Mindfulness of Thoughts

To help us practice gaining perspective on our thoughts. Part of the Stress Reduction work I do as a Mindfulness Teacher.

Transcript

Mindfulness of thoughts meditation.

So coming into an upright position with your back straight but relaxed,

Dignified feeling the floor or chair or cushion beneath you supporting you feeling gravity holding you,

The earth receiving you gently allowing the body to become still gently allowing the body to become still and then gently bringing our attention onto the body,

Onto the breathing breathing in and breathing out noticing the belly expanding and gently coming back to neutral expanding and gently coming back to neutral bringing curiosity and kindness onto our experience moment by moment noticing wherever you feel most in the breathing process and taking your attention there simply breathing in and breathing out taking our attention down onto the contact with the ground beneath our legs,

Our feet,

Our buttocks grounding ourselves,

Earthing ourselves and particularly on each out-breath sort of discharging any tensions any emotions down into the ground and then in our own time we're just going to gently expand our awareness and then we're going to focus expand our awareness to include thoughts and just allowing any thoughts to come and go to see our thoughts as a bubbling stream to see our thoughts as a bubbling stream if we find we have many thoughts we can try imagining standing beneath a powerful waterfall the waterfall falling down on our heads feeling the effect,

The power and then at some point we realise we can take a step backwards and as we do so the waterfall is still there powerful,

Very close but now we're outside the waterfall,

We can see it and if at any moment our mind wanders off at some point we will realise at that moment we have awareness and with that awareness we can choose and we might choose to come back gently escorting the attention back to the breath making the breath the centre,

The focus of attention again and then again expanding our attention beyond the breath to include the whole of the body sitting,

Contact with a chair or cushion perhaps the touch of clothes on your body sensation of temperature noticing how sensations change changing in intensity shift and pass away as new sensations arise like the breath,

They have a beginning,

A middle and an end and with this expanded awareness taking in our thoughts and we just gently try to look at our thoughts rather than from our thoughts an expanded awareness just letting our awareness expand into the thinking,

The realm of thought seeing thoughts not as distractions but rather bringing your awareness to the thinking process itself noticing how thoughts arise,

Stay and then dissolve beginning,

Middle,

An end beginning,

Middle,

An end so not getting lost in the contents of the thoughts allowing thoughts to be in the foreground of awareness and in the background sounds,

Body sensations and the breath so with this expanded awareness of thoughts I'm just going to suggest some images which you may find useful just imagining a cinema screen and try and see your thoughts projected as images onto that screen looking at our thoughts rather than from our thoughts some of our films will be short and others very long try and see if you can identify your top ten favourite films and then gently redirecting our attention back onto the body and onto the breath coming back into the moment the ground beneath us the sensations in the body and again gently expanding our awareness onto the thoughts and now just try and see the thoughts as a train as each carriage passes a thought do we just let it pass?

Or do we find ourselves jumping aboard and being taken on a ride and sometimes we will realise and sometimes we will be in very different territory from where we started out from and with awareness comes choice and we might choose to step down from the train stepping back into the now coming back onto the breath opening up to any tension or difficulty and then with an out breath letting that go breathing in to the body and breathing out down into the ground breathing in and breathing out and just try and imagining a big blue sky stretching in all directions and just try and see our thoughts as clouds some small white fluffy clouds other big dark thunder clouds observing,

Watching remembering that the big blue sky is always there and sooner or later the clouds will move on and with the big blue sky comes freedom and choice and gently coming back onto the breath,

Onto the breathing,

Breathing in and breathing out feeling the earth beneath us taking our awareness out into the room and in our own time gently bringing the meditation to a close

Reviews

Very powerful meditation for me. Thank you

Great mediation. Looking forward to doing it again

Very well guided.
Soothing voice.
One of my favourites, thanks for sharing it ❤️

Another very effective meditation.. loved it! Thank you🙏🏻

Loved this meditation 🙏🏽

Wonderful, thank you

Really calm, with good techniques. Loved it.

Everyone should try, great guidance. Thank you Bodhin.

Thank you for sharing this wonderful guide on thoughts

Great meditation before going to work😊😊😊thankyou

Namaste! Loved it it got me focused on thing that matter and put out the negative

Thank you
Aum shanti 🙏🏽

Great pace and balance

An excellent mindfulness meditation. Bookmarked. Thank you so much. 🙏💜

Just what I needed tonight. Thank you.

Calm & relaxing.

Great visualization of thoughts. Definitely coming back to this one.

Absolutely beautiful meditation, loved how he made me full aware on the beginning of my thoughts as they come to the surface, in the middle and follow them to the end. I will continue to use this techniques for my kundalini Sadhana and students in tve future ❤️ sat nam, wahe guru! 🙌🏼👌🏼😀😍

I am going to use this meditation to practice a form of breathing that is powerful if we do it everyday for 20 minutes

Peaceful progression🌴

I enjoyed this. Thank you! Namaste