Mindfulness and Meditation

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 contexts,

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's,

Teaching people how to use meditation for people who are subject to relapsing depression or who had anxiety or chronic pain or other conditions,

Stress.

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.

That was wonderful.

I started to teach eventually on that program having graduated.

I was mainly teaching clinicians in our national health service,

Training them in the use of mindfulness in clinical contexts.

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.

This has been driven a large part by apps as well as books,

But the apps have made a massive difference.

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 has often gone is towards mindfulness for relaxation.

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

The sad downside of that is that sometimes and maybe even pretty often,

They don't work.

People find that they try to listen to guidance on an app to still their 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 they gave up.

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 can buy aromatherapy oils branded as mindfulness aromatherapy oils.

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

Where it was taught as a liberative technique,

A technique to free people from attachment to the 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.

It's a 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 and often anxiety or unhappiness for yourself in the way in which you are using the wonderful mind that you have.

So many people would find when they come to really engage with mindfulness practice.

So how does this work?

Well,

The first step for 99.

999% of people is let go of the idea of stopping the default network I spoke about earlier.

It's just not gonna happen.

For some time that's not gonna 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 that's that.

It's wonderful,

Great to be them,

But 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.

I'm 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.

We're with the breath for another breath and another breath and then both.

Off we go again.

Thinking,

Thinking,

Thinking.

We don't know that we're thinking,

But then we notice and we bring our attention back.

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 and 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 meta-awareness.

And the exciting thing here is that meta-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 meta-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 meta-awareness we accumulate,

The more we build the neural networks that support meta-awareness.

So your mind wanders.

You're thinking,

Thinking,

Thinking.

You notice it.

Bang!

Meta-awareness.

Come back to the breath.

Again.

Meta-awareness.

Come back to the breath.

Again.

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 meta-awareness because you're doing the practice repeatedly.

You're now starting to build the neural networks involved in certain kinds of meta-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 meta-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,

Love,

Allowing tolerance,

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

And the capacity to take an 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.

To 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,

And come back to the breath 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.

Now,

If you're 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 other story,

Which we'll explore in another video.