Intention Setting For Meditation

In this session, we practice intention setting.

Setting an intention for your session helps to keep you focused on the practice.

For a mindfulness practice: "For the next few minutes, I will be mindfully meditating to improve my calm, clarity, and focus. I will gently return my focus back to the breath for the duration of the session."

For an introspective practice: "I will approach and accept everything that arises with compassionate curiosity and calm confidence."

You can also end a session with an intention: "I will bring the clarity, calm, and insight from this practice into my day."

Transcript

I invite you to lay down or take a seat and get yourself comfortable. You can close down the eyes if you wish and just begin by taking some slow deep breaths in through the nose. Just taking a moment to scan the body, Scan the mind, See if there are any tensions, Any thoughts, Any surface level things that we can just release, And if so, Do that. Maintaining the slow breathing. I'm going to begin this session with a brief discussion of intentions. As we sit down to meditate, There's often an implied intention. We're going to do the practice, We're going to sit for the duration of the time we've decided to sit or to listen to the guided meditation, And we're going to do so with a certain attitude. That's always implied, But sometimes it's good and some people find it quite beneficial to have a formal intention for their meditations. A little phrase or a little idea or a certain set of small instructions that help contain or frame the session. So I'm going to offer you two that I sort of jump between, Depending on the style or the people that I'm working with. The first one will be used for say a mindfulness based practice and you're welcome to use this one. For the next few minutes, I will be meditating mindfully to improve my clarity, Calm and focus. I will gently return my focus back to the breath for the duration of the session. That intention, And I'll read it again soon, Tells you what you're doing and how you will respond when things arise. Once again, Feel free to use this one if you like. For the next few minutes, I will be meditating mindfully to improve my calm, Clarity and focus. I will gently return my focus back to the breath for the duration of the session. So with that intention in mind, Let's do some basic mindfulness for just one minute. We're going to sit mindfully, Focusing our attention on the breath at the nose to improve our clarity, Calm and focus and if our mind wanders, We're going to gently return it back to the breath. Let's give it a try, Just one minute. Let's begin. So, How did you go? For some people, Setting a clear intention like this one. For the next few minutes, I'll be meditating mindfully to improve my calm, Clarity and focus. I will gently return my focus back to the breath for the duration of the session. It's clear, Tells you what to do, Tells you why, Tells you how to address things that arise. Good intention, Feel free to use that at any time. The other intention I use is more for the deeper inner work, The introspective work or the deep healing work. This intention tells you sort of an attitude to take. I will approach and accept everything that arises with compassionate curiosity and calm confidence. I will approach and accept everything that arises with compassionate curiosity and calm confidence. That intention gives us a mental attitude and obviously you combine these two intentions and make your own, That's the ideal. But once again, It tells you how to approach things. Soon, We're going to sit in silence. Things are going to arise. The best response to those things arising, If we're looking for a healing and introspective capacity, Is to approach and accept them. Not to run from them, Not to hide, Not to push them away, But to approach and accept. These are the things that are arising. The attitude of compassionate curiosity and calm confidence Those four words give us a really good frame to approach things. Thoughts pop up that might be challenging. Yeah, Things from the past, Things that aren't that comfortable or nice. Let's have compassion to ourselves. Let's be curious. Why are those things arising? Let's be calm and grounded and confident that we in this moment can handle it. Being our own inner parent, Our own inner therapist or guide, Us, The sense of self, The observer has it. We might be holding on to things, The body keeps the score, Past work, All of that sort of stuff, But we can ground ourselves in the sense of self. When things pop up, We, With compassionate curiosity and calm confidence, Observe what arises. So we're going to sit for three minutes with this intention, To approach and accept whatever arises with compassionate curiosity and calm confidence. Let's give that a try. Things will arise. You approach and accept them with an attitude of compassionate curiosity and calm confidence. You just keep going. Three minutes. Let's begin. Okay. So the idea of intent, Like setting an intention, Is to help better frame the practice you're doing. Sometimes it helps you to contextualize, Helps you to focus, Helps you to remember what you are doing. And oftentimes when we are doing a class in real life or a guided session with a instructor, Their presence sets the intention. They might say it explicitly, Specifically, Or just the fact that they're leading you into something is the intention setting. But if you are working by yourself, It may help to have an intention designed for the kind of practice you do. So today I offered you two intentions. The one that we worked on first was for a mindfulness-based practice, But you could tweak it however you like. For the next few minutes, I'll be sitting mindfully meditating to improve my clarity, Calm, And focus. I'll gently return my focus back to the breath for the duration of the session. Tells you what you're doing, Why, And how to respond. Very good for a beginning of a mindfulness meditation practice. You might set the timer for whatever time you're working on. Say that intention a couple of times to yourself and then settle in and sit. It's a great use. The other intention that we looked at, I use for deep inner work, Introspective, And that sort of in healing approach. And it is, I will approach and accept everything that arises with compassionate curiosity and calm confidence. This is an attitudinal intention. It helps you approach or respond to the things that are arising in an appropriate way. My goal is to see what's coming and to process it. So when things arise, It would be good to approach and accept it, Whatever it is, Good, Bad, Ugly, Unknown, Things that are changing, With an attitude of compassionate curiosity and calm confidence. Compassion, Curiosity, Confidence, And calm are all very good ways to approach things that arise and it helps you to process it. So I just sort of remind myself of that intention. I go to sit, Set my timer, I will approach and accept everything that arises with compassionate curiosity and calm confidence. So I encourage you to consider adding an intention to your practice, Particularly the ones that you're practicing by yourself. Those solo practices benefit from an intention. But at the very least if you are doing a guided session like this one with an instructor and you feel it necessary, The base intention is just to do the session. My intention is to sit and engage fully with this practice for the duration of the session, Something like that. Set yourself an intention and you'll find that your practices go far deeper and they will give you the benefits of the practice quicker, More intently, Deeper, Because you're working with something. Yeah? Either way, Thank you for joining me and I'll see you in another session. Catch up.