Put meditation reminders around you. If you intend to do some yoga or to meditate, put your yoga mat or your meditation cushion in the middle of your floor so you can’t miss it as you walk by.Shifting the balance to give your intentional brain more power takes some work, though. There are two ways to do that-first, slowing down the autopilot brain by putting obstacles in its way, and second, removing obstacles in the path of the intentional brain, so it can gain control. It’s a way to put your intentional brain in the driver’s seat. So how can we trigger ourselves to be mindful when we need it most? This is where the notion of “behavior design” comes in. While our intentional brain knows what is best for us, our autopilot brain causes us to shortcut our way through life. Every time we do something deliberate and new, we stimulate neuroplasticity, activating our grey matter, which is full of newly sprouted neurons that have not yet been groomed for “autopilot” brain.īut here’s the problem. The more we activate the intentional brain, the stronger it gets. It’s executive control rather than autopilot, and enables intentional actions, willpower, and decisions. Mindfulness is the exact opposite of these default processes.
These default brain signals are so efficient that they often cause us to relapse into old behaviors before we remember what we meant to do instead. That’s because neural networks underlie all of our habits, reducing our millions of sensory inputs per second into manageable shortcuts so we can function in this crazy world. It’s estimated that 95% of our behavior runs on autopilot. But here are some helpful strategies to change that up: How to Make Mindfulness a Habit We think thoughts, typically, and then we act. But all of these practices have one thing in common: We notice that our minds ARE running the show a lot of the time. We’ve gone over the basic breath meditation so far, but there are other mindfulness techniques that use different focal points than the breath to anchor our attention-external objects like a sound in the room, or something broader, such as noticing spontaneous things that come into your awareness during an aimless wandering practice. Recent research from neuroscientist Amishi Jha discovered that 12 minutes of meditation, 5 days a week can protect and strengthen your ability to pay attention. You’re not just holding some value like mindfulness or compassion in the abstract, but really making it real.” Because right then you’re saying to yourself that you believe in change, you believe in caring for yourself, and you’re making it real. Meditation teacher Sharon Salzberg says: “One of my meditation teachers said that the most important moment in your meditation practice is the moment you sit down to do it. The key is to commit to sit every day, even if it’s for five minutes. It is that simple … and that challenging. Meditation is no more complicated than what we’ve described above.
You focus your attention, your mind wanders, you bring it back, and you try to do it as kindly as possible (as many times as you need to). Take a moment and notice any sounds in the environment. When you’re ready, gently lift your gaze (if your eyes are closed, open them). When you get around to noticing that your mind has wandered-in a few seconds, a minute, five minutes-simply return your attention to the breath.ĭon’t judge yourself or obsess over the content of the thoughts you find yourself lost in. Inevitably, your attention will leave the breath and wander to other places.
Just make sure you are stable and in a position you can stay in for a while.įollow the sensation of your breath as it goes in and as it goes out. You can sit in a chair with your feet on the floor, you can sit loosely cross-legged, you can kneel-all are fine. If you’re just beginning, it can help to choose a short time, such as five or 10 minutes. Read these steps, make sure you’re somewhere where you can relax into this process, set a timer, and give it a shot:įind place to sit that feels calm and quiet to you. Meditation is simpler (and harder) than most people think. How to Meditate Meditation is something everyone can do, here’s how.
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