Step Two

The first dive into our wellness program began the process of developing a sustained mindful concentration and awareness. It may have given you a glimpse into the mind's mechanisms and constant internal narrative. For very good evolutionary reasons, our mind tends to 'chatter' about what is going wrong, and this can easily hijack our attention and sweep us away towards anxiety.

By cultivating embodied attention, we can learn to not get swept away by this chatter. The attention is focused into the sensations of the body: we can practise grounding ourselves in the present moment and not getting carried by the thoughts and feelings that swarm our minds. In this way, body sensations are a great place to anchor the attention. Sustaining the connection between the two is the first step in mindfulness training.

As well as an anchor, however, body sensations can also be a radar. It's in the body that you can feel the first stirrings of emotionally charged thoughts. Instead of your body acting as an amplifier, it can become a sensitive early warning system that alerts you to unhappiness, anxiety, stress and fatigue almost before they arise. But if you are to learn to 'read' and understand the messages from your body, you have to learn how to pay attention to all its regions, as they are the source of the signals. This means you need to use a meditation practice that engages the entire body, ignoring nothing, befriending everything. And for this we use the body scan.

"Gradually learn to "taste" the difference between the "thinking mind" and the "sensing mind.”