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How to Meditate: Meditation 101 for Beginners

10 Science-Backed Benefits of Meditation

What is Meditation?

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Cory Muscara

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Create Ease Around Thoughts

Personalized support for learning how to integrate mindfulness into your life. Delivered fresh everyday by our world renowned experts. Choose meditation duration:

Hi, welcome back to

your Daily Mindfulness.

In today's session, we're going to

talk about working with thoughts.

So I had a student on a retreat many years

ago when we had a one-on-one session.

And she said, "You know, I've

been doing all the meditation.

It's helpful, but I'm kind of getting

stuck, especially with thoughts.

Each time a thought arises, I'm

noticing it, but I feel some tension.

And so I asked her like,

"What is your relationship to

the thought when it arises?"

And she gave a visual image.

She said, "Well, I notice the

thought, it comes up and I

just go, okay, bye thought."

And it was subtle.

And it was said in a very gentle way.

Okay.

Bye thought.

But there was still this encouraging

the thought to move away.

So I said, what if we reframe that

from pushing the thought with the hand

to just keeping the hand like this.

So she tried this.

And then two days later she said, "This

transformed my meditation practice.

I didn't realize how much I was

actually resisting my thoughts with

this imagery of the hand moving across.

And by just holding it out like this,

there was much more equanimity and

balance with the thought when it arises."

So, this is something you could

take with thoughts as they

arise throughout your day.

And it's also something that you could

take in your meditation practice.

Notice if there is this gentle

encouragement of thoughts leaving, and

instead, what would it be like to shift

the energy from this to one of this?

Thank you for your practice.

Let's settle in for today's meditation.

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