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How to Meditate: Meditation 101 for Beginners
10 Science-Backed Benefits of Meditation
What is Meditation?
How to Meditate: Meditation 101 for Beginners
10 Science-Backed Benefits of Meditation
What is Meditation?
Benefits of Mindfulness: Mindful Living Can Change Your Life
Mindfulness 101: A Beginner's Guide
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Personalized support for learning how to integrate mindfulness into your life. Delivered fresh everyday by our world renowned experts. Choose meditation duration:
Hey, welcome back to
your Daily Mindfulness.
In today's session, we're going
to talk about how to create
freedom from your thoughts.
Now, if you're a human being and you have
a mind, chances are you're very familiar
with the stress that thoughts can create.
Of course, thoughts can be very powerful
and we can use them for critical thinking,
imagining that future being creative.
But there are also a lot of times
where thoughts create extra anxiety,
frustration, negative emotions.
And our tendency tends to be in those
moments to try and stop the thoughts,
get rid of them, or get angry at
them as if felt magically disappear.
And that's usually wasted energy.
So one strategy we can use when working
with thoughts is to become an observer
to our thinking mind, rather than
being caught in the thinking mind.
I'll share a metaphor that
helps me think about this.
It's a river going down a mountain.
So if you think of a river going down
a mountain as your stream of thoughts.
We could be sucked into the
rivers, smashing into the
whitewater, the rocks, the banks.
Really going wherever
the river is taking us.
Or we could be sitting on the bank of
the river, watching the river go by.
Same you, same river.
Different relationship,
different experience entirely.
And that's the quality of attention
awareness that we're cultivating
in mindfulness meditation.
And the strategy I want to talk about
here today, instead of being so sucked
into your thinking mind and instead of
even trying to fight it, quiet or get rid
of it, what would it be like to simply
become an observer to your thinking mind?
A strategy that can help take that a step
further is just to label the thought,
thinking every time you notice it, right.
So you might be sitting down or driving,
standing or walking and you notice
the thought of like, oh, why did I
say that thing to that person before?
Like, I shouldn't have done that.
And we just, we notice the mind thinking,
just go thinking another thought comes up.
Oh, there's a thing I need to do.
I can't forget.
Thinking.
Another thought comes up, why
is that person looking at me?
Thinking.
Right?
And so now it's, it's as if
you're eavesdropping on your mind
having a conversation with itself.
And taking that relationship, not
getting so sucked into the thought,
not identifying so strongly with
them instead, just observing them,
allows us to find a little bit more
ease as if we were sitting on the
bank of the river watching it go by.
So see if you can try this out today.
You can take a few moments in
silence to do it, or you can do
it as you're going about your day.
Thank you for your practice.
I'll talk to you soon and
until next time, take care.
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