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Whichever it is, the fact that it’s behavioral rather than physiological (and I’m assuming this is something you will have clarified with your GP if you have serious concerns) means that it can change.
Either the habit of resistance is “unlearned,” or a new, more positive way of relating to the thoughts and feelings is adopted.
allowed the mind lots of space. It can be helpful to think back to some of the analogies here, whether it’s taming the wild horse, the idea of the blue sky and the thoughts passing by as clouds, or any other one of them that you might find helpful in increasing your sense of perspective and space.
Remember, this is not an exercise to make you go to sleep, but rather to increase your awareness and understanding of your mind at night.
on it, remaining present with the sound
When you realize you’ve been distracted, that the mind has wandered off, in that moment you are back in the present, and all you need do is gently return the focus to the rising and falling sensation.
Remember that it’s not an exercise to make you go to sleep, but rather an exercise to increase your awareness and understanding of your mind at night. So, if you’re still awake, there are two ways to go. The first is to allow the mind to drift off, in the usual way, freely associating as it wants, without any sense of control or coercion on your behalf. This can feel very nice, but the only problem is that for some it feels a little vague or even disconcerting. If that’s the case for you, then this final part of the exercise will be a more helpful way to conclude. Begin by counting backward
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In one such study, binge eating decreased by over 50 percent in just forty-two days.
However, this age-related decline was not found in the meditators. Using sophisticated brain-mapping techniques they discovered that the reduction in gray matter that typically comes with aging had actually been offset by the meditation.
Those ten minutes will give you the very best opportunity and conditions to become familiar with what it means to be aware. It’s also likely to provide you with a sense of stillness which is very difficult to replicate in everyday life when you first begin.
It doesn’t matter whether your mind is currently busy or quiet, happy or sad, stressed or relaxed. All of these mind states are appropriate starting points for meditation. What matters is whether you are able to rest in awareness of that mind state, with a sense of ease. And this is something that can only be done through consistent, regular practice. And it is this experience that has the potential to fundamentally transform your perspective of life.
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.
If you are considering taking up meditation as a full-time career, then there are some benefits in learning to sit in the traditional way. But for the purposes of a daily practice, it’s perfectly acceptable to use a chair.
If the purpose of meditation is to know one’s own mind, then with this approach you’ll only ever get to know the happy and calm aspects of the mind, and never the more troublesome aspects. This may sound quite appealing at first, but when was the last time you had a problem with feeling too happy or too relaxed? So it’s the troublesome thoughts and emotions that we need to get to know the best. In order to know your own mind, and therefore experience life with a renewed sense of perspective, it’s important to always cross the finishing line, to complete the ten minutes, no matter what. By the
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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 to repeat the process, for it’s through this repetition the foundations are laid for more headspace in the future.
The important thing to remember is that those areas of discomfort were already there before you sat down. All the meditation has done is shine a light of awareness on them so you can see them more clearly. At first this sounds like bad news, but in fact it’s actually very good news because we need to see these things clearly before we can let go of them. So it’s almost as though by witnessing the discomfort coming to the surface, you are witnessing its departure.
This is not about judging in a “marks out of ten” way, but rather recording your findings in a “what I saw when I went for a walk” way.
Simply witnessing this transition, day after day, can in itself lead to a more relaxed way of seeing things, a greater willingness to accept and be part of change. We tend to identify very strongly with being a certain type of person, but when you do this exercise honestly, it makes you realize that actually we are much more than that one type of person. We’re always changing, one moment to the next, one day to the next. And when you see this clearly, it becomes more difficult to hold on to any fixed views of how you see yourself. The result is a feeling of more freedom, of no longer needing
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It’s about developing a gentle curiosity: watching, noticing and observing what’s happening in every aspect of your life—how you act, how you speak, and how you think. But remember, it’s not about trying to be someone else, it’s about finding a sense of ease with you as you are, right now.
The good thing about this realization 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. Noticing these shifting perspectives from day to day, and from moment to moment, can be a very strong support for your daily meditation.
Communicating skillfully and sensitively with other people is therefore essential on the road to getting some headspace. This could mean applying a greater sense of restraint, empathy or perspective to your relationships—or maybe all three!
how little time they spend reflecting on moments of happiness? Part of the reason for this goes back to the idea that happiness is somehow “rightfully ours,” and that everything else is therefore wrong or out of place.
It’s very difficult to be caught up in lots of distracting thoughts when there is a strong sense of appreciation in your life. And by developing a more heartfelt appreciation of what we have, we also begin to see more clearly what’s missing in the lives of others.
Kindness makes the mind softer, more malleable and easier to work with in your practice. It creates a mindset that is less judgmental and more accepting. Clearly this has profound implications for our relationships with others.
Compassion is not something that we can “do” or “create,” it already exists in each and every one of us. If you think back to the blue sky analogy, the same principle applies to compassion. In fact, you could say that the blue sky represents both awareness and compassion in equal measure.
Compassion is a lot like empathy really, putting ourselves in the shoes of another and experiencing a shared sense of understanding.
emotionless gray blob. In fact it’s quite the opposite. 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. Acceptance
With that in mind, the journey to acceptance is about discovering what we need to let go of, rather than what we need to start doing.
start to become more aware of what prevents acceptance from naturally arising.
But remember, meditation is not really about achievement and results—which is why it’s such a nice change of pace from the rest of life. Instead it’s about learning to be aware, to rest in that space of natural awareness with a genuine sense of ease.
usual preconceptions about meditation, assuming that it was all about trying to stop thoughts and clear the mind of any unpleasant feelings.
meditate less on the anxiety itself, which when left alone has a tendency to just come and go in its own time anyway, and instead focus on his resistance to the anxiety.
With her doctor’s support, she was planning to very slowly reduce the dosage. It was estimated this might take about a year. That may sound like a long time, but when people suddenly stop the long-term use of antidepressants, the results can be quite serious, so it’s important to do it with your doctor’s consent and in a very gentle way. The other advantage of this approach is that studies have consistently shown that relapse is far less likely if the withdrawal is gradual. Pam had read in the
But the analogy is important, because as long as you’re searching for happiness or headspace outside of yourself, it will only ever lead to a temporary end to depression. What’s more, it will intensify the feeling that what you’re currently experiencing is somehow “wrong.”
it’s not that we need to “create” creativity, but, rather, find a way to allow it to come to the surface.
But if that first thought appears so interesting that all awareness is lost, a second thought is created, and then a third and a fourth.
I also asked her to write down each time she was going to miss a session—just a short sentence to say why she wasn’t going to do it. This isn’t a retrospective to be done at the end of the day, it’s about writing down, there and then, what it is you are about to do that can’t wait ten minutes.
simple yet challenging task of meeting anger with kindness remained at the heart of them all.
That’s the interesting thing with meditation. It’s a reflection of the way in which you relate to the world around you.
