Lately, I had a couple of friends asking me: Virendra, do you have any mindfulness courses available for me? And I had to tell them that I hadn’t. However, I started wondering, is the difference between meditation and mindfulness that big that they can’t be joined hand in hand? Well, let’s have a look at my journey searching for this answer.
What is the meaning of mindfulness?
Let’s first have a little look at the name. Mind-full. Some spiritual teachers even talked about this in their programs. Mooji for example, mentioned that it shouldn’t be mind-full-ness, it should be mind-empty-ness. As that is what you want to achieve with this type of practice.
That said it’s just a term of course and I can see that the intention may just be to emphasize living a fuller life by being more aware. Rather than having a full mind.
If we can look past this, we can have a look at what mindfulness actually is.
What is the goal of mindfulness
This one can just be answered easily and quickly: To be more aware of what is going through your mind and to give yourself the space to unwind and relax.
That’s more easily said than done of course. But within mindfulness, we will use techniques to observe our thoughts, to be more aware of our surroundings, and so on, but that all with concentration and without judgment. That’s the key to mindful living. Being aware without putting any judgment into our thinking.
What is meditation
Now that we’ve looked a bit at mindfulness, let’s take a look at meditation. I can actually give the same explanation to meditation that I’ve done before. So you can just scroll up and get your explanation there!
However, it’s also not just that. There’s a bit more to it. Because we can talk about mindful meditation, but we can also talk about silent meditation, active meditation, Buddhist meditation, and so on!
Meditation is just an umbrella term for all types of focused attention with the purpose of mental relaxation and more.
However, I do have to mention that there’s also a lot of overlap in all these types of meditation.
Where to begin my meditation practice?
I know this is a shorter article, but I have to be honest, we can talk a lot more about this, but the biggest question is: How can you start with mindfulness or your meditation practice?
If you type in Google the words Mindfulness in my area, you’ll for sure find something. I can also understand if you are not fond of throwing yourself into a group, or maybe you also don’t have to money for a lengthy and expensive course. There are a couple of apps that are worth it! My favourite is Calm!
Hope you’ll enjoy your mindful practice!
