Mindfulness Meditation Lesson 1

Following Your Breath Discussion

Once we start paying attention to where our minds are, we realize just how often they wander, and what seems like a simple task of counting ten breaths in a row can feel almost impossible. The most common experience when we first start meditating is that we can follow our breathing for three or four breaths, and then before we know it a few minutes have gone by and we've completely forgotten about our breath altogether.

Sometimes when our minds wander away from our breath, it can be relatively simple to let go of whatever has captured our attention, and return our awareness back to our breathing and resume counting or measuring our breaths. But often our minds wander to things we find interesting enough that we want to think about them, and resist shifting our attention away from what we've been thinking about and returning it back to the breath.

If our minds wander to simple distractions like what we're planning to do once this is over, or what we're having for dinner tonight, these thoughts are generally easier to let go. But if we've started worrying, or thinking about a problem at work, or something with an emotional component—something we're anxious, or sad or angry or even excited about—these are much more difficult to let go. And when we do resume following our breath, our minds often jump right back to where they were a few breaths later.

These are all things we'll be exploring in more detail in the next few lessons. For now the important thing is to keep your attention focused on your breath as best you can, and to try not to become discouraged or judge yourself when your mind does wander, because mind wandering is inevitable. When you first start to meditate, and even if you've been meditating for years, your mind is going to constantly wander away from what you're trying to pay attention to.

And every time this happens, rather than getting frustrated or disappointed with yourself, be kind to yourself, because you haven't failed or done anything wrong. No matter how dedicated you are to keeping your attention on your breath, your mind was always going to wander. That's how our minds work (though the more you practice mindfulness, they less they tend to work like this). And so whenever your mind wanders, there's no need be self-critical, all you need to do is to gently bring your attention back to where you want it.