One of the things I hear a lot when people talk about meditation is how they find it impossible to stop their thoughts or empty their mind. I can understand why people think that this is what they need to do when meditating, but the truth is and as anyone who has ever tried to meditate will probably know it’s impossible to stop your thoughts and the more you actively try to do that the harder it will get.
My meditation experience really changed when I realised that the aim of practice wasn’t to stop your thoughts but to observe them. This means that what you’re aiming for is kind of a middle ground between not thinking (the impossible) and getting really involved in your thought process (most people’s default setting.) This leads me to one of my favourite meditation techniques which is noting. This means sitting watching my thoughts and regularly noting what’s foremost in my experience. The idea is to note things in quite a broad way, for example I would note sound rather than saying traffic or sirens.What I love about this practice is I’m not expecting to be able to keep observing my thoughts. I’m accepting the fact that I will get dragged away at some point, but every time I realise and note what’s happening that is a little boost.
Over time this practice has allowed me to see my thoughts as less real, meaning just because I’m thinking something doesn’t make it automatically true. One of the most important phrases in mindfulness (for me) is ‘thoughts are not facts’ which can be very difficult to remember sometimes but this practice is one of the best ways to remind myself .
This whole idea of watching thoughts was reinforced by one of the meditations I did this week which was on the theme of being a witness to what is going on in your mind and body and not identifying with things too strongly. My take away from all this is that if I keep working on observing and witnessing thoughts, with the hope of creating a little distance from them, I will eventually learn to hold things little more lightly. This applies to meditation practice to as my experience is that the lighter we hold the idea of what meditation practice should be the more enjoyable it will become. It is called practice after all, so just allow yourself to explore and figure out what meditation feels like for you and what techniques work well for you, without getting too focused on the outcomes.
moreinclusivemindfulness 