Let thoughts pass through

This meditation helps you practice letting go of whatever your thinking without getting stuck. You'll work with the natural flow of thinking, you don't need to be doing anything special. A useful tool when your mind feels crowded or stuck in loops.

Why this helps? Learning to release thoughts clears your mind and frees you up from mental clutter and overthinking.

Transcript

Welcome And Settle The Breath

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Welcome to Inner Strength Meditations. A moment to breathe and be.

Introducing The Thought Bubble

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Let's practice the thought bubble. In this type of mindfulness practice, we're learning how to notice our thoughts and let them go. Good thoughts, troublesome thoughts, boring thoughts, random thoughts. We're going to treat them all equally. And as soon as we notice them, we're going to encase them in a bubble and let them float away. It can be a bubble of any shape or color you like. The main thing is just don't crowd your mind with them. Just let them all float away.

Catch-And-Release Basketball Metaphor

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It's just like in basketball, when the coach wants us to learn how to catch and release the ball, and we practice these drills, training our fingers to let go of the ball as quickly as we receive it. So when we're on the court and we have to pass immediately, we'll have that muscle memory in our fingers. You know, that feeling of standing in a line across from a partner and passing the ball back and forth. As soon as they make contact, you release it. As soon as you make contact, you release it over and over and over again. And eventually it starts to become automatic. So when you need to pass, that memory is there and you can let go. We can do the same with our thoughts.

Posture And Grounding Cues

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Sit in your best mindfulness posture with your feet flat on the floor. Press your toes into the ground, feeling the solidity underneath you. Notice your weight on the chair. Let your spine rise up tall, your vertebrae neatly stacked one on the other. You might want to shift a little in your seat until you find that perfect spot where the curvature of your spine lets you rise up tall and allows your head to just float at the top of your neck. Take a nice breath in and a slightly longer exhalation. Paying attention to your spine and allowing your spine to lengthen just a little bit.

Bubble Practice With Thoughts

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Now the next thought you notice, put it in a bubble and let it float away.

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Might be a happy thought, might be a random thought, might be a worry, might be a thought about how much homework you have to do. You might think you're not thinking. That's a thought too.

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Put that in a bubble and let it float away.

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Put that in a bubble, let it float away. You can put sounds you hear, sensations you feel,

Expanding To Sounds And Emotions

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or emotions that arise and pass away. You can put all those in bubbles, just let them float away, and all the while be still, feeling like an anchor is holding you to your chair, feeling tall, steady, and alert.

Reorient And Reflect On Mindset

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Now begin to bring your focus back to the objects in the room around you. You can wiggle your toes, stretch your fingers. And before you move on to your next activity, just notice. Notice your mind, notice your emotions, even notice the sensations in your body, and see if you might feel just a little more settled, a little more clear, a little more energetic, a little more curious. You might feel the opposite, simply be a scientist of your experience, and congratulate yourself on the effort you're making to be able to choose which thoughts to pay attention to and which ones to let float away. Enjoy this moment and stay well.