Work With Distraction - Ksantikara

A guided meditation for responding skilfully to distractions. These distractions could be mental, emotional, or in our external environment. Ksantikara explains how distractions are likely to arise during meditation and guides us in practical methods for bringing our minds back to our present and direct experience.

Transcript

Hello,

My name's Kishanti Kara and I'm sitting here in the basement shrine room of the London Buddha Centre.

And today we're going to be doing a guided meditation of about 20 minutes that works specifically with distraction.

So it'd be ideal if you could find a quiet,

Comfortable place to sit,

Perhaps on a chair,

Perhaps on a cushion or a stool,

But something like a dining room chair would be absolutely fine.

Placing your feet on the ground,

Making sure your hands are supported in your lap or a cushion,

And making sure your mobile is on do not disturb.

So I'll give you a few moments to set yourself up.

So yeah,

In this meditation we're going to be working with distraction,

But really that's going to be a feature of meditating almost every time.

When we sit down to meditate,

We encounter our mind as it actually is right now.

We close our eyes and we engage with our direct experience.

Our minds might be whirring with anxiety,

Frantically making lists,

Or it might be littered with ill will,

Creating arguments with partners,

Friends or perhaps bosses.

This is a feature of human existence,

Craving and aversion,

Wanting things and pushing other things away.

And in our meditation,

This often manifests as distractions.

We'll be distracting ourselves with conversations,

Perhaps with fantasy,

Perhaps with planning.

And all of these are a feature of wanting things and pushing things away,

Craving and aversion.

And craving and aversion often have a bodily counterpart.

When you want something you sort of tense up.

When you push something away,

You can also feel a kind of tension,

Can't you?

So we'll begin this guided meditation in a moment by taking a good while to come into our bodies and relaxing tension where we can.

And hopefully by doing so,

We can allow craving and aversion,

Wanting things and pushing things away to dissipate slightly,

We can start to put down our distractions.

But while we do this meditation,

It's really important that we remember that being distracted is going to be a feature of our meditation practice.

This side of being enlightened,

Our minds are likely to be distracted.

So why don't we enjoy it?

Get to know your mind.

What are you distracted by?

How can you work with it?

Congratulate yourself every time you notice that you've gone off in a meditation,

And then come back to your breath,

Come back to your body and resolve to start the meditation from where you are.

So if you haven't already,

Why don't you close your eyes?

And as soon as your eyes are closed,

Settling into your posture,

Giving your weight to the ground or the chair,

Sinking down heavy into the ground.

Nothing to do right now but sit here.

You can imagine yourself like a mountain sinking into the ground whilst rising into the sky.

And noticing the muscles of your face.

All day long we use our faces to express ourselves.

But right now we can just let all that go.

Is there a sense of tightness around your eyes?

Or around your lips or your mouth?

Are you clenching your jaw?

Just allow your face to smooth out.

Softening that holding on around the eyes and the mouth.

Letting go of holding on and clenching your jaw.

Next,

Taking your awareness to your shoulders.

Just see if you can let them go.

With your hands supported on your lap or a cushion,

You can really let go of the weight of your arms.

You can allow your shoulder blades to fall down your back,

Opening your chest up slightly.

Just see if you can open the gap between your neck and your shoulder.

Just allow yourself to drop.

And then next,

Noticing any holding on in your belly.

Many of us will have a tendency to hold our bellies in and upwards slightly.

So once again,

Just see if you can let that go.

Maybe you could notice the breath and its effect on your belly.

You can see if that helps you to relax.

Are you holding or bracing on in your legs?

Often it can feel like we're ready to get up at a moment's notice.

But we're safe now.

Nobody's going to surprise us.

We can just completely give our weight to the ground.

There's no need to have any sense of bracing in our legs or in our thighs.

Combing through our bodies,

Our face,

Shoulders,

Belly and thighs.

Noticing any holding on or tension.

And smoothing it out and letting go of it where we can.

Sinking down into the ground and yet rising into the sky.

Now you can start to gather your awareness around your breath.

There's no need to change your breath at all.

See if you can gather your awareness around your breath while keeping hold of this relaxed body.

Noticing the breath as it comes in and out.

No need to change the pace of your breath.

Just placing your awareness there.

And as you have this awareness of your breath in the foreground of your experience,

Try and keep an awareness in the background of your body.

Your softened face,

Relaxed shoulders,

Your belly and your thighs.

Feel a subtle awareness of your body in the background of your experience as in the foreground of your experience.

If you're particularly distracted or you can't get interest in your breath,

Then we could use some numbers.

You can allow the breath to come in and out and mark it with a 1.

In and out.

2.

In and out.

3.

Seeing if you can count to 10 and then starting again at 1.

Marking each out breath with a number.

But once again there's no need to change your breath.

Just leave it as it is but gather your attention around it.

Whenever we find we're distracted in meditation,

We can always come back to the experience of our body.

Comb through our face,

Shoulders,

Belly,

Thighs,

Softening tension where we can.

Return to the sensations of our breath as they come in and out.

1.

In and out.

2.

Starting to 10 and then starting again at 1.

So we can always come back to the body.

We can always come back to using our breath as we're using these numbers.

I'll leave that to you.

But when you feel concentrated enough,

Leave the numbers behind.

Just notice the breath as it comes in and out of your body.

What is it like to hold that broad awareness of your breath and your body as the breath comes in and out?

Eva.

So again,

As you follow the breath,

Place your awareness on your breath with this broad awareness,

You may find that you're distracted.

Your mind's gone elsewhere.

So that's fine.

There's no need to be despondent.

And it's really not helpful to add another layer of thought on top of your distraction.

So don't worry about it.

You've noticed you're distracted.

Congratulate yourself for noticing.

You're taking the meditation seriously.

You're working with your mind.

Just return to your body.

Take your time to settle back into your posture.

Then once again,

Gather your awareness around your breath.

And if it helps,

You can use the number at the end of each out breath.

But maybe you won't need to.

So when you get distracted,

Congratulate yourself for noticing and coming back to the meditation.

Nothing to do right now but sit here.

Settling into your body.

Becoming aware of your breath.

Just noticing the quality of your mind.

We can work with distraction by noticing and then coming back to our body and our breath.

Perhaps you'll have to keep doing this again and again.

Or perhaps you're rather concentrated.

I'm just going to leave you for the last few moments of the meditation.

The last few minutes to work with your mind on your own.

So if you get distracted,

Come back to your body.

Relaxing tension where you can.

Gather your awareness around your breath.

If you need to,

You can place a number at the end of each out breath.

Just enjoying the simple pleasure of sitting here quietly with nothing to do but noticing the quality of your mind and working with your distractions by building an awareness of your body and your breath.

Then just before we close this meditation,

You can stop any effort you're making.

There's no need to be aware of your body or to gather your awareness around your breath.

Spend this last few moments,

No need to make any more effort,

Just noticing the effect of your meditation.

How did it go working with distraction?

What does your mind feel like now?

What is your experience like now?

Twenty minutes on from when we started meditating together.

Ac Ion levels Great.

Well,

I've enjoyed meditating with you.

Well done for sitting this through right to the end.

And remember that meditation will always have distraction in it.

It's not unique to you.

The art of meditation is learning how to work with it.

So don't give up.

See you again soon.

Reviews

Interestingly, once I did the body scan my mental activity dropped out. I did experience distraction in the form of return of tension whenever I wasn't sure where the facilitator was going next, but my breathing focus enabled me to let that go quickly.

What useful guidance! Thank you so much, I am really grateful for your meditations on this app.

I found that a very useful meditation that I can return to regularly

Thank you for this wonderful meditation! ☺️🙏🏼

Grateful

amazing meditation that works through our distractions!

Thank you.

Thank you.

This is what I need and needed. Thsnk you indeed.

Thank you so much, Ksantikhara.
Dealt with my current distraction by aligning body and breath.
Something I have experienced occasionally.
🙏Namaste🙏

I've been struggling with distractions in my meditation in recent weeks and this was just what I needed. Really good guidance and encouragement. Thank you.