Mindfulness Meditation Lesson 1

Mindfulness Meditation Introduction and Overview

Mindfulness meditation involves two main components, concentration and awareness. Although we develop both of these skills concurrently, in order to become more aware, we need to train our minds to pay attention without constantly getting distracted and wandering. In the first part of this course, our primary aim it to increase our ability to concentrate by learning to focus our attention on our breathing.

When we're able to concentrate enough to maintain our attention on our breathing relatively well, we'll expand our awareness beyond our breath to various aspects of our experience, culminating in adopting an open awareness towards whatever we're experiencing in the present moment.

Concentration:

We practice concentration by focusing our minds on a single object of attention, which in our case will be our breath. As our concentration strengthens and our attention becomes more attuned to our breathing, our thoughts, worries, stresses, etc., start to recede into the background, and we experience a sense of deep calmness and tranquillity.

The ability to concentrate and focus our minds is a skill we develop over time, so you may find it difficult at first, but it's something that everyone can improve that has benefits not just when we meditate, but throughout our everyday lives. Who wouldn't like to be able to focus and concentrate better at work, in relationships, even while watching television, and in all sorts of other situations?

Awareness:

Once we're able to concentrate and focus our minds on our breath, we begin to shift our attention and awareness to other aspects of our experience such as physical sensations in our body, our thoughts, our feeling and emotions, and our behaviour. As we do this, we always maintain an awareness of our breath in the background that functions as a sort of anchor.

It's easy to get caught up in and carried away by our thoughts or our emotions, so whenever our minds start to drift from whatever we're trying to pay attention to, we can reconnect to the present moment by refocusing our awareness on our breath. This awareness of our breath functions as a home base from which we explore anything else we may be experiencing, and we can always return to our breath whenever we start to get lost.

As our concentration strengthens our awareness expands, and we begin to develop insight into ourselves and our experiences, which again translates into our everyday lives. The more we practice mindfulness meditation, not only the better do we get at meditating, but the more we develop a range of techniques and skills that carry over into our daily lives.