Mindfulness and Meditation

Mindfulness practice was originally offered by the Buddha as a method by which we could directly observe our own minds at work and learn at first hand how we create pain and frustration from the way we use our wonderful minds. A clear understanding of mindfulness and its relationship to meditation can help us to awaken.

Transcript

I'd like to talk a little bit now about mindfulness and meditation.

These are much misunderstood these days.

As the term has become more and more popular,

So it's also become.

.

.

More and more,

I believe,

Misunderstood.

I first encountered.

.

.

Clinical mindfulness meditation,

Mindfulness meditation used in clinical context.

In the early 2000s at a university where I was studying for a master's degree in Wales,

I did a master's in the.

.

.

Clinical applications of mindfulness.

I was hugely excited because I'd been meditating for years and now suddenly there was a master's.

A secular master is teaching people how to use meditation for people who are subject to relapsing depression or who are anxiety.

Or chronic pain or other condition stress.

And that was wonderful.

What it was doing was taking this stuff which previously had lived in exclusively Buddhist contexts and bringing it out into the world.

And finding a language for it,

Talking about it in ways that were very,

Very amenable,

Very,

Very accessible.

And that was wonderful.

So I started to teach eventually on that program,

Having graduated,

And I was mainly teaching clinicians in our National Health Service.

Training them in the use of mindfulness in clinical contexts.

And I did that for several years.

Eventually,

I moved out of that field and started also to work with executive coaches and then eventually business executives and developed mindful leadership training.

But that's another story.

As mindfulness was coming out of the Buddhist retreat centers and the urban Buddhist centers.

Into a kind of mainstream environment.

So it was becoming better and better and better known.

When I first started to teach it,

It was like pushing water uphill.

I'm here to talk about mindfulness.

What's that?

Now everybody thinks they know about it.

There have been this has been driven a large part by apps as well as books But the apps have made a massive difference.

And I meet so many people these days who've at least experimented.

With doing some meditation guided by a mindfulness app.

And that's great.

It's lovely.

Unfortunately,

Where this is often gone is towards mindfulness for relaxation.

How to use these techniques and these methods in order to chill out a bit.

And the sad downside of that is that sometimes,

And maybe even pretty often,

People find that they try to listen to guidance on an app to.

.

.

Still the chattering minds.

It doesn't happen.

And very often people get into fights with themselves about,

I just couldn't do this.

I tried,

I tried,

I tried,

I tried to get rid of my thoughts,

I tried to empty my mind,

Couldn't do it.

And mindfulness as a kind of meme,

As an idea in the culture,

Is associated with chilling.

Zen,

Relaxation,

Kind of spa days.

On the one hand,

Or emptying your mind,

Getting rid of your thoughts on the other.

You can buy bath salts,

Branded as mindfulness bath salts,

You know.

You can buy aromatherapy oils,

Branded as mindfulness aromatherapy oils.

None of this has got anything to do the original intention of mindfulness.

Where it was taught as a liberative technique,

A technique to free people.

From.

.

.

Attachment to.

Troubling nature.

Of their own minds.

To see into.

To see their own minds at work and to come to understand the nature of mind.

And to understand how they can begin to do things differently.

So that they come to have a different kind of mind.

And this is not the same as just chilling out.

This is a deep inquiry.

Into the mind that you have.

So deep first hand.

Kind of neuroscience experiment,

We might say.

It's a first-person neuroscience experiment.

With real dedicated mindfulness practice,

What you do is you turn the lens of attention through 180 degrees.

And instead of just looking at the world through your mind,

As it were,

You look at your mind.

You begin to observe this mind.

Producing this experience.

You get to see how this mind produces this experience.

You come to see that at first hand.

You observe.

The process by which you are probably over and again,

Generating frustration.

Often anxiety or unhappiness for yourself.

In the way in which you are using.

Wonderful mind that you have.

With many people.

Would find.

When they come to really engage with mindfulness practice.

So how does this work?

The first step.

.

.

For 99.

999% of people.

Is let go of the idea of stopping the default network I spoke about earlier.

Just not gonna happen.

For some time,

That's not going to happen.

Now,

I have met in my life one or two really exceptional people.

Who turn up at a meditation class,

Sit down cross-legged on the floor or in a chair,

Close their eyes and .

It's wonderful.

Great to be there.

Very,

Very rare.

For most of us,

We sit down,

We close our eyes,

And we become aware of inner chatter.

And the secret here is to not think of this as wrong.

Not think of this as a problem.

But to think of this as aha,

I am now doing the business.

I am seeing this mind at work.

I am seeing how this mind is working and I'm learning to get some choice.

Learning to get some choice.

So it goes in the initial stages like this.

You sit down to meditate.

Focus on the breath,

Perhaps.

You're with the breath for one breath,

For two breaths.

And off you go.

Thinking,

Thinking,

Thinking.

Then you notice that you're thinking.

You notice that you're thinking.

Consider how rare that is,

How rare it is that we actually notice ourselves in the process of thinking.

Most of the time,

We're just thinking,

Thinking,

Thinking,

Thinking,

You know,

Standing at a bus stop waiting for a bus and just thinking,

Thinking,

Thinking about any kind of stuff,

The default mode network chattering away.

We rarely know that we're doing this.

But in this context,

We've set up the conditions for noticing.

And in these conditions,

We see,

Aha,

I'm thinking.

I didn't mean to be thinking.

I meant to be meditating.

So we bring our attention back to the breath,

With the breath for another breath.

Another breath and then buff off we go again thinking thinking thinking we don't know that we're thinking but then We notice and we bring our attention.

Now,

Whenever we notice we're readily able to bring our attention back until we notice Forget it.

You're just on automatic.

You're just thinking.

It's this act of noticing what you're up to that enables you to enact a choice.

Noticing.

And choosing.

Noticing choosing.

You notice that you're thinking,

You choose to come back to the breath.

You notice that you're thinking.

You choose to come back to the breath.

You do this over and over and over again.

Now this act of noticing we call meta-awareness.

Awareness of what is happening within the space of awareness.

And it's really wonderful.

It's rare and wonderful to have moments of matter aware.

And the exciting thing here is that matter awareness enables choice.

Without meta-awareness,

It's impossible to choose.

It doesn't make sense to speak of choice without meta awareness.

You're just automatically doing stuff.

When you notice.

.

.

You can choose.

So there's that.

The other thing is that matter awareness accumulates.

Here's a basic of neuroscience.

Neurons that fire together,

Wire together.

Any action which we perform repeatedly builds the neural networks that are involved in that action.

The more moments of matter awareness we accumulate,

The more we build the neural networks that support matter awareness.

So your mind wanders,

Just thinking,

Thinking,

Thinking.

You notice it.

Bang,

Matter awareness.

Come back to the breath.

Again,

Matter of awareness.

Come back.

Again.

Do that over and over and over.

Now you do that 20 times or 50 times in the course of a 10-15 minute meditation,

Whatever,

It doesn't change anything.

Accumulate 10,

000.

Moments of matter awareness because you're doing the practice repeatedly.

You're now starting to build the neural networks involved.

In certain kinds of matter awareness.

And that plays out not only in the meditation,

But outside of it as well.

You're more readily able to see what you're up to.

Inside your own mind,

To see what you're up to and to make a choice.

See what you're up to and make a choice.

Now,

That capacity to be aware of what you're up to while you're up to it,

I've called matter awareness.

Another word for it might be mindfulness.

That may be what mindfulness is really all about.

Mindfulness is the ability to be aware of what you're up to while you're up to it.

So I've sometimes spoken about mindfulness as being The ability to choose what you pay attention to.

The ability to choose how you pay attention to it with an attitude of kindness,

Considerateness,

Care and love.

Allowing tolerance,

How you're paying attention to what's shown up.

And the capacity to.

.

.

Take.

Accurate view.

On what it is that you're paying attention to.

And by taking an accurate view of what it is that you're paying attention to,

I mean this.

I mean seeing that your thoughts are just thoughts.

Seeing that your feelings in the moment are just processes of proprioception and thinking.

Coming together in certain ways,

Or interoception and thinking,

Coming together in certain ways,

Interoception and thinking.

Coming together in certain ways to see what is going on.

Understand your inner processes from the inside and to read them accurately and appropriately.

So mindfulness is choosing what you pay attention to,

How you pay attention to it,

And the view you take of what it is that you're paying attention to.

And You build it from where I'm coming.

The most effective way of building this capacity is the regular practice of mindfulness meditation.

Just take some time.

10 minutes or more each day.

To sit down,

Pay attention to the breath,

See what's going on,

Notice what's happening.

Don't get dispirited by the fact that you're thinking.

Recognize that this is beneficial to see what you're thinking,

To see what you're up to.

Come back to the brand.

Over and over and over again.

I'm going to publish some audio guidance for people who are interested if you want to follow one of my meditations.

So it's really a simple procedure,

But it has huge consequences.

If you.

.

.

Practicing mindfulness meditation for many years or for a good stretch of time.

Gradually,

Gradually as your capacity to practice extends.

You may find.

That you're able to begin to calm the default network.

And enter into a different set of processes altogether.

And that's a whole nother story.

Which we'll explore in another video.

Reviews

Very helpful!
I have sent this to a couple friends.

Great talk, thank you! I guess a lot of people get the concept of Mindfulness wrong, is due to consumeralism and marketing, and choosing the ”wrong” teachers. Same as with yoga, people think yoga is asanas only. The westerners are exercising and thinking it’s yoga. Instead we should go to the source. Learn mindfulness from a buddhist monk, yoga from an older indian hatha yoga teacher. Not from a 25y old in 200€ leggings 😅✌🏼🪷 Just keep it simple to start with.

Brilliant explanation of what is and what is not mindfulness! This is definitely going to help my practice. Thank you so much Michael !

Blessed beautiful greatful actor singer model Christian amen 🙏

Thank you
I’ve found it very difficult to explain what mindfulness is .
Very helpful talk

I love how wonderfully clear this is explained, even for the "trained" mediators. Very encouraging too! Thank you 🌞