Meditation: what to do when your mind wanders

woman turning head - when your mind wanders

Meditation: what to do when your mind wanders

In this previous post, I set out all the “Steps to Make Any Move a Meditation. The fifth step in this process of making any movement form a meditation is to gently bring your mind back when it wanders.

When Your Mind Wanders, Gently Bring It Back

When you attempt to meditate (moving or not), you will no doubt experiencing your mind wandering. The fifth step in making movement a meditation, a vital step, is gently bringing your mind back to your object of meditation. In doing so, you build that calmness of mind: equanimity.

Your mind will naturally wander. The mind’s job is to think thoughts. Dealing with a wandering mind is simple, but not always easy. When your thinking strays, first notice that you remembered you were meditating. Maybe even give yourself a mental cheer for that. Whole meditation sessions can pass without such remembering.

Then, once you have remembered, gently return your attention to your selected object of meditation. Think of an analog radio dial, a round knob turned to tune the radio to a station. You might catch a frequency between stations. The signal isn’t clear. You turn the dial until it is.

Recently, Scarlet (a.k.a., “the pupperina”), a yellow Labrador we got after my beloved Morgan died in his old age, and I headed down to the ravine to slow jog a few miles along the pavement.

I chose my good friend “left foot” as my object of meditation.

When I felt those wandering-mind sensations, I tuned my awareness to that left foot station. I tuned the dial of attention into that feeling and allowed my  consciousness to sink in; this was not forced. I directed my mind, but I did it with focus and concentration, tuning out anything not left foot. I did not imagine my left foot. If I saw an image in my mind, I let that drop. I only attended to the felt sense entering through my foot.

Despite years of practice, thousands of miles of running, and a strong attempt to focus, thoughts intruded: What are you trying to prove? You’re old, fat, and slow! On and on they droned.

You’ll never be a real runner.

Then, I remembered.

I was meditating! I had selected left foot sensations as my object.

This moment and what I did with it was the most important part of this and any meditation session.

I gave myself a tiny pat on the back for remembering, then gently, gently, gently brought my mind back to the real-time sensations in my left foot. It would have been easy to heap more chiding and berating thoughts on top of the negative voices already at work, but I did not. With practice, I have learned never to yell at myself or reprimand myself for being distracted.

And I would be this gentle no matter the nature of the distraction.

I have included more than twenty exercises in the book Make Every Move a Meditation.

This excerpt is from Make Every Move a Meditation by Nita Sweeney which is available now through Amazon and Mango Media.

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