thinking

How to Start a Mindfulness Practice, Part 3

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.

How to Calm Your Mind, Part 2

(video 12:04min) In Part 1 we covered the idea that when we’re practicing mindfulness, and when we’re being mindful we’re going to keep thinking… And that actually we WANT to think (gasp!).

And now we want to know why we’re told during practice that we should “let go of our thoughts”? If thinking is ok, then why do we need to let go of it?

Great question! On to Part 2!

Is Mindfulness Helping You Think Too Much?

A colleague shared recently that she has to help her clients stop obsessing over their thoughts because they meditate on them so much they’re obsessed with them!

As someone who was addicted to thinking I totally understand!

I imagine this can happen when we lose sight of the point of meditating, which is to focus on the present, and instead use it as an excuse to focus on our thoughts. This could be easy to do, especially since most of us are addicted to thinking to begin with.