When a meditation instructor asks us to sit down and be mindful, what exactly are we supposed to be doing? Focus on the breath? Focus on the body? Be present?
It all sounds pretty simple. And then we try it.
Pardon the sports intrusion, but I sometimes like to think of mindfulness meditation as a hockey game. Like, the whole hockey game. The players in a hockey game have learned their skills in various ways – some of it by playing actual hockey games – but a lot of it in the form of different drills.
Players practice shooting the puck in different ways, they practice skating forwards and backwards, they practice defense and offense, they practice plays with other players. When the time comes to play a hockey game, all of those skills learned during drills come together.
Mindfulness meditation is similar, and I think that there are individual skills related to mindfulness that can be strengthened by performing different drills. Bite-sized, skill-focused drills.
This talk, given for the Boundless Freedom Project’s Thursday night Sangha, explorethe idea of mindful drillsets and offers examples of what some of them could be.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=coSweVhMxmo
