Practicing mindful meditation on a regular basis is a necessary part of transforming your life through mindfulness. It provides the necessary training to remain present during times of stillness and silence. Stillness and silence are the two great teachers and connecting with them in the present moment will yield lifelong benefits that will energize and inform the rest of your life. People have discovered this over thousands of years of experience and now science is providing us with the answers as to why.
I’ve noticed over many years that there can be a tendency to overdo meditation. It’s an interesting phenomenon because the first impulse is to think that this is something that can’t be overdone, the more the better. I’ve discovered that this is not true and this remains as one of the major misconceptions about meditation. It’s true that after some practice we feel really good during meditation but I’ve noticed that this good feeling can actually become addictive at which time meditation, even mindfulness meditation, becomes an escape, a way to disconnect from what might be an unhappy life. So how do we avoid this situation?
The key to avoiding over meditating is to balance it with bringing the mindfulness practice into all activity. It is very important to build a bridge between the formal mindfulness meditation practice and everyday activity. I like to end each meditation with two or three minutes of meditating with my eyes open so as to give me a feeling for bringing this level of attention into the rest of my day. I find that it allows for a seamless transition. Next, I like to bring that present moment attention into all my activities especially, eating, walking communicating, exercising all five senses and exercising the body. Everything is fair game including the “small” stuff like brushing the teeth. This approach will guard against over emphasis on meditating and bring balance into your practice.