The two most important attitudes to take into a meditation practice are curiosity and letting go.
Instead of focusing on trying to relax or trying to be mindful of every moment,
Instead take the attitude of curiosity to your experience.
By doing that you create some space of expectations and just space from your mind and your thoughts and feelings.
We're just here to observe.
The translation normally used for meditation and Tibetan tradition is to become familiar with.
To become familiar with the mind,
Thoughts and feelings and emotions.
So just take this sense of curiosity and when you do that,
What happens?
It opens the practice up.
Instead of thinking,
Oh I'm not being as relaxed as I wanted to be and getting frustrated or I'm not being as attentive and aware as I wanted to be.
Instead we're just noting.
We're just noting with curiosity how we feel,
What we're experiencing breath by breath,
Moment to moment.
As if we're just a witness to our experiences and our minds and feelings,
Emotions and body.
The second most important foundational attitude to take in is this feeling of letting go.
In this you could think about on many different levels.
You're let going of expectations of what it means to have a good meditation sitting session.
You're letting go of thoughts as they come and go and not sticking and getting stuck on certain thoughts.
Just let them come and go like clouds.
You're letting go of any tension or tightness in the body.
Letting it come and letting it go.
As well,
You could think about this on an emotional sense.
Curiosity as you experience some feeling of anxiety maybe or some stress and then you just let it go.
This is actually a really powerful practice on its own.
Inhale.
Be curious.
How does the body feel on the inhale?
What's happening with feelings and emotions in the mind?
And on the exhale feeling of letting go.
You let go of tension.
Letting go of those thoughts or feelings.
It's a really nice practice.
Inhale curiosity.
Exhale letting go.
This is unbelievably important attitude to take into life.
Remember we're just looking at meditation as practice.
Practice for everyday life.
So the more you could bring in a sense of curiosity into your day-to-day life,
The more you could bring in the feeling of being able to let go and let be,
The healthier and happier you will be.
