What mindfulness actually is

This meditation introduces mindfulness in simple terms—what it is, what it isn't, and how it helps. You'll learn through an experiential example how it works - get the basics without jargon or pressure. A perfect starting point.

Why this helps? Having a clear simple visual to understand what it means to be mindful and get space from thoughts helps you with all your practices.

Transcript

What Mindfulness Really Does

Guided Hand-Eye Experiment

Seeing More Of The Room

Thoughts As The Hand Metaphor

Mindfulness Broadens The Picture

Curiosity, Insight, And Compassion

Closing And Next Steps

SPEAKER_00 0:02

Welcome to Inner Strength Meditations. Let's take a moment. Let's talk a little bit about mindfulness and what it is and why practicing mindfulness helps us work with our thoughts, especially with difficult thoughts. I have a little example. If you'd like to do it with me, it'll help you get a sense really of what mindfulness is from the inside out. Take your hand and put it tightly over your eyes. Leave just a little bit of room so you can open your eyes. Now, take a look and see what you see. This is not a trick question. With your hand covering your eyes, open your eyes and take a look. What do you see? You probably see blackness or maybe a few light streaks. Maybe you see a little bit of a shape of your fingers where a little bit of light is peeking through. But generally you can't tell very much about what's going on. Now move your hand just a little bit, about half an inch away from your eyes. Now take a look, be a scientist of your experience. What do you see? So maybe now you see a little bit of light poking through. Maybe you can tell it's your fingers. Maybe you see the lines of your palm. And you might see just a tiny edge of the room you're in peeking through from underneath your hand or on top of your hand. We see a little bit more. Now take your hand and stretch it out as far away from your eyes as you can. With your eyes open, look around. Again, this is not a trick question. What do you see? So you see your hand, you see your fingers, you can tell that your hand is attached to your arm. You can turn your hand the other way and look at the back of your hand. You can see the room that you're in. Maybe there are other people in the room. Maybe there's a window. Maybe there are trophies on your wall that you won. Maybe there are presents that your best friend gave you that remind you of them and how much they help you when you're having a hard time. In this example, our hand represents thoughts. And usually we're so stuck to our thoughts, just like when we pressed our hand against our eyes, that we really can't see very much about them. And especially if we're having a problem, like imagine if there was a cut on your hand, you might feel like you just want to cut off your hand and get rid of what's hurting you. When we practice mindfulness, it's like stretching our hand away from our eyes so we can see more of the whole picture. Then you might see that, oh, I have a cut on my hand. I need some antiseptic cream and a band-aid. And maybe you look around the room and you remember your friend or your teacher or your parent or grandparent. Somebody can help you. Sometimes it's hard to put band-aids on the backs of our hands ourselves. But we realize that even though our hand might hurt, we don't want to get rid of it. It's very useful. So with mindfulness, we notice the problems that we might have or the thoughts that we might have that might be worrying us. But we can see more of the whole picture. We can see that there are people who can help us. We can see things about our lives where we've made it through difficult situations and gained strength and insight. Mindfulness is not a magic trick of emptying the mind or clearing our thoughts. It's simply allowing us to take in a much, much, much, much bigger picture of everything, of our thoughts, ourselves, our surroundings, the people, the world, even the whole universe. And when we start exploring more of our surroundings from different angles, we gain new insight. New things strike us. We discover a lot more about how we work, how the world works. That's why the simple process of sitting still, letting ourselves be easy, not worrying about thought, just observing, paying attention, being scientists of our experience, can all of a sudden fill us with a sense of curiosity, perspective, insight, and even compassion for ourselves and for other people. Thanks for listening. Enjoy your next mindfulness session. You can stay here as long as you'd like, or move on when you're ready.