This exercise is not limited to a meditation mat. It can happen in the middle of ordinary moments where the mind is pulled away and has to return without making a scene.
- Before replying to an irritating message.
- While overthinking at night.
- During work pressure or task switching.
- When a craving or old habit starts asking for attention.
People often meditate to improve concentration, reduce stress, and follow it as a healthy habit for all the other uncertainties that one can often encounter in one’s life.
When we think about meditation, most of us think about unloading our mind from all the thoughts that we gather, as if our mind is a shipping container. At times of adversity, where you already think of millions of things and find it pretty hard to meditate and try to clear off things from your head, you raise your white flags.
It is very important to know the difference between an escapse and a pause. People should not consider meditation as a form of escape from reality or a dreamy landscape. If your occupation or vocation is too demanding, a pause does not means lethargy or laziness in that regards.
When I was reading a very good book by the author Jeff Sanders called The Free-Time Formula, I came to a very interesting section that explains why taking breaks or pauses is still a very important part of productivity. There was this term called “Mental Bicep Curls”.
Let’s see how on rep of this exercise looks like?
How I technically describe this technique is by building resilience while switching between a chaotic state and a blank state. If you stay too long in a disturbed state, you may enter into a state of rumination and make your condition even worse, and if you happen to stay too long in a blank state, then either you are an expert meditator or a Himalayan guru.
The resilience of switching between a distracted and a refocused state should be thought of as a swinging pendulum, and the goal is to bring your mind close to equilibrium. The difficult part is not silence but noticing that the mind has wandered without judging yourself for it.
I have listened to people who meditate while also fighting a war with overthinking/rumination. Their only success in beating that negative thought is to assume it is only a transient cloud in the sky and acknowledge and let go. This is also how many people got rid of their most fearful addictions. The best part of this exercise is that there is no recovery time :)
I always think the goal of meditation is to not stop the mind from moving but to teach it how to return.