Hey, welcome back to

your Daily Mindfulness.

In today's session, I want to talk

about why we can view meditation

as a form of mental fitness.

You know, we have a gym on

almost any street corner.

We all know the benefits of taking care

of our bodies and we have a rough sense

of how we would do that if we wanted to.

When it comes to training our minds,

we're often not raised with an

understanding of what those resources are.

One of the cool things about meditation

is that it, it kind of fills that gap.

Uh, I know when I was young, a lot

of teachers told me you need to pay

attention, you need to focus, but none

of them actually taught me how to focus.

This is the how for a lot of

different things related to presence,

compassion, openness, vulnerability,

empathy, and concentration.

I like to think of the meditation

almost as a bicep curl for the mind.

So if you think about what we're

doing, we center our attention in

the present moment, or let's just

say the breath to keep it easy.

And what happens.

We notice the mind wanders or starts

to think about other things, we

gently bring it back to the breath.

Mind wanders, we bring it back.

And you see this motion?

It looks a lot like this motion, right?

So it, in some sense it is

a bicep curl for the brain.

The weight of the world, the weight of

the heaviness of our thoughts is pulling

our attention away and we get to bring

it back, pulls us away, we bring it back.

In the same way that the weight of the

dumbbell pulls the arm down, we pull

it back up, pull it down, pull it up.

And I think this is a helpful way

to frame the meditation simply

because we look at the, the, the

weight of the dumbbell as an asset.

It's an ally.

We need it in order to

strengthen the bicep.

But a lot of times when we think

of the mind wandering, it feels

like a hindrance, something that's

getting in the way of the meditation.

I think we can look at it in

the same way we view a dumbbell.

Without the mind wandering, we

wouldn't have the opportunity

to strengthen attention.

Without the mind wandering, we

wouldn't get to explore what is it

like to actually bring our attention

back and develop that mental muscle.

So framing this practice as a form

of mental fitness can make those

moments where the mind seems all

over the place as opportunities to

develop this internal, mental fitness.

The kind of fitness that we didn't often

get the opportunity to develop while

we were growing up, but we can now.

So try taking this perspective

in your meditation practice

and also throughout your day.

We'll talk more about it in a

meditation and I'll talk to you there.

Until then, take care.