Part of what's so essential here
is understanding that this isn't just about teaching this
to others if you're a clinician.
It's important that we do this practice ourselves.
This is how we become teachers,
is that we've... we have our own personal practice.
Like with every new behavior change,
um, repetition is really helpful.
And in the beginning, it might feel
that when you start mindfulness practice,
it's like just another chore that you have
to fit into your already very full day.
We often compare it with exercise, so you know
exercise is good for you, and you know you have to do it
in order to really reap the benefits of exercise.
And you know that it doesn't always feel good, so sometimes
you don't want to do it, sometimes while you do it,
you ask yourself why you're spending all this time on this,
but you keep doing it because you know it really helps you.
With mindfulness practice, it's very similar.
So we do it, and we often say, you don't have to like it;
you just have to do it.
And that, again, it goes away from this idea
that whenever you meditate, you feel relaxed,
and it's wonderful, or you're in a blissful state.
You're not. Very often, it's really...
it's tedious and your mind is all over the place,
or you might feel actually quite stressed in that moment.
And that is fine.
It will still change the way you feel in life in general,
and it will still change how you respond in situations.
There's a lot of judgments that happen here.
So bring a sense of compassionate curiosity
to this experience.
What's going to come up?
What's going to be revealed in this moment here?
What is really helpful
to support your mindfulness practice
is to find a time during the day that works for you.
For a lot of people,
it helps to do it at the beginning of the day.
Some people do it, they drive to work
and then just sit in the car before they walk in.
To do it for five or ten minutes can be helpful.
It can be during lunch break.
It can be at the end of the day if you're not too tired.
So, in the beginning, it might need some experimentation
to find out what really works for you.
And then just keep on doing that,
and make it something that you do every day.
So if you combine it with something that you already do,
it can be helpful.
It can also be very helpful to actually do it
in the same place every day,
because we have something that we call "muscle memory"
or "body memory," so your body will remember.
So you get into your chair at the same time of the day
and your body will say, like, "Ooh, we're meditating now,"
and that will be helpful.
So part of what we're doing
with this practice-- the same posture,
the same time, the same place--
it doesn't always have to be that way,
but we're doing something called "stimulus control."
So we're linking a posture to a practice over and over,
and over time, just like the dog salivating with the bell,
we can sometime feel a great sense of relief
from the disengagement from the ruminative mind.
So, nowadays, we're very lucky
because there are a lot of resources out there
where you can learn mindfulness.
The best thing, we think, is to find a group
with a teacher that is in your area,
because we find that people really learn the best
in a group learning from each other.
But if you don't have that,
there are also a lot of online resources now.
You can even do online classes,
sometimes even now with video
like with Google Hangout or Skype.
You can learn from books.
There are a lot of free resources also on audio
where you can download guided meditations.
It's really wonderful now.
And we also have
provided you a list of resources that you can check out.
We can aim our attention well. It's hard to sustain it,
but we work on this with our practice moment by moment.
Media Access Group at WGBH access.wgbh.org