Introduction to Mindfulness Meditation

Insight
Written By Kodo Conlin

A self-guided path through mindfulness practice, in six sessions

This is a place to learn mindfulness meditation in the way I approach it, at your own pace, from wherever you are. Maybe you've sat with me at IMC or IRC, or on a daylong or retreat, and you'd like to continue. Maybe you're just starting out. In any case, this page is meant to provide an orientation and introduction to the practice: a clear, gradual path, with recordings you can listen to and practice with as many times as you like.

These mindfulness meditation instructions develop over six sessions. Each one builds on the last, and each one includes a short orientation, a practice to work with, and importantly, recordings: guided meditations and talks, which carry the instruction in more detail. No need to rush through these. You might spend a week with each session, or a month. The sequence tends to unfold best when it isn't hurried.

How the path works

There's a simple image at the heart of this whole sequence: concentric circles. Imagine the breath at the very center. As we move through the sessions, we widen the circle: first breath, then body, then emotions, then thinking, and finally all aspects of our experience. Each practice includes what came before.

Throughout, the breath remains available as a home base. In this approach, whenever things get complicated or overwhelming, you can return to the breathing, settle, and rest there.

One more point of orientation: in any moment of experience there are two things going on. There's the what of our experience, whatever the senses are sensing. This might be a sound, a sensation, a thought, anything sensed. And along with the what there's the how, how we are relating with the experience: the attitude, the relationship, the way we regard it. Much of what makes experience challenging isn't the what but the how. In this practice, we attend to both.

Before you begin

You don't need anything special to begin. You will need a place: a chair or a cushion, a place that is reasonably quiet where you can practice uninterrupted. I suggest sitting in a way that's upright but not rigid, both relaxed and alert. Legs grounded, perhaps sitting cross-legged or kneeling. If in a chair, sit so the feet are flat on the floor. The body should be balanced. Roll the shoulders back and rest the hands on the legs or in the lap. Eyes can be closed.

To begin with, aim to gradually work up to twenty minutes of meditation. Daily sitting for this length starts to show benefit in a matter of weeks. Once comfortable, feel free to extend the meditation to thirty minutes, forty minutes, or longer. Many community meditations are around 45 minutes. The guided recordings below are mostly around half an hour, and you're welcome to use them as your timer.

If you're completely new to this approach, begin with Session 1 and stay with it for at least a week. The attention will surely wander. There's no failing here. As Dharma teacher Andrea Fella puts it, forgetting is not a mistake. The practice includes both wandering and returning to this moment of experience.

Session 1 · The Breath

We begin with the breath. It's always available, always in the present. I like to begin the instruction with just three words: knowing, now, simply.Knowing: being aware of the inhale and exhale, as we experience it right now, as these sensations. Now: in the present moment, this breath, rather than past or future. Simply: with a uncomplicated relationship to experience.

In this practice, we're not trying to control the breath or make anything of it. To begin, we're cultivating two skills: connecting and sustaining. In this sense connecting is to bring together the attention and the sensations of breathing. Once attention and sensation are connected, we sustain that connection, staying with it, gently, the way you might sand a piece of wood with even, patient application. When the attention wanders, and it will, that wandering-and-returning is part of the practice.

The practice this week: Sit with the breathing. Find where you feel it most naturally, e.g., the nostrils, chest, or belly, and invite your attention rest there. Softly label "in" and "out" in time with the breathing. When you notice attention has drifted, come back, simply, kindly.

Practice with these recordings:

Session 2 · The Body

Once we have practiced with the breathing, we widen the circle to include the whole body. Many of us have moved through our lives without really inhabiting the body. I certainly did this until, at twenty-nine, I discovered there was a whole world of experience in here I'd never really known. Mindfulness of the body one way we come home to our life.

Now, a key skill is distinguishing sensation from commentary. There's the actual felt experience, say, warmth, pressure, tingling, coolness, movement; and then there's the mind's story about it. The sensation is like standing in a forest, sensing it directly; the commentary is more like looking at a poster of a forest with a slogan printed across it. One is alive and rich; the other is thin and static. At this stage of the practice, we are learning to prioritize the sensed by keeping it in the foreground of attention. When commentary comes, we allow it to float right by in the background.

The practice this week: Maintain the breathing as home base, and when a compelling sensation arises, let your attention be drawn to it. Give it a simple name and let the sensation be the focus of mindfulness. When the sensation is no longer compelling, return home to the breathing. When commentary arises, that's fine; if possible, let it stay in the background and prioritize sensation and breath.

Practice with these recordings:

Session 3 · Emotions

Now we widen the circle again to include emotions, an important part of our human life. First, for the purposes of mindfulness practice, no emotion is inappropriate. And, emotions communicate through the body. With this practice, we're not trying to suppress feelings, and we're not trying to pursue them either. Instead, we're learning to let arisen emotions flow through us, to sense them rather than be swept away by them.

Often, bringing mindfulness to emotions as sensations can be sufficient. For working with an emotion when it becomes strong or persistent, I use the acronym RAFT(T) (I learned it from Tanya Wiser): Recognize: giving it a simple name. Allow: neither condemning nor condoning; it has already arisen. Feel: locate the emotion in the body, and experience it as sensation. Tease apart: notice the difference between the sensation and the story. Trust: give the practice its time.

You don't need RAFT for every arisen feeling. If an emotion isn't compelling, leave it in the background. If it becomes compelling, turn toward it with mindfulness and know it as sensation. Often that's enough. It's when an emotion is strong or keeps returning then RAFT applies.

The practice this week: Meditate with a focus on the breath and body. When an emotion becomes compelling, turn toward it. Recognize and name it, allow that it is present, feel it in the body, tease the sensation apart from the story. And when it fades, return to home base. If it's ever too much, you can always return attention to the breathing.

Practice with these recordings:

Session 4 · Thinking

Thinking is often an aspect of experience people most want to fix or avoid. To approach the practice, we can begin with a reframe: much of what we call "thinking" isn't deliberate. We aren't intentionally doing it. It's happening. This involuntary production of thoughts, at IMC we sometimes call "thoughting." If thoughts arise in meditation, it's not a shortcoming. "Thoughting" is often simply what minds do.

In our approach, we don't set out to stop thoughts. To cultivate mindfulness, we aim to know thoughts as process rather than being driven by their content. A well-known metaphor: imagine standing at the roadside, watching cars go by. It is possible to watch each one come and go without climbing in and being driven off. When we "climb into" a thought, we've left the roadside, and all too often, we don't notice until miles down the road. And yet, the moment you notice you've been lost in thought is itself a moment of mindfulness. Mindfulness is back.

What makes a thought compelling enough to pull us in? Often, one of three things: it's about me; it carries an emotional charge; or it lives as a tension in the body. All of this can be met with mindfulness. Thoughts have a half-life. No thought is permanent.

The practice this week: Let thinking be part of the field of meditation. When you notice thinking, note it, "thinking," and return to the breath or body. When a thought repeats or keeps drawing attention, check for an emotion or a bodily tension underneath.

Practice with these recordings:

Session 5 · Choiceless Attention

Over the last four sessions, our concentric circles have widened to include more of our experience. Now we let the edges of the circle dissolve. In the earlier sessions we gave priority to one aspect of experience at a time: breath, then body, then emotion, then thinking. Here we let attention move wherever it will, undirected and unencumbered. Everything gets to be included.

Perhaps think of attention as like a spotlight. It lights up one thing at a time out of the whole field of experience. Often, we've directed attention. Now, practicing choiceless attention, we let it move freely. We follow. Perhaps now attention is noticing a sound. Now a sensation in the back. Then the coolness of the air. Then a thought. One thing after the next, and we simply stay close, recognizing each as it comes. If you ever get disoriented, observe: What's happening now?

What's remarkable is that even while the what of experience keeps changing (e.g., sound, sensation, thought, sound again) mindfulness can still grow steady. Moving attention, steady awareness.

The practice this week: Begin meditation focused on the breathing, to settle. When ready, release attention to move where it will, and follow it. Lightly note or label what's known; know each thing and letting it go. If ever scattered, feel free to return to the breath, gather a while, and open again.

Practice with this recording:

Session 6 · Taking It Into Daily Life

What have we been growing with this practice? Gradually, our relationship to experience has been changing. Here we return to the frame from the beginning: the what and the how. Much of our daily experience is unchosen: the traffic, the interruption, the ache, many of our own thoughts. If our strategy for happiness depends on controlling the what of experience, odds are stacked against us. But if we can cultivate a free and kind how with whatever arises, then we can be free far more often, in far more circumstances.

Mindfulness in daily life is an extension of our practice of seated meditation. We bring the same knowing, now, simply to washing the dishes, to a difficult conversation, to waiting in line, to all four "noble postures": walking, standing, sitting, lying down. Every time we choose awareness over reactivity, we're training the heart's relationship to experience. Little by little, awareness becomes the tendency of the mind.

There's a phrase I love from a Zen abbess who'd practiced forty years: the fruit of all this, she said, was "an affectionate relationship with my own mind." That's a worthy aim. We bring awareness to our experience and come to know our own heart... to know it, and love it, and care for it. The heart grows wise, and all beings benefit.

The practice this week: Pick one ordinary daily activity, perhaps an evening walk walk, a meal, or brushing your teeth; and make it an extension of your meditation. Also, from time to time, in middle of your day, pause and ask: How am I relating with this experience right now? Is there an attitude here? Notice the what and the how.

Practice with these recordings:

Where to go from here

Your mindfulness practice is underway. This is enough to keep developing on your own for a long time, and enough to be the ground for a conversation.

From here, the natural next steps might be teachings on the refuges and precepts, working with the hindrances, or the Five Faces of Compassion. The Dharma is vast, so avenues are many. My encouragement is to continue developing the mindfulness practice, and the next steps will present themselves.

Practice discussion

One of the ways I teach is through one-on-one practice discussion, to extend and deepen our understanding of these teachings. If you've been working through this mindfulness practice and would like to talk it over, you're welcome to contact me.

*Recordings on this page are freely offered through AudioDharma and Dharma Seed.

© Kodo Conlin. This material is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution–NonCommercial–ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

Kodo Conlin
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