Five key skills. It’s hard to understand why the simple act of meditating can be useful. Why would I want to sit there doing nothing? It feels like navel gazing! A closer look at the mental exercise of meditation can help you understand why. Basic meditating is just one simple act done over and over again, thousands of times. You begin by bringing your mind to one point of focus or anchor (usually it’s in the body), like the breath, and you concentrate on it for as long as possible. When you become aware that your mind has wandered, you gently bring it back to the breath, without judgment. As you continue, five skills are developed:
- Self-Awareness. Being able to recognize when your mind wanders trains you to be self-aware, the ability to have one part of your mind watch the other. With self-awareness, one part of the mind is telling the other to come back once it wanders. With practice, self-awareness helps you watch your thoughts, emotions and judgments. Now, instead of acting on every thought, you can stop and choose whether to just observe or take action. This step is called discernment, because you don’t have to believe everything you think and not all your thoughts are driving your behaviour.
- Letting go. Every time you bring your mind back to the breath, you’re learning how to “let go”. Trying to let go of repetitive thoughts is frustrating. You can train the mind to “let go” by bringing it back over and over again, just the way you lift weights to strengthen muscles. With practice, letting go becomes much easier, and eventually, second nature. This practice allows you to move naturally into the present moment, where there are no worries (future) or regrets (past).
- Focus and concentration. When your attention is back on the breath, you increase your ability to focus and concentrate. The longer you stay on the breath, the more focused you can be in your daily life. Staying on task will be easier, you will be more efficient, and you will learn and retain information better. Studies show that the average person gets interrupted or switches tasks about every 10 minutes, it then takes an average of 20 minutes to get back on task. * In this digital age of information overload, it is easy to be distracted, so this skill becomes paramount.
- Acceptance. It is natural for the mind to wander. Applying non-judgment every time your mind wanders cultivates acceptance. From a very early age, we are taught to judge and solve problems. Unfortunately, we apply this approach to all our thinking. But in life, some things can be changed, and others cannot, and in these situations, we tend to judge and control when we should let go. Acceptance helps relieve the stress that comes with wanting things to be different. It also helps to cultivate a gentler attitude towards oneself and others, understanding that nobody is perfect. This practice lays down the foundation for authenticity, where you can begin to feel good about yourself, warts and all.
- Becoming less reactive. Learning to sit through meditations with discomfort, like an itch, a pain or scattered thoughts, exercises your ability to be with difficult mental and physical states while learning how to remain calm. This practice helps you become less reactive and release stress because you don’t drain so much mental energy as situations arise.
* The cost of Interrupted Work: More Speed and Stress; Gloria Mark, University of California, Irvine, 2008.
To learn more on how mindfulness can help you, please join us at our free meditation event: http://mindsana.com/events/walkin-event-november/ or follow us on twitter: https://twitter.com/felcitybanniste #event