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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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Hi, and welcome to your Daily Mindfulness.
Today I'm going to talk about a two step
approach to dealing with restlessness
if it comes up in meditation.
So, first of all, it's important
to know that it's really quite
common to feel restless from
time to time in our practice.
It really happens to all of us.
Sometimes it can occur because we're
going through a period of stress in our
lives, and so the mind is quite agitated
or it could be that we've had a really
busy day or a really difficult day and so
our body and mind are kind of revved up.
Sometimes it can happen because there's
pain in the body or discomfort of some
kind, so that can bring on restlessness.
And some days you know, we just
experience agitation, impatience, or an
unsettledness in ourselves for really
no good reason that we can understand.
It just arises.
But when it does, when restlessness
is there, it's very tempting in those
moments to just think, you know, okay,
this practice is not working today, or
I'm no good at meditation, and you just
get up and walk away from the practice.
Or maybe we sit there, but we
kind of grit our teeth and try to
just get through the meditation.
Or perhaps we start wandering off
into constant distractions so that
we don't have to feel so directly the
uncomfortableness of what we're feeling.
But from the perspective of
mindfulness, these strategies are
all different forms of trying to
run away from that restless feeling.
Whereas what we want to learn is
to cultivate throughout practice
this ability to stop running from
our feelings so that we can bring
awareness and compassion to them.
So we transform our
relationship with the restless.
So you can deal with
restlessness in two simple steps.
The step one is simply to
allow it and relax with it.
So in this step, you can start
by mentally saying to yourself,
okay, restlessness is here.
This is a way of bringing
acceptance to the feelings.
So you're essentially saying,
okay, I see you restlessness.
You're welcome here.
And then you just kind of have a sense
of making room for it in your experience.
You don't have to like it or want it.
You're just accepting that it's here.
Now, if the restlessness is
only mild, that might be enough.
You don't need to give it any more
attention that it really needs.
But if the restlessness is
really pulling at your attention,
then you go to step two.
Now step two is to basically take your
focus off the object of meditation,
say the breath, for example, and
actually bringing a curious, kindly
and compassionate awareness right
into wherever you feel the sensations
of the restlessness the strongest
in the body and explore them.
I like to imagine that I'm breathing a
kindly and soothing awareness right into
and out from the sensations of restless.
Now it might sound counter intuitive to
move closer to the feeling, but if you
can deliberately surround the agitation
with a calm, accepting awareness, then
you transform your relationship to the
feeling and train your mind to stay
steady in presence and peace, no matter
what emotion is passing through it.
We'll explore this a little
more in today's meditation.
So let's now settle in for that.
And as always, thank
you for your practice.
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