Hi, and welcome to your Daily Mindfulness. Today I'm going to talk about taming the craving mind. So the way our minds evolved means that we have a really strong impulse towards always wanting more. For our ancestors who lived as hunter-gatherers, life was really difficult and dangerous. There were huge challenges to survival, like dangerous predators, rival clans and adverse weather conditions and resources were really scarce.

Any advantage you could get to survive was really imperative. So the mind would always be thinking you need more. You need more water. You need more food. You need better shelter.

You need better weapons. You need to get better clothing to keep off the elements. So the mind is thinking in that way really was a matter of survival. It was a matter of survival to always be wanting more and better. Now, these days, the human mind still does the same thing, right? The mind keeps telling us we don't have enough.

We need more, more, more. So if we don't learn to recognize this craving mind and learn to tame it, we can get caught up in very unhelpful habits like overeating, overspending, overworking to get more stuff. We can get caught up in addictions of all kinds as well. So, how do we learn to tame the craving mind so that we can live a more genuinely fulfilling and meaningful life? One way is through a mindfulness practice called urge surfing, which is really just a new way of relating to the cravings and urges that we have when they arrive. The basics of this practice is really simple.

It's actually just to bring conscious awareness to those moments when we have an urge or a craving, or that sense of dissatisfaction, like something's missing. So urge surfing teaches us to connect with what's actually happening in our body and mind at the moment that we feel an urge. Like are we truly hungry in that moment? Are there feelings we're trying to escape from through eating? Are we feeling dissatisfied? What does an urge actually feel like in that moment in our body? That brief moment of awareness allows you to slow down, become attuned to what's going on, and it creates some space in between you and the urge so that you can respond to what's arising instead of just reacting out of habit. So in today's meditation, I'm going to guide you through a practice of urge surfing so that you can experience it for yourself and then take this practice with you into daily life. But I also extend this invitation for today in daily life.

Just see if you can meet any urges that arise with mindful awareness. So when you feel an urge, try slowing down, taking a breath, and then gently staying with the feeling for a minute or so, just observing it with curiosity and acceptance. After that, you can just deliberately choose whether to have that cookie or whatever the thing is. But whatever you choose, you choose it with full awareness. By staying with the sensations like this, you're training the craving mind to settle and soften and cultivating greater wisdom and contentment from within.

So as always thank you for your practice and your presence here with us. And now let's settle in for today's meditation.