What Is A Support In Meditation?

When you first start out you will hear the word 'support' often and it may be a little confusing for you in the beginning. Listen to this short explanation that can help you to get started with your meditation practice.

Transcript

So if you've ever tried mindfulness meditation before through an app or reading a book you probably always come across this expression and now let's return to our support and if you're not too sure what that actually means returning to your support of breath or sound or body has quite a dramatic effect on the mind and the body. So we can live in several different time zones we can live in the past the present and the future and these time zones take our attention they take our awareness and minds can wander we can get actively involved in these past or future thoughts it can be quite colorful fantasies they can be quite emotional past events but whatever they all do they all do the same thing which is take us away from the present moment so coming back to the support of breath sound or body simply means to remind ourselves that what we've actually done we've noticed that we have been distracted which is quite good it shows awareness is starting to develop but we need to find a way to come back to the present moment and we use the support of breathing which is happening right now we use the support of sound which is around us right now and we use the support of body which is with us right now to come back to the present moment and learn to kind of hang around in that space for a while learning to let go in the present moment with the understanding and acceptance that the mind will wander off again that's what it does so it's a bit like a little young puppy in that if we have a puppy in a room and we just leave it to its own devices it will walk around making a mess chewing everything not listening to instruction yeah thinking probably absolutely nothing but being distracted by every single noise or every single bright color that it comes across and we find it very difficult to control that little dog but if we were to put a lead around the little dog at the puppy and when the puppy was to wander off like it will like it does then we can assert a little bit of gentle control just a gentle kind tug or pull on the lead just to remind us I don't think so come back here and sit with me and over time the puppy learns a new routine and in time as the puppy grows we can release the lead we can release that support and allow the dog to just wander off but with training with regular input the dog begins to know when it's time to return back to the owner or it responds to instruction when you ask the dog to come here to sit down to listen to me and it will recognize that as an instruction and it as something it can do just like the mind if we train it to come back to the support of breathing sound or to the body it starts to learn the routine it becomes normal so two things start to happen in our world which is being studied and it and it has been shown that we are aware some of the time and then we're not aware some of the time yeah so it would be a good idea to be aware more of the time and that comes about with regular practice and teaching the mind to return on purpose with kindness back to this support of breathing sound or the body