How to practice formal mindfulness meditation

To start a formal mindfulness practice, sit comfortably with your eyes open or closed, whatever is more comfortable. Try not to get too perfectionistic about how or where you sit. You can practice mindfulness sitting up or lying down wherever is easy and comfortable. You might start at your kitchen or desk chair and then move to a space that is specific to mindfulness meditation as you build the habit.

There are four steps to mindfulness practice:

• Attend

• Wander

• Notice your wandering

• Return

It’s as simple as that. Simple, not easy.

Start with attending. For many people, starting with attending to your breath is an easy and reliable anchoring sensation. The breath is always with you, so you can use it in formal mindfulness practice and use it to cue yourself to be mindful in everyday life. The breath can be triggering for those with panic disorder or trauma. If not the breath, consider another sensation, like your feet on the floor or your hands in your lap. Whether or not the breath is comfortable for you, you can always use other parts of your body, as you might do in the case of a body scan.

When you attend to your sensations, you’re trying to feel the sensations in your body as sensations. As you attend to the sensations, you’ll likely feel a moment of ease. If you have trouble getting in touch with your body or you are new to the practice, it may take some time to notice the moment of ease or you may not feel it at all. It’s a leap of faith to believe that you will feel ease over time and it’s worth it to keep practicing.

As you attend to your sensation, your mind is naturally going to wander. Wandering is what minds do. You aren’t doing it wrong. In fact, you should expect the wandering as part of the exercise. You have to wander in order to notice the wandering.

The opportunity for mindfulness is when you notice the wandering. Regardless of how long you were wandering, there will always be a moment that you notice that you’ve wandered. In that moment, you are accessing your observing self. Everyone has an observing self and accessing it is another moment of ease. The more you practice wandering and noticing the wandering on purpose, the more practice you are getting at accessing your observing self. When you access your observing self, whether in formal practice or in everyday life, you are having a mindful moment. It will generate ease and help you cope with any thought, sensation, feeling, memory or urge you experience.

After you notice your wandering and have access to your observing self, you have the opportunity to bring yourself back, to return. Depending on the stickiness of your thought or the intensity of the feeling your thought generated, it may be challenging to return to attending to your sensations. This will give you a sense of what kind of day you are having especially if you practice regularly, around the same time, regardless of how you feel. If you don’t judge your experience, but rather use it as data, it can help you build self-awareness and become more mindful, even if it’s hard and you feel stuck or pain.

Returning to your sensations may be a commitment to letting your thoughts or your feelings be there in the background, while you go back to paying attention to your breath or another sensation on purpose. When you go back to attending to your sensations, you again have a moment of ease. The returning can be a challenge, so remember that you have the opportunity to begin the mindful cycle again, when you choose to return to attending.

And so, you are practicing a mindful cycle: you attend to your sensations and have a moment of ease; you wander, as minds do; you notice wandering with your observing self, generating a moment of ease; you commit to returning to your sensations, giving yourself the chance to start the mindful cycle again.