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How to Meditate: Meditation 101 for Beginners

10 Science-Backed Benefits of Meditation

What is Meditation?

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Melli O'Brien

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When in Doubt, Zoom Out

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

Hi, and welcome to your Daily Mindfulness.

Today I'm going to talk about how we

can create some mental space when we're

getting stressed, anxious, or caught

up in unhelpful thoughts and emotions.

In short, I'm going to show you

how, when we're in doubt, we're

going to learn to zoom out.

So there's a metaphor I'll offer you here.

If you put a tablespoon of salt into a

cup of water, it's going to be intensely

salty and unpleasant to the taste.

But if you put that same teaspoon

into a swimming pool of water,

it'll be barely perceptible.

And in the same way, when our minds

begin to fixate on our problems,

our insecurities, our anxieties

and struggles, they tend to feel

really intense and overwhelming.

The mind can get really constricted

around them, but the more mental

space we can surround them

with the less they bother us.

Mindfulness allows us to make this

choice to zoom out and taking a

much greater perspective of what's

happening in any given moment.

So in any given moment, it's not just

that problems rolling around in our heads

that's happening in any given moment.

For instance, there might be also

birds, singing trees gently moving

in the wind, the sun shining.

And on an even broader

perspective, the planets are

spinning and time is moving on.

There's a whole kind of mystery

unfolding all around us.

And there may be a lot that we can

be grateful for and appreciative

for in that moment, as well as

the things that are difficult.

So the invitation here is not to ignore

the difficult things, but it's just

that when we zoom out into this broader

awareness, it allows us to hold whatever's

bothering us in a larger container.

It's like we surround that problem

with a calm, steady and broad

awareness and suddenly it doesn't seem

so overwhelming a lot of the time.

We view it from a greater perspective.

So we don't have to try and get rid of our

mental struggles or unpleasant emotions,

but instead when we're caught up in them,

we can just notice, first of all, that

we're caught up and then we can choose

to zoom out into a larger awareness

of all that's going on in that moment.

So we're going to practice this a

little bit more in today's meditation,

but today in your life and ongoing,

see if you can just remember when

in doubt you can just zoom out.

So as always thank you for your

practice and your presence here.

And just inviting you now to

settle in for today's meditation.

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