How To Manage A Busy Mind When Meditating

In this talk we discuss how to manage a restless mind when meditating. If we are finding that basic mindfulness is not working for us, or that we cannot connect to the practice, or are 'bouncing' off the object of meditation too quickly, perhaps we need to 'entrain' or add additional points of focus.

This could take the form of a mantra 'I am here, now' or a visualization, or movement (or all three).

For some people, having more points of focus helps to settle a busy mind.

Transcript

So question, Why use a mantra, Practice or entrainment in general over straight mindfulness of the breath for practice? Is it for a more restless mind? Yes, The simple answer is yes. So normal mindfulness is a focus upon the breath or whatever single anchor you choose, What you're seeing, What you're hearing, What you're feeling. But traditionally we use the mind wanders, You bring it back, Your mind wanders, You bring it back. No judgment, Just bring it back to the breath. And there's two lines of thought here. The first one is, Is that one anchor is enough, The breath, Or whatever you choose. And you just sort of deal with it. Your mind's very bouncy. And that's okay. That's the nature of the mind in this moment. So that's one school of thought suggests you just deal with it. However, The reality of most people is that we don't like hard work. And if we're not sort of succeeding, We might leave the practice prematurely before we get the benefits. There are some people's personalities, Some people's minds, Some kinds of neurodivergence, Or a variety of other things. You might just be quite kind of stressed and overwhelmed. And you find that focusing on one anchor alone simply isn't enough to capture the mind for an extended period of time. And the act of practicing the meditation just feels terrible. Now that's okay to push through. And indeed, We should push through it from time to time and just be in that disruption, That internal distress, And just witness it. That's the nature of our mind. We can't focus easily on the breath. That's okay. The best meditation is the one that we're having. However, There's a sort of a dialectic thinking, Thinking of two things at once. That's what we should do sometimes. But also, That's not enjoyable. And if that's happening all of the time, You'll be like, Well, This meditation thing isn't working for me. So for some people, And for all of us at some time, We might need an extra point to focus upon. We entrain, We add. So you're focusing on the sensations of the breath at the nose. We're adding a mantra to that practice. Now we've got two things to focus on. Maybe you add a visualization as well. So let's say you're focusing on the sensations of the breath, You've added a mantra, You might visualize a ball of energy traveling up and down with the breath. This is a practice that I like to do when I'm doing a heart space expansion practice. You center yourself in the heart space with the breath, You visualize a ball of energy there traveling up and down, And you add a mantra in. We're doing multiple things at once. The idea behind the entrainment is that you're giving your mind three, Four, Five, Six tasks, As many tasks as it needs to occupy it so it doesn't bounce to other things. Because if your mind is super bouncy, The act of the meditation can feel just not great. But it's up to you to play with, Up to you to know, Up to you to sort of explore the different approaches. One of the approaches of entrainment is you start with the single point of focus, Then you add a second thing, Perhaps the mantra. Then you might add a third thing, Perhaps a visualization. Then maybe a fourth, Like the sensation of the fingers, Movement of the body. But then you go back, You take away the movement of the body, You take away the visualization, You take away the mantra, And then you're left with just the breath. Then you even take away the focus upon the breath and you just be. There are many different ways to use entrainment with mantra, With visualization, With these other things. But ostensibly, It is more for just a restless mind. But I would encourage you to do both. Yeah, All that we offer here is a collection of different tools for your mindfulness and meditation toolbox. Different tools for different jobs and different tools will suit different people.