How would you like a way to begin to befriend the antics of your busy mind? With consistent practice, mindfulness can offer us a way to relate to our thoughts without getting carried away by them. This is our focus in today’s episode.
For our first few episodes we explored our body and breath as a gateway to Being mode – a way of being with our direct moment-to-moment experience. No doubt, as we have practised together, you have begun to be aware of our more habitual human mode of mind – Doing – our human tendency of planning, problem-solving and rumination, our urge to action.
Our busy mind, sometimes referred to as the monkey mind, has a tendency to scamper off, looking for bananas and fending off imaginary foes. As we begin to sit in stillness, in meditation, we often become painfully aware of this. It can be helpful to remind ourselves, at this point that, in mindfulness, we are not attempting to still the mind or to turn off thinking. Rather, we are intending to simply notice where our attention is and, when we notice the mind has wandered, bring it back, kindly and firmly to our intended focus of attention.
So, in today's episode, our practice will be a 20-minute sitting practice. We will begin in the familiar territory of arriving with the body and the breath before resting attention in the realms of sound and thought. As we do this we may notice the natural tendency of all phenomena, be it sensations, sounds or thoughts, to arise, stay around for a while and in their own time pass by, being with the changing landscape of our minds in this way.
As Jon Kabat-Zinn, developer of the MBSR programme acknowledged, mindfulness may be simple but it’s not always easy. So, with that in mind, there’s an invitation to be with ourselves with great kindness and patience as we observe the antics of the monkey mind and bring our attention back again and again, as many times as we need to. Mindfulness is the invitation to begin again, and again, and again so join Kate in episode 4 as we put this into practice.
Time Stamps:
(00:00) introduction
(07:20) 20 minute sitting practice
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Just a quick disclaimer:
This podcast is intended as an ongoing support resource to anyone who has attended an 8-week Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction or Mindfulness-Based Cognitive Therapy course or similar.
It may also serve as an introduction or a resource to support the continuation of a budding meditation practice.
However, we believe that there is no replacement for attending a live 8-week group which offers the alchemy of group learning alongside the real-time support of a qualified teacher.
If you would like to practice mindfulness with me, you can find out more about me and the courses I offer at the Realise website below.
And remember any information you hear on this podcast, see on the Realise Mindfulness website, Facebook page, LinkedIn, Instagram, YouTube or SoundCloud is for information purposes only and should never be a substitute for actual mental and/or medical advice from a doctor, psychiatrist or any other health professional.