to the journey.

by ‘labeling’ these emotions and thereby becoming more aware of them, the intensity was significantly reduced.

So, the next time you find yourself writing a retaliatory e-mail or wanting to shout at your partner in a fit of rage, label your anger ‘anger’ and you might just avoid having to make an embarrassing apology.

two essential components: concentration (usually the calming aspect) and clarity (usually the insight aspect).

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!

allow it to happen naturally.

While it’s important to acknowledge that it is absolutely not OK to be walked over, abused, bullied or taken for a ride – at work or at home – from a meditative point of view it is also important to acknowledge the source of the anger we can sometimes feel in life.

there was something actually quite nice about trying to get it ‘just right’,

and the less I indulged the thoughts, the less momentum anger had.

We often underestimate the value of clarity

the process will likely be a gradual one, where each day you see the hole a little earlier, with a little more clarity. In doing so, you’ll manage to avoid many of the habitual reactions that stress you out.

The skill is simply to be aware, that’s all.

‘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.’

it’s through developing that ability of passive observation that you get to experience the clarity and confidence to make decisions, make changes and live life more fully.

Awareness is not something you need to create,

as it’s always present. We just need to remembe...

have you ever stayed with boredom long enough to look at what it is?