Exploring Mindfulness: Practice #1
Note: This is the first in a series exploring practices I’ve found transformative both personally and in my work with clients. You can read my introductory post about practice here.
Meditation is a foundational practice for me—I’ve meditated almost daily for about fifteen years. I hesitated to begin this series with meditation because it’s almost too ubiquitous. Mindfulness apps abound, and discussions of its benefits are everywhere. In the end, I am starting here because mindfulness is foundational and building a practice can help us to strengthen essential qualities for leading skillfully in an increasingly complex world. I’ve also been reminded, in recent weeks, that my meditation or mindfulness practice is an invaluable anchor in navigating challenging times like the ones we are living through today.
In this post, I’ll share my experience with meditation, resources to help you start or restart your practice, and three appendices featuring excerpts from meditation teachers. At the same time, I don’t want to suggest that formal mindfulness practice is the only way to learn to be mindful. In future posts I’ll offer practices that can be done alongside a meditation practice or can simply be done on their own.
My Practice
Although I’ve meditated daily for just about fifteen years, I wouldn’t call myself a “good” meditator. While I don’t struggle to find time to practice, I often feel like a beginner—sometimes frustratingly so. But I’ve come to accept that. My focus and ability to stay with my breath vary, but my morning meditation always offers a chance to notice how I’m feeling—and that awareness is invaluable.
There are times that I consciously choose, during my practice, to focus on the impatience that tends to arise a few minutes in. Instead of resisting I breathe into it, get familiar with it, let it be, and eventually let it go, or more precisely, it lets go. I stay seated through the discomfort.
This practice of noticing, allowing, and moving through without reacting is perhaps the most important thing I’ve learned through regular meditation practice. When we can apply that “in real life”, under pressure, we are more likely to make wise choices. This capacity to pause and choose how we respond is a critical leadership skill—a “meta-competency”—and it’s increasingly vital in today’s complex environments. Practicing in the low-stakes environment (nothing will happen if we do get up) of meditation makes it easier to pause and respond thoughtfully in more challenging situations.
Here’s an example: If I practice enough with mild impatience on the safety of my meditation cushion, it becomes more likely that when something or someone taxes my patience, I will pause and check in with myself. I might refocus on the person in front of me because I realize the impatience is about me, not them. I might choose to interrupt—but with conscious intent and gentler words. Meditation is possibly the best way I know to build the intentionality that is essential for powerful leadership.
Getting Started
If you’re curious enough to give it a go, I recommend starting with guided meditations. They can help you stay present, even as your mind inevitably wanders (which is normal). Many free resources and apps are available to help you experiment with meditation without committing to “being a meditator.”
Free Resources
Tara Brach: Tara Brach, a well-known meditation teacher, offers hundreds of guided meditations categorized by length and topic. I love her voice—which is probably the most important thing. If you don’t, she’s not for you.
AudioDharma: A treasure trove of meditations. I recommend Gil Fronsdal’s introductory series based on classic Buddhist models.
Books: Many excellent meditation books are available—this list is a great starting point. If you’re more interested in the neuroscience of meditation, "The Science of Meditation: How to Change Your Brain, Mind, and Body" by Daniel Goleman and Richard J. Davidson is a wonderful resource.
Apps
10% Happier: I’d start with Joseph Goldstein’s excellent introductory courses. I also loved the series called The Dalai Lama’s Guide to Happiness.
Calm: Jeff Warren’s beginner series is outstanding.
Headspace is a favorite of many of my clients. It offers meditations around different topics—though it lacks the variety of teachers and approaches you’ll find on other apps.
Insight Timer has more teachers and more meditations than almost any app I’ve seen—and an excellent meditation timer. It’s a bit unwieldy as a result.
Waking Up has high-quality teaching and does not have the gamification features of the other apps. I appreciate that. It feels a bit more “advanced” to me—so I probably wouldn’t start here.
The Wisdom of My Teachers
Many meditation teachers have influenced my practice. I’ve included three appendices with excerpts that offer additional insights. I leave you with these as a resource.
Appendix One: Jay Michaelson – “Don’t Take Your Thoughts So Seriously”
Jay Michaelson is a meditation teacher, journalist, and rabbi. In a Substack post titled “Don’t Take Your Thoughts So Seriously”, Michaelson writes about being a “lousy” meditator, yet realizing that there’s value in meditation nonetheless—or maybe because of that:
Thanks to having spent thousands of hours noticing myself getting carried away in meditation, I was still mindful, in a sense, even when things were lousy. I was noticing the feelings coming and going, and amazed at how rapidly they came and went. I was able to laugh at myself after the bad weather lifted. Stuff was hitting the fan, but I was right there, clearly aware of it.
This is, I think, the great secret and great misconception of meditation: that it’s not about feeling a certain way (e.g. relaxed, Zen, equanimous, unbothered), but by seeing however you’re feeling, and being able to coexist with it. Okay, so here’s anxiety. Okay, here’s some bliss. It’s not what’s going on emotionally, physically, or externally; it’s about how you relate to it…
This basic awareness helped me feel better, and more importantly, helped me not make matters worse by snapping at family and friends. It also helped me notice when things really were fine… It’s easy to get swept up in a narrative that everything is a certain way – a solid block of joy, or gloom, or whatever – when in fact even just a single hour is made up many small, different-feeling parts.
This is Mindfulness 101, and I think it, not the perfection of equanimity, is what growing in wisdom is really about. It’s not about feeling a certain way; it’s about being aware of how you’re feeling, however that is, and not making matters worse, especially for other people.
Michaelson makes this point even more clearly in another post:
In other words, the popular image of meditation—a blissed-out person (in media depictions, usually a beautiful woman) in a state of lovely relaxation—is wrong. Yes, meditation can help you relax, that’s been proven. But the real benefit of meditation isn’t changing how you feel, but being basically okay with feeling how you’re feeling.
And, if we are ok with feeling how we’re feeling, we are less likely to take those feelings out on the people around us, be there are family, our colleagues, or our direct reports. Bottom of Form
Appendix Two: Margaret Wheatley, Who Do We Choose to Be
Meg Wheatley is better known as a management consultant and writer than as a meditation teacher. In her recent book Who Do We Choose to Be, she asks us to be “warriors for the human spirit” at a time when the human spirit can be particularly degraded. She suggests that to operate with strength and wisdom in a volatile time in our history on this planet, we need to practice. The essential practice she suggests is meditation. The following passage comes from a piece of writing from Meg’s Warrior Training:
…when we sit for a few minutes, with the intention to just let thoughts be, mind settles itself. Thoughts appear. We note them with a light touch of recognition. But we don’t do anything with them, we don’t stir them up. We don’t engage with them, we don’t think, we just let them be. If we can just be here, like this water, mind becomes settled. Thoughts come and go endlessly. If we don’t bother them or get seduced by them, they pass by, disappearing into nothing. And then another thought appears almost instantly. We touch it lightly, let it go, and it passes on…
Most people misunderstand meditation. They think they can’t do it because their minds are so busy, always filled with thoughts. Yes this is true—for all of us. The function of meditation is not getting rid of thoughts. Maybe I should repeat that. The function of meditation is not getting rid of thoughts. It’s learning to observe them and not interfere with them, letting them pass by.
We learn this in meditation practice and then we carry it into every moment, every interaction. We learn to observe our reactions, and pause long enough to respond with awareness rather than emotions. We become less reactive, more responsive. With our children, at work, being with those suffering—this capacity to be awake rather than caught by emotions, to be conscious rather than compulsive, to be present and listen well, this is a great gift. It gives us the capacity to see clearly so as to act wisely.
This is meditation—learning to watch the mind, to be aware as thoughts arise but not controlled by them. It requires practice to develop this beautiful muscle, this capacity to not engage with whatever runs through your mind.
Appendix Three: Pema Chodron, Reasons to Meditate
I often think about desert island scenarios—what’s the one book I’d take, the one movie I’d watch on repeat, the one album that would suffice. For years, the book choice has been easy: When Things Fall Apart by Pema Chödrön. She’s one of the wisest voices I know.
The following is a brief excerpt from her essay Reasons to Meditate:
The mind is very wild. The human experience is full of unpredictability and paradox, joys and sorrows, successes and failures. We can’t escape any of these experiences in the vast terrain of our existence. It is part of what makes life grand—and it is also why our minds take us on such a crazy ride. If we can train ourselves through meditation to be more open and more accepting toward the wild arc of our experience, if we can lean into the difficulties of life and the ride of our minds, we can become more settled and relaxed amid whatever life brings us. Meditation teaches us how to relate to life directly, so we can truly experience the present moment, free from conceptual overlay.
There are numerous ways to work with the mind. One of the most effective is through the tool of sitting meditation. Sitting meditation opens us to each and every moment of our life. Each moment is totally unique and unknown. Our mental world is seemingly predictable and graspable. We believe that thinking through all the events and to-dos of our life will provide us with ground and security. But it’s all a fantasy, and this very moment, free of conceptual overlay, is completely unique. It is absolutely unknown. We’ve never experienced this very moment before, and the next moment will not be the same as the one we are in now. Meditation teaches us how to relate to life directly, so we can truly experience the present moment, free from conceptual overlay.
We do not meditate in order to be comfortable. In other words, we don’t meditate in order to always, all the time, feel good. I imagine shockwaves are passing through you as you read this, because so many people come to meditation to simply “feel better.” However, the purpose of meditation is not to feel bad, you’ll be glad to know. Rather, meditation gives us the opportunity to have an open, compassionate attentiveness to whatever is going on. The meditative space is like the big sky— spacious, vast enough to accommodate anything that arises.
In meditation, our thoughts and emotions can become like clouds that dwell and pass away. Good and comfortable, pleasing and difficult and painful—all of this comes and goes. So the essence of meditation is training in something that is quite radical and definitely not the habitual pattern of the species: and that is to stay with ourselves no matter what is happening, without putting labels of good and bad, right and wrong, pure and impure, on top of our experience.
If meditation was just about feeling good (and I think all of us secretly hope that is what it’s about), we would often feel like we must be doing it wrong. Because at times, meditation can be such a difficult experience. A very common experience of the meditator, in a typical day or on a typical retreat, is the experience of boredom, restlessness, a hurting back, pain in the knees—even the mind might be hurting—so many “not feeling good” experiences. Instead, meditation is about a compassionate openness and the ability to be with oneself and one’s situation through all kinds of experiences. In meditation, you’re open to whatever life presents you with. It’s about touching the earth and coming back to being right here. While some kinds of meditation are more about achieving special states and somehow transcending or rising above the difficulties of life, the kind of meditation that I’ve trained in and that I am talking about here is about awakening fully to our life. It’s about opening the heart and mind to the difficulties and the joys of life—just as it is. And the fruits of this kind of meditation are boundless.