Meditation Myth: You Need To Get Rid of Your Thoughts
In today’s episode of the podcast, I’m discussing the most common meditation myth: the idea that you need to get rid of your thoughts. You’ll hear about Mindfulness of Thinking, how thoughts fit in to meditation practice, what we can learn by observing those thoughts, and some techniques to try.
Episode Details:
I’m hoping that if you’ve heard this meditation myth, you’ve also had someone tell you it’s false! But here’s the thing – just having the myth busted probably isn’t enough. You can know that you don’t have to get rid of your thoughts to meditate…but what next?
You also need to know what to do with all those thoughts, and how to go about your practice. Fortunately, there are ways to work with the mind – it’s not like you just have to sit there and suffer through all your thoughts and hope for the best.
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What you’ll learn instead of this meditation myth:
- paying attention to the mind is an essential part of Mindfulness Meditation
- how to “step back” from the waterfall of thoughts and observe what’s going on
- your nervous system may be driving the busy-ness in your mind
- several mindful inquiries you can use to explore the thinking process, without getting lost in it.
I also talk about one of my first meditation retreats, where something triggering came up and I got really stuck on some thoughts. It was during this experience that I learned one of my favorite meditation techniques (foreground/background) from one of the teachers on the retreat, Larry Yang.
If you’ve said, “I can’t meditate because my mind is too busy” or “I tried meditation, but I couldn’t stop thinking,” then please listen to this episode! I hope it will give you another way of looking at meditation, as well as some useful tools for working with your mind.
Links & Resources from this episode:
- Try this guided meditation with Larry Yang (the teacher I mentioned from my retreat) on Mindfulness of Mental States
- For more meditation myth busting, check out this blog post by Oren Jay Sofer (another teacher I really like)
If you found it helpful to question this meditation myth, I also recommend Episode 23 – So You Think You Can’t Meditate (Part 1) for help with more of the common roadblocks to starting a mindfulness practice.
P.S. Did you know there is a Free Membership Tier of the Moved To Meditate Class Library? Learn more about the Class Library and sign up for your Free Library Card to access the five featured classes from the catalog each month.