Settling the Mind
- Jen
- Sep 28
- 2 min read
This week, I taught two mindfulness courses (Mindfulness Based Living) and recorded one of the “settling the mind” practices.
The first part of the practice is noticing that the mind is unsettled. It is fascinating how people respond to trying to do nothing. Often, our course participants don’t have a clue what their mind is doing, and think that mindfulness is about emptying the mind of everything. When they notice that their monkey mind is swinging from the chandelier and emptying cupboards and drawers and chucking everything to the far corners of the brain, bouncing on the furniture and generally being unpredictable and bonkers (including in some case shitting up the walls!), they are astounded and wonder how can mindfulness ever work for them?
As experienced meditators know, firstly, it’s not about emptying the mind! And, secondly, the monkey mind that we all have can settle a bit, given enough time and patience. The first stage of that patient, gentle process is to notice what happens when we regulate the breathing, just a little. Not hyperventilating or striving to take big deep unnatural breaths, but lengthening the inbreath and extending the outbreath.
There are very complex body functions that are stimulated and/or soothed when we do this, but why and how it works doesn’t really matter - what matters is it does work.
Once we learn this very simple breathing technique, we have a tool that we can use, moment to moment, when things are difficult or we notice that we are distracted, ruminating, spiraling upwards or downwards, getting caught up in a drama. We can calm our body and quieten our mind simply by deliberately breathing a little more slowly.
Catch a recording below on (Substack) of my leading a settling the mind practice live to my wonderful group. I’d love to know what you think of it and if it helped quieten your (sometimes cute, sometimes crazy) monkey mind, even if only for a few moments.
For details of our next mindfulness course, and a new course especially for School Business Leaders, watch this space.
Love, Rise&Bloom