4.1 – The Monkey Mind

Now, as I mentioned yesterday, when the mind starts to wander it doesn't mean anything is going wrong.

This is just what the mind does it thinks about the past. It wanders into the future. It goes all over the place.

In Buddhism this is something that they call the monkey mind in the sense that the mind is always jumping around from branch to branch and from tree to tree and it never seems to slow down.

So, this is the monkey mind.

So, instead of trying to force the monkey to stay put and not jump around we can actually give that monkey something to do.

And this is the technique of labeling or using a short montra or a short phrase that we repeat in our mind.

So, what this is going to look like is as you breathe in you can just say quietly in your mind “rising” and feel the belly rising.

And then as you breathe out, you can quietly in your mind say “falling” and then feel the falling of the belly and the falling of the chest.

So, when we do this labeling of the breath to improve our concentration we want to make sure that most of our attention is still on the actual physical sensations of the breath.

About 90 percent of your attention should still be feeling the breath in the body and just about 10 percent of your attention being with the words “rising” and “falling”.

We want to do this because if all of your attention is just on the word “rising” and “falling” it's still a very conceptual exercise.

And in mindfulness we really want to tap into the raw sensations that we're experiencing.

So, in the meditation today we'll be continuing with mindful breathing just noticing the physical sensations and also bringing our attention back and then we'll be adding in this other layer of labeling the breath.

So, when you're ready to get started go ahead and click on the next video.

Focused Attention

Focused Attention, Concentration