When I was stuck in the “trap” of my mind, there were two things that got me out.
Training my ability to focus my mind – which eventually leads to being able to focus on my “larger” mind (the rest of me).
And training being aware of myself, or noticing that I’m (here in this body-mind) focusing – which naturally leads to an awareness of my “larger” self (the rest of me).
For example, I might practice focusing on my hand. And while I’m doing that, I also practice keeping in mind that I’m sitting here looking at my hand. Simple.
This two part practice will naturally reconnect you with the rest of you. You’re dropping your fixation on your thoughts and letting yourself become aware of the rest of you. It’s just a matter of time. And then you’ll need to keep practicing it to create the new habit of “larger” awareness (vs collapsing your attention back down into only your thoughts).
If it sounds esoteric or mysterious in any way, I apologise. It’s not. It’s just like remembering to use both hands to pick stuff up… You’ve got two of them… Why not use them both?
I know, for most of us the idea that we’re not our thoughts, emotions and sensations sounds ludicrous at best.
Someone telling you that is either insane or trying to sell you something. Or maybe trying to get you to join something (which is the same thing really).
I mean, for most of us we are our thoughts! That is completely our experience. And saying it’s not is irrational – it’s denying reality!
It’s nuts!
Except that it’s crazy-making, all this stuff in your head, and you want out. Maybe they know something you don’t?
But how can that be?! You’re in the same reality that they are, how can you be missing something so fundamental?
Well, it’s not that you’re missing anything, exactly… It’s just that you’re so busy paying attention to your thoughts and feelings that you’re not noticing the rest of you. You’re just missing the larger picture because you’re busy focusing on a small part of it, and you’ve done it so well and for so long (most of your life!) that you’ve actually forgotten that you can do anything else!
You’re literally out of the habit of exercising the other parts of you. It’s like if you only used one of your two healthy arms. If you did that long enough, if you focused exclusively on the one arm that you used, you’d likely completely forget that the other arm existed. Now who’s crazy? :)
So, you don’t believe that huge parts of you are here because you’re not using them. Because you’re using your mind and feelings exclusively. Of course you don’t know what people are talking about when they tell you to use your other arm! It makes sense. Your other arm, your bigger self, isn’t part of your experience (anymore).
The good news, is that if this makes sense to you and you want to play with it, you can get it back. In fact it hasn’t gone anywhere! Just like your arm, it’s still a part of you. You just need to stop focusing exclusively on your thoughts and feelings and notice the rest of you.
Thinking about something else during your practice? Maybe you were lost in thought the whole time until your timer went off and reminded you you were supposed to be practicing? That totally happens to me sometimes! Like this whole week! Yikes!
One way to deal with this is to give your mind something else to focus on. That will help keep it interested in the practice you’re doing.
Mindfulness Can Be Boring!
A big problem that most of us have is that our breath is totally boring! After a few seconds our mind goes, “Man! Where are problems to solve? The videos and movies to watch? What fun is this? I want something to do! I know! I’ll think about this…” and you’re off, lost in thought, totally oblivious to your breath.
Most of the time, I just tell myself (and you) to return to your breath. To come back to noticing your breath whenever you notice that you’re lost in thought. For many of us that’s when we complete the thought, solve the problem or finish the story. At that moment you can rejoice that suddenly you’re aware of yourself (the point of practicing mindfulness! Yay!).
And what happens if you’re so lost in thought that you spend the entirepractice thinking about something else?! This whole week, I’ve been coming to at the end of my practice and realizing that I’ve been lost the entire time! Yikes!
Giving Your Mind Something Else to Do
What’s a meditator to do? After a whole week of this, I realized that I needed to change something! So I remembered a trick I used to use when I first started meditating. This worked really well for me then and it’s working well now, too.
Here’s what I do: I slightly shift my focus to give my mind something slightly new to do. It’s like having a new problem to solve. It works especially well if there’s something to count or quantify. Here are some examples.
Practices To Play With
If you’re focusing on your breath, change from say noticing the qualities of your breath (depth, speed, sensation, etc) to counting your breath. My mind goes, “Oh! You want me to count! Ok! This is something to do! Great!” You can go the other way too. If counting is boring you, change to noticing the qualities. Notice things like how deep or shallow you’re breathing. Or how fast or slow. Or what sensations you can feel. Or the sounds of breathing. Here’s a free guided breathing practice for noticing general qualities (vs counting).
Another example would be if you’re working with your eyes open, you can go from a specific focus, say on the candle in front of you, to soft eyes or noticing your whole field of vision (soften your gaze so that you’re not looking at anything in particular and notice everything in your peripheral vision). Or the other way round, going from soft to specific. You can follow a free guided meditation for having your eyes open here.
In the video I talk about changing up a sound practice if you’d like to try that (also free).
Contra Indications – Things to keep in mind.
Of course, you can also plow through, don’t change your practice at all and know that at some point you will be able to focus again. Someday your mind will settle down and you will be able to focus on your breath during your practice.
In general that’s good advice, especially since the object is to learn to focus and tricking yourself into focusing will only work for so long or so well…
Ultimately you can’t use your mind to meditate. You want to use that larger part of yourself, that part that you naturally access when you’re noticing yourself. This part, when you’re observing, witnessing or noticing yourself, is “larger” than your mind, and that’s really what you want to access. Changing up your practice to help your mind focus is really just a way to get your mind to calm down a bit so that you can notice yourself.
Keeping the Ultimate Goal In Mind
If it helps you be less frustrated when you practice, then play with slightly changing your focus. Keep in mind that when you change your focus, you want to be aware of yourself focusing, à la, “I’m here counting my breath.” or “I’m here looking at this candle.” and you’ll be accessing that larger part of you. You’ll be observing or noticing yourself. Awesome. You’re mindful.
I hope that helps you! Now I just have to follow my own advice! It worked earlier this week, and then I just got excited about the problems I was solving and left my practice in the dust… Ah, the life of a meditator! Sometimes it’s easy and other times it’s fun to see what crazy things we get up to, hey?
When you’re practicing mindfulness, inevitably you start thinking about something… that thing that happened yesterday, what you want to happen tomorrow, what you think about sitting here, etc.
This is actually a good thing… It means you’re alive and you’re not brain dead. (Congratulations!) Just like your heart beating, as long as you’re alive, your brain is going to be active and your mind is going to think. This is natural and normal and an important part of being alive: it’s how you’re able to understand yourself and your environment (on a mental level).
Distracted By Thoughts
The only issue is that it’s easy to get distracted by our thoughts to the point that we’re no longer noticing that we’re practicing. For example, if we’re sitting in our room, practicing being aware of our breath (which is a fancy way of saying that we’re noticing ourself inhale and exhale), it’s easy to get so caught up in our thoughts about that super annoying guy and that ridiculous thing he said at work yesterday, that we completely forget that we’re actually sitting here breathing. We lose touch with our physical bodies, and transport ourselves in time and space to work, yesterday! Mentally, we’re totally unaware of the room we’re sitting in – we’re at work!
We do this all of the time. We’re physically in one place and yet totally unaware of it, because mentally we’re thinking about being in another place. This is a classic example of being “lost in thought.” This doesn’t bother most people too much. You may only really notice it when you’re practicing. You complete your thought (“Next time he says that, I’m gonna say this!”), your mind returns to you sitting here, and “Oops! I’m thinking about something else and I’m supposed to be watching my breath!”
Immediately, you (likely) think that you’re not practicing well. You’ve been told to notice your breath, and you just caught yourself doing something else! Oops. Bad.
Aware of Thoughts
Well, actually, not bad. Good! Here’s a secret: if you’re practicing mindfulness because you want to be more aware of yourself, more present throughout your day, that means that you need to build the muscle of being aware of yourself even when you’re thinking. Functionally, that means that you stay aware of yourself sitting in the room while you’re thinking about work. Your thought process works something like this, “I’m sitting here watching my breath AND I notice that I’m also thinking about work.” In other words, you’re thinking about work while still aware that you’re sitting there.
You can do this now, by reading the next sentence while being aware that you’re sitting there reading it. Notice that your body is in whatever space you’re in (or how your feet feel on the floor) while you read this.
Even simpler, look around you right now and be aware of your body sitting here while you do it. Think/be aware that, “I’m sitting here in this place looking around.” Easy. (Please do it if you haven’t. Otherwise, you might have no idea what I’m talking about, and that experience is really important to understanding the next sentence.)
How does it work?
This is exactly what you do with awareness of thoughts. You just stay aware of yourself (your body if you like) while you’re thinking. Basically, “I’m (sitting) here, thinking this thought.” That’s exactly what you did above when you were aware of yourself while reading.
It’s pretty easy to be aware of ourselves while looking around (seeing what’s in front of us). It’s much harder to stay aware of ourselves while we’re thinking (for very long). This is because we’re so used to distracting ourselves (from where we are physically) with our thoughts. You start thinking about work, and you totally ignore where your body is. It’s habit. We’re incredibly good at distracting ourselves with our thoughts. Even if someone is talking directly to you, you can go off in your head, thinking about something else, and completely miss a whole paragraph of what the person is saying to you. Distraction is a strong muscle. We exercise it a lot.
And if there is any problem with thinking during practice, this is it. It’s that we get distracted from noticing (ourselves). We stop being aware and we start being distracted.
So how is thinking during practice good?
Well, that moment that you notice, “Hey, I’m supposed to be noticing my breath, but instead I’m thinking about something else,” is a moment of perfect awareness. You’ve just accomplished the difficult task of being aware of yourself while you’re thinking! Super!
The secret is that every time you do that, you’ve just exercised a new muscle. The muscle of awareness while thinking. And as you exercise this new muscle, the muscle of distraction will naturally get weaker.
Being aware of ourselves (sitting here) while we’re thinking, is really tough, so every time you get distracted and come back and notice that you’re thinking, you’ve just won the jackpot! Every time this happens you can celebrate! This is a challenging muscle to build, so every time you do it is a gift of pure gold…
So, next time you practice, if you get distracted a million times, realize that you’ve just given yourself a million times to experience mental awareness! Wow! Such riches!
Next time your mind is going crazy, be grateful. Every time you come back and realize that you’re thinking about something else, you’ve won the lottery. You’re giving yourself the gift of strengthening this new muscle of awareness.
If your goal for mindfulness practice is to be more mindful (present, aware, conscious), then the first thing to remember is that good or bad practice isn’t defined by how calm your mind or emotions are.
What?!
I know. Most of us fall into that trap of thinking a calm mind means we’re having a good practice and a busy mind means bad practice.
It’s tricky because there’s a lot of (mis)information out there that says the goal of mindfulness practice is to calm your mind. And, of course, then you naturally think that should be calming your mind when you practice. Calm mind = good practice. Busy mind = bad practice.
Frankly, it’d just not true. The goal is awareness. Not a calm mind. (Realize: Your mind can be totally crazy and you can be aware of it.)
Then it get’s even trickier!:
One of the side effects of mindfulness practice is a calm mind. And the more we practice, the more it happens.
AND it’s so enjoyable when it happens that we can start to make it the goal.
The problem is that it’s an unreachable goal, so if you start to make it your goal you will fail. Why? Because it’s your mind creating this as a goal. Your mind thinks it wants to calm itself, and this is a thought. The mind cannot calm thoughts with more thoughts. It’s sort of like fire trying to put itself out with more fire. Yikes.
What does work is to notice your thoughts, notice “I’m thinking.” By noticing your thoughts, you stop adding to them, you stop fueling the fire and it naturally calms down. This is because the part of you that notices your thoughts is actually larger than, or outside of, your mind. By practicing observing your mind you learn to naturally step outside of it into this bigger part of you. When you step out, you stop adding fuel: you take your foot off of the gas. (If you don’t know what I’m talking about, rest assured that you do this all of the time without realizing it. Stepping into observation or witness mode is natural, you just don’t realize that’s what you’re doing. That’s why we practice this on purpose when we meditate – so that become aware when we’re doing it. Easy.)
This is how you get better at mindfulness: Simply, practice noticing whatever is happening.
Noticing a crazy mind is just as good as noticing a calm mind. The point isn’t to attain calm. The point is to get better and better at noticing, to be more and more aware, more and more conscious of whatever is happening. If you notice that your mind gets calm while you do this, great. If you notice that it gets even more crazy, great. You’re noticing. That’s good practice.
So, notice your crazy thoughts and emotions. Practice being aware of them. Come back to that over and over. You will get better just by doing it. That’s how you make your practice better. Notice.
Are you noticing increased levels of anxiety and depression around you?
I’m sad to say I am. And since those are two common outcomes of modern stress, my first thought was, Oh my God, we’re getting more stressed. Really?!
But, actually I don’t think it’s that. I’m not even sure it’s possible for us to be more stressed, because that would require that we be even more busy, take on more, do more, etc. … and there’re only 24 hours in a day.
What makes more sense to me is that we’re seeing the cumulative effects of all of these years of stress we’ve been enduring. After 5, 10, 20 years of overtaxing our bodies, we’re seeing these results of constant biochemical overload: more anxiety and more depression.
So if that’s what’s happening, the question becomes, is it worth it? Is whatever you’re doing that’s creating this constant stress worth your health and happiness?
That’s a serious question to ask yourself. And it’s not so easy to answer with honesty. Most of us have too many conflicting desires that are as deep as power, control and survival. A few little things to deal with…
What if you do want to move in the direction of more health and happiness? Would it help to start small? What are the little, simple, easy things you can do right now? Today? What things are you willing to do every day? Can you take more breaks, or eat lunch everyday, or relax every day, or, or, or? Can you prioritize you?
It’s an important question to ask yourself. It’s even more important to realize that you make these decisions each day, everyday, all day. You’re constantly prioritizing your health and happiness. Or not. Anxiety and depression aside, stress isn’t a great companion if you want a long and healthy life. And happy? I’m sure happier when I can think straight versus running in circles with my stress reactions. Little steps, everyday help me a lot. Maybe they’ll help you, too.
I had an awesome “Ah-ha!” moment this week! I finally understand what people are talking about when they say that, “Chanting cleans the mind.”
I realized that I could replace the broken record of pain I was spinning and replace it with a song or chant of joy. Ah ha! That’s what they mean! Chanting gives us a chance to replace our unproductive thought loops with something productive! Got it!
You can choose any song or chant or phrase that you like. It doesn’t have to be spiritual or religious – though there are lots of those to choose from if you like! – it can be a pop song! I’ve been singing the line, “You are so beautiful to me.” in my head for years without realizing that I was doing something great for myself. Now I’ll do it on purpose when I want to change a loop.
Pick something that you like that has the feeling or the emotion that you want, and sing or chant it in your head. Don’t worry about how well you sing or how it sounds, because no one will hear it but you! And you’ll be much happier with your uplifting words than the painful ones that were looping around in there before.
Try it out and let me know what you think.
If you’re in Hong Kong, you can chant with Cristina Rodenbeck at her group sessions. Lucky you! You can find her at Manipura Wellness.
She suggested some great chants in English, which you can find on Spotify or Youtube. There are more spiritual and as we like to say are vibration lifting. :)
Here are two: Ancient Mother and Waves of the Sea both by Sacred Earth.
(video: 2:03) Sometimes when I’m willing to look at my fears, to see what’s bothering me, I get overwhelmed with all of the things that I don’t like – everything feels bad! It’s like once I start looking at what I’m not happy about that’s all I can see – more and more things I don’t like!
What can I do about that? I realized that it was really helpful to also look at what I like! Duh!
Balance is key. Then I can still face what’s not working AND not get overwhelmed by it. Shew!
(video 6:33) I often have this dilemma when I’m facing my issues: once I start looking at what’s wrong, EVERYTHING seems wrong! It’s like the whole world seems sour. Negativity takes over. Yikes!
So how can I look at what’s wrong without that taking over everything? How can I look for negativity and not have negativity color everything?
For instance, there were somethings that I was uncomfortable with and I felt that it was a good idea to start admiting outloud that I was uncomfortable – sharing why I was unhappy with the people around me so that they knew what was going on with me. Sounds like a healthy thing to do, right? Except that I started realizing I was uncomfortable with A LOT of things… I started seeing discomfort everywhere! To the point that it was super exaggerated! Argh!
That wasn’t helpful either!
I didn’t have a solution to share, until after I made this video (see the next one). I wanted to share this with you to say if you’re feeling this way you have a friend!!!
Part 3 of 3: The last thing that every beginner needs to know is that you will keep thinking during your mindfulness meditation practice and THAT IS OK! In fact, thinking is an important part of the practice.
Mindfulness meditation + Thinking = Good Mindfulness Practice!
I know you don’t believe me. I know you think you have to stop thinking in order to be mindful. You believe you aren’t practicing mindfulness when you’re thinking. It’s a common myth and one that’s really hard to let go of… I imagine this is because we come to mindfulness thinking that our thoughts are the problem and we want to get rid of them!
Mindfulness doesn’t get rid of our thoughts. Mindfulness helps us work with our thoughts in a way that makes them less of a problem. Mindfulness doesn’t make the problem of thinking go away, mindfulness makes friends with thinking and turns it into something we work with – not against.
What if you’re knee was misaligned and really painful because you’d been walking in a way that hurt it. You probably wouldn’t want to cut it off. Instead, you could work with it, re-train how you walk and eventually re-align your knee. This is how mindfulness works with your thoughts. We don’t try to cut them out, we train ourselves to work with them in a better way.
And you don’t have to believe me! This is the best part. To find out for yourself, practice for a while, and experience for yourself what the present moment includes for you. Notice if you have thoughts and experience if you are able to be aware of yourself thinking. Experience how this begins to change your relationship with your thoughts.
