Capturing Your Moments: Mindfulness Meditation in Everyday Life by Jon Kabat Zinn

[Music] capturing your moments the best way to capture moments is to pay attention this is how we cultivate mindfulness mindfulness means being awake it means knowing what you are doing but when we start to focus in on what our own mind is up to for instance It's Not Unusual to quickly go unconscious again to fall back into an automatic pilot mode of unawareness these lapses in Awareness are frequently caused by an Eddy of dissatisfaction with what we are seeing or feeling in that moment out of which Springs a desire for something to be different for something to change you can easily observe the mind's habit of escaping from the present moment for yourself just try to keep your attention focused on any object for even a short period of time you will find that to cultivate mindfulness you may have to remember over and over again to be awake and aware we do this by reminding ourselves to look to feel to be it's that simple checking in from moment to moment sustaining awareness across a stretch of Timeless moments being here now try asking yourself in this moment am I awake where is my mind right now it helps to have a focus for your attention an anchor line to tether you to the present moment and to guide you back when the mind wanders the breath serves this purpose exceedingly well it can be a true Ally bringing awareness to our breathing we remind ourselves that we are here now so we might as well be fully awake for whatever is happening already our breathing can help us in capturing our moments it's surprising that more people don't know about this after all the breath is always here right under our noses you would think just by chance we might have come across its usefulness at one point or another we even have the phrase I didn't have a moment to breathe or to catch my breath to give us a hint that moments and breathing might be connected in an interesting way to use your breathing to nurture mindfulness just tune into the feeling of it the feeling of the breath coming into your body and the feeling of the breath leaving your body that's all just feeling the breath breathing and knowing that you're breathing this doesn't mean deep breathing or forcing your breathing or trying to feel something special or wondering whether you're doing it right it doesn't mean thinking about your breathing either it's just a Bare Bones awareness of the breath moving in and the breath moving out it doesn't have to be for a long time at anyone's stretch using the breath to bring us back to the present moment takes no time at all only a shift in attention but great adventures await you if you give yourself a little time to string moments of awareness together Breath by breath by moment try staying with one full in-breath as it comes in full out breath as it goes out keeping your mind open and free for just this moment just this breath abandon all ideas of getting somewhere or having anything happen just keep returning to the breath when the mind wanders stringing moments of mindfulness together Breath by breath try it every once in a while as you listen from Kabir Kabir Says student tell me what is God he is the breath inside the breath