Mindfulness meditation has a lot in common with practicing the piano. Both require clear instruction, consistent effort, and falling in love with the process instead of obsessing over the results. They are also both about finding tangible ways to navigate the abstract murkiness of time.

When remembering to notice that we're alive becomes a habit, we begin to erode the internal friction that obscures our view of the richness we're swimming in every day.

When you begin a walking or running program, there are several details you can track as evidence of improvement. Your step count. The length of your stride. Your pace. The amount of time it takes your heart to return to its recover its baseline resting rate. But how will you know when you’re getting better at noticing perceptions? 

Any perception you can observe directly in real time can be used to train a variety of attention-related skills.

I like to make a game out of turning ordinary activities into opportunities for practice.

There are a number of exercises I use when watching a film — whether it’s one I enjoy, dislike, or have seen before.  

What makes it so difficult for us to pay attention at any given moment? It seems like it should be easy.

Thinking your way through unpleasant emotions takes time while a single repetition of any mindfulness exercise only takes a few seconds. The skills of attention strengthened by mindfulness practice enhance both the resolving of unpleasant emotions and the acceptance of them.  

It seems like stepping outside for a walk should be enough to clear our minds, but when we head outdoors, our attention tends to stay anchored in our heads. What we need is a practical focus strategy and more realistic expectations about how our minds respond to such a challenge.

When it comes to developing any new skill, it is more important to be clever than to be disciplined.

“People don't understand that the hardest thing is to actually do something which is close to nothing. It demands all of you because there's no story to hide behind."

Marina Abramovic

Shinzen Young created this breath awareness exercise to develop concentration, sensory clarity, and equanimity. It is also designed to foster the cultivation of an ongoing mindfulness practice by providing both short-term and long-term benefits.

Mindfulness practice involves tracking aspects of ordinary experience as precisely as possible while allowing these observations to come and go with less interference. The noting technique creates a structure for maintaining both of these qualities of attention. Using mental labels is a technique that supports noting.

Mindfulness meditation uses ordinary sensory experience to develop skills of attention which can increase our baseline level of contentment. We take the world in through our eyes, our ears, and our bodies. We make sense of the world and our relationship to it through our mental images, internal conversations, and sensations in the body which seem to have emotional flavors.

Just as physical exercise increases strength, flexibility, and endurance to support the regular activities of your life, mindfulness exercises develop skills of attention that nurture a deep and mature level of personal contentment.

“There is a middle way here between the extremes of rigidity and passivity, one that offers a more legitimate form of meditation.”

Jason Siff