Taming the Monkey-Mind

• Sit up straight in your chair and place your feet flat on the floor if you can. Close your eyes, or lower your gaze.
• Tune in to your breath as it flows in and out of your body, follow each inhale and exhale as fully as you can. There’s no need to change your breath, let it be natural.
• When your mind wanders (as all minds do), gently bring your attention back to the breath — don’t give yourself a hard time, instead, congratulate yourself for noticing your mind had wandered.
• When emotions/thoughts/physical sensations arise, see if you can just notice them without getting involved in them, and return your attention to the breath.
• After a minute, open your eyes and come back to the room.

This practice lets you take back control of your ‘monkey mind’. Often our minds are darting around from one place to another and it can be difficult to focus. You might have noticed yourself that your thoughts tend to wander off to the same places, perhaps to something bad that happened last week, or something you’re worried about in the future. Spending too much time in the past or the future not only steals from what is happening right now, it can also feed depression or anxiety.
A practice such as this one strengthens your attention muscle, so you can make better choices about where to put your attention. 

Aim to do this several times a day for the next week. (It may help to set a reminder on your phone.) Each time you practice, know that you are doing a little more to break the habits of your automatic thinking, and take control of your life.

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“Most people don’t realize that the mind constantly chatters. And yet, that chatter winds up being the force that drives us much of the day in terms of what we do, what we react to, and how we feel.” ~Jon Kabat-Zinn

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