Hello and welcome to Expansive Health Services Mindful Meditation Series.
My name is Mike Bauch.
I'm the founder and clinical director of Expansive Health Services.
And this recording is to provide a brief,
Very brief introduction to mindfulness meditation.
So you may have heard the term mindfulness in your day-to-day walk.
And I just want to start with a basic definition of mindfulness.
This is a simple,
But I think elegant definition of what mindfulness is.
And it's brought to us by a person who many consider kind of the father of mindfulness in the United States and the West,
Really.
His name is Jon Kabat-Zinn.
Dr.
Kabat-Zinn,
Who's an American psychiatrist who works with patients who have severe chronic pain and severe mental health issues,
Describes mindfulness this way.
He says,
Mindfulness means paying attention in a particular way on purpose in the present moment and non-judgmentally.
So another way to put this is that it's a form of mental training,
If you will.
Meditation may conjure up images of Buddhist monks in orange robes with shorn heads chanting and mountaintop temples.
And that certainly is accurate.
It's what they're doing is meditating through sound.
But in a much more practical way,
Meditation and the practices of mindfulness meditation are really just about paying attention to one thing to the exclusion of other things.
And we're doing this purposefully.
And we're staying focused on the present,
Not in the past,
Not in the future.
We're not trying to categorize things or label things or judge things in Kabat-Zinn's definition.
Let's talk about briefly why mindfulness.
Margaret Cullen called mindfulness the antidote to the disease of 21st century living.
And perhaps I should pronounce that differently,
Disease,
If you break it up,
Is broken up into dis-ease.
And folks,
We live in a hectic,
Chaotic world.
People suffer needlessly a second sort of level of pain.
We're surrounded by pain and suffering.
We have profound illnesses,
Relationship problems,
Tragedies,
And trauma all around.
And we're living in a world where environmental toxins,
Nutritional deficiencies,
And many other challenges that we're naturally exposed to.
But we also kind of create this second layer of suffering through overthinking,
Through hectic busy lives,
Through mis-prioritizing or misusing imagination.
And mindfulness meditation is a very effective tool or set of tools that we can use to inoculate ourselves against the challenges of these days.
One question I often get asked is,
Do I have to be a Buddhist to practice mindfulness meditation?
Mindfulness does have its roots in the ancient wisdom traditions of Buddhism and Hinduism,
But there is no requirement to subscribe to any dogma or any teaching in order to have these practices be extremely useful to you in whatever your religious or spiritual tradition.
And I think the last thing I'll say at this time about mindfulness is it's important as one engages with these practices that we realize that our brains are designed and engineered to think,
To obsess,
To anticipate dangerous stimulus,
And to distract.
Therefore,
One of the first challenges you'll encounter as you embark on this journey with mindfulness is how you treat yourself when you find your mind wandering.
In mindfulness circles,
This is called many times autopilot or sometimes the monkey mind,
But you're going to encounter distraction while you try and meditate,
And you may even fall asleep if you get really relaxed while you're meditating.
Please remember you're not alone in this,
And these practices,
I consider them more of a training exercise,
Like exercise in the gym or physical exercise.
It's not so much about clearing your head of thought and of feeling.
It's more about gradually training your mind over time.
So be kind and be patient with yourself.
And when you notice you've wandered away,
Gently remind yourself where you intend your focus to be.
And I'm certain that you'll be glad you did.
Thank you for joining me on this journey,
And I hope these practices are helpful.
I wish you health and ease.
