Let’s start at the beginning. Meditation is a 2,500+ year old practice for training the mind. Historically a practice reserved for reclusive monks, kung-fu masters, austere yogis, and ochre-robed swamis, it’s now the preferred performance-enhancing practice of R&B moguls, Super Bowl Champions, Olympic athletes, and A-list celebrities.
Meditation has become popular with people who are under a great deal of pressure. One reason for that is that meditation is generally considered one of the most effective ways to train and focus your attention.
But meditation isn’t just for those under pressure. More and more people are making meditation into a habit, weaving regular meditation into their daily lives because the benefits of training one’s attention are invaluable- and everyone can benefit.
How does meditation work to train your attention?
When you sit down to meditate, you allow yourself to become very still, relaxed, and alert. Once you’ve settled into the space you’ve chosen for meditation, you focus your attention on one thing. Technically, it can be anything. But traditionally it’s something like your breath or a mantra—a word or phrase—which you repeat over and over again for the duration of your meditation.
When you do this, your mind will wander. That’s natural. The practice of meditation is all about bringing your attention back to the one thing you’re focused on. If you sit in meditation for an hour, your attention might drift away into thoughts and daydreams more than 500 times.
That’s fine. Your only job when you practice meditation is to bring your attention back when it strays from your object of focus. And it’s important to stay relaxed, still, and alert while you practice.
As you do this over and over again, you’ll slowly enter into a highly relaxed and focused state of mind. This is often accompanied by a feeling of deep well-being. And now, science has shown us that the meditative state has extremely positive physiological and neurological effects. It has been observed that regularly meditating corresponds with improved empathy, goal setting, self awareness, as well as reduced anxiety, stress, and depression.
We’ll get more into the science of meditation below.
Is Meditation the Same Thing as Mindfulness?
If you’ve heard about meditation, I’m sure you’ve also heard about mindfulness. Mindfulness is meditation in action. According to John Kabat-Zinn, one of the chief exponents of this Buddhist practice, mindfulness is “the intentional, accepting and non-judgmental focus of one’s attention on the emotions, thoughts and sensations occurring in the present moment.”
But the way I like to think about it is this. Mindfulness is the art and science of paying complete attention to the one thing you’re doing in any given moment. Of course, paying attention only ever happens right now, so learning this art grounds you in the present moment like nothing else.
And it’s important to remember that mindfulness and meditation are two sides of the same coin. You can bring the calm and focused attention you cultivate in meditation to everything you do—and that’s mindfulness. A strong meditation practice will imbue your attention and your actions with mindful presence.