Meditation 3 (Basic): Mindfulness (Improving Your Focus)

Mindfulness (Improving your Focus)
This is a foundational practice you learn to do when not under any stressful circumstances. In contrast to Breathing Practice, you are learning instead how to strengthen your mental focus to concentrate on what you are physically doing instead of getting caught up in thoughts in your head. This practice intensifies your presence with others and in your own life. It trains you to be fully focused in the here and now and it trains your mind not to wander off. This technique is a variation on traditional Sitting Meditation. Traditional Sitting Meditation has you sitting cross-legged on a cushion for long hours of time without being allowed to adjust your posture or move. If a mosquito bites you, you endure it. If your leg falls asleep, you endure the pins and needles. Hate the sound of it already? I don't blame you! Mindfulness meditation practices for the same result, but uses daily tasks instead of sitting on a cushion. I will teach you the basic structure, and then you can employ it throughout your day, whenever you are doing a household chore or a mundane activity. In this way, your every day life becomes the meditation hall for your practice, whether you are standing in line at the bank, doing laundry, or grocery shopping. Unlike sitting meditation, mindfulness meditation can be practiced anywhere, and the more often you do it, the better you get at it, until you are so well trained; you are meditating all the time. How's that for a life-friendly technique?
 
Why You Need It
If your mind wandered off while you were reading this page, you need it. If you have mental arguments in your head, saying all the things you wish you had said to that person yesterday, you need it. If you don't listen when other people are talking, you need it. If you stub your toes regularly, you need it. If you are thinking about what you are going to say next, instead of listening to what the other person is saying, you need it. If you love debating, theorizing, and fantasizing, you need it. If you believe everyone else is the problem, you need it. If you don't know what it means to have a sense of yourself separate from what you think and feel, you need it. If you don't know that there is a space between what just happened and how you choose to react to it, you need it.