The restless mind
For thoughts that keep going round.
Ten evenings for thoughts that keep going round. We're not trying to switch them off. We're practising following them a little less far.
The lessons
- 01Meditation · 9 min
Where your mind is right now
Take stock of your thinking, and find the first deliberate way back to the body.
- 02Meditation · 8 min
A thought isn't an instruction
A small margin of choice opens up between a thought and your reaction to it.
- 03Meditation · 8 min
The breath as an anchor
The natural breath becomes an anchor; feet, hands and sounds stay equally good alternatives.
- 04Meditation · 8 min
Watching the stream of thought
Thoughts are noticed as events, without carrying their content any further.
- 05Meditation · 8 min
The moment it starts again
Your own early signs make the start of drifting easier to catch.
- 06Everyday practice · 7 min
Worry gets an appointment
Deliberate postponing is kept apart from suppressing, and from something that genuinely needs doing now.
- 07Body practice · 8 min
The body knows first
Body sensations are explored as possible early signs for you, not as a general certainty.
- 08Meditation · 8 min
Doing nothing, on purpose
Open attention is taught as a skill you can learn, not left as unguided silence.
- 09Meditation · 8 min
Between two thoughts
Transitions are observed without trying to produce held breaths or an empty mind.
- 10Meditation · 9 min
A quiet mind isn't an empty mind
The course ends by putting the skills together, taking honest stock and setting up a small daily practice.
The length is calculated, not estimated: it follows from the spoken text and the pauses inside it. What it says here is how long it takes.
How the course works
The lessons build on each other — lesson two knows what happened in lesson one and picks it up. You listen and follow; between the sentences there is silence, where nothing has to happen. You choose the voice and the background sound yourself, and if you play a lesson a second time you get a different welcome than the first time.
The first lesson is free, with no time limit. Everything else is part of Gentle Plus at $4.99 a month or $39.99 a year, cancellable any time.
