Mindfulness Essentials

By Allen Weiss

Allen Weiss is a senior teacher of mindfulness meditation at InsightLA, the Director of Mindful USC and teaches mindfulness to companies and teams through insight4peace.com. This book reads like a friendly user manual on the essentials of mindfulness meditation. In particular, it explains why people meditate, how it works, and how it can help you.  The author knows that meditation is hard for many people. So he tries to give encouragement, helpful tips and answer every question heard from the thousands of students (and skeptics) he's taught over the last 13 years.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Allen Weiss
• Release date: Dec 26, 2020
• ISBN: 9781393204275

Book preview

1

Why Mindfulness

Twenty three years ago I was a professor at a major university who also traveled the world consulting for major high-tech companies. I thoroughly enjoyed my life and was engaged in my academic research, playing tennis, and learning Spanish.

Then one day I had an experience that radically changed everything. After noticing a strange swishing noise in my head while living in a very quiet town in France, I visited a doctor and was diagnosed with a brain tumor. A few months later I found myself in a hospital in Los Angeles. A year later, I was back for a follow-up surgery.

I spent the next few years trying to get back to my daily routine. Most things slowly fell into place. My job as a professor and my family life were stable and secure. While I had lost some of my prior interests such as tennis and languages, I found other activities with which I became deeply engaged.

Yet, while my outer life was getting back on track, my inner life had changed completely. This became apparent when I needed to see the surgeon for yearly checkups. Just making the appointments brought up anxiety I had never experienced before. The thought of doing another MRI and worrying that my surgeon would see that the tumor had returned were too much for me to bear. Fear and anxiety became the backdrop of my daily life. I’d never before thought of myself as anxious or fearful, but now I had become these emotions.

I tried various emotion regulation strategies to put my fears out of my mind, including psychotropic drugs, distraction, and repression. And while these strategies worked for a time, they quickly lost their ability to help me lead the life I wanted to lead. Eventually, prolonged and daily anxiety turned into depression, and I found myself in a situation that is typical of many people I meet today. To other people, I seemed happy and successful; but my inner life was mired in a thicket of difficult emotions that I couldn’t resolve or control.

Then I saw a flyer for a two-and-a-half-day mindfulness meditation retreat.

Like many people, I had tried to meditate before and I found it extremely difficult. My mind wandered so much that I couldn’t concentrate for more than 2 seconds, and then only if I was listening to music. My back bothered me as well, which made sitting still very hard. The benefits of meditation seemed elusive, since nobody had explained to me why the practice was beneficial, aside from the Herculean task of quieting my mind. But since I found no other remedies for my condition, I decided to go to the retreat.

Afterwards, using the mindfulness practices I learned, I began a simple daily meditation practice. Little by little, my anxiety loosened its grip and my sense of self became more fluid. I became less resistant to my emotions, and my compassion for others grew as a result. My mind did settle down; I found periods of quiet stillness that I had never experienced before.

I also clearly saw that what and how I was feeling was not who I am.

Now, years later, I’ve taught mindfulness to thousands of students and learned how different people relate to this practice. My students span a wide range of backgrounds and circumstances including undergraduate and graduate students, professors and staff in every department at a large university as well as teams in small and large companies. I’ve taught doctors, surgeons and staff in hospitals. Finally, I’ve taught the variety of people who come to a traditional mindfulness meditation center.

I’ve heard the misconceptions all these people have about mindfulness, and I’ve used a variety of analogies to explain the practice and why we practice, especially to those who come to mindfulness with a great deal of healthy skepticism. If you’re wondering about mindfulness, how to practice it, and how it can apply to you, I hope this book will help you take the first step.

How People Come to Mindfulness

When I began my serious mindfulness practice in 2005, there were 21 published research papers on the effects of a mindfulness practice on a person’s quality of life. Last year, 1203 papers were published. This dramatic increase in research interest spawned a network of online sites devoted to mindfulness, and articles appeared regularly in the popular press. This in turn increased the number of people interested in learning the mindfulness practice.

In addition we now live in difficult times that are mentally and emotionally depleting. We are facing loss—loss of routines, opportunities for travel and celebration and patterns of social interactions. We face new realities to which we must adapt, from social isolation to relentless negative information. And we face uncertainties about the financial, emotional, and physical health of ourselves and our loved ones. In short, many of us are among those who are reeling from these changes.

While more and more people have come to learn mindfulness, their reasons for doing so have remained pretty much the same: people feel a general unease and a sense that they could live their lives in a better, more intentional way. They experience a swirl of thinking and emotions they can’t manage well. Others are simply searching for a more spiritual way to live.

When I teach mindfulness, I tell a story about going to the grocery store and getting a shopping cart that has a bad wheel. You want to exchange the cart, but life is like having to push that wobbly shopping cart every day. It’s a bumpy ride.

People also come with the idea that they have unique experiences. They leave with the understanding that while their life histories may be different, they experience the same emotions that other people do and they tell themselves similar stories. They realize they are more connected to each other than they previously thought. And they realize that they are not alone in falling victim to self-critical thoughts (I’m not good enough, what’s wrong with me, I will fail at this).

If you are just beginning to contemplate a mindfulness practice, it helps to know that millions of people are similarly trying to live their lives in a better, more intentional way. You are not alone. In fact, people have been practicing mindfulness for over 2500 years. Mindfulness is central to the teachings of Buddhism – which for many people, myself included, are teachings of positive psychology. Without getting into the nuances of these teachings, you can still reap profound benefits by engaging the essential practice of mindfulness.

What’s the Problem?

People cope with their problems in many ways. To avoid the inevitable rise of difficult emotions, uncomfortable thoughts, and painful body experiences, some people turn to drinking, shopping, eating, losing themselves in social media, doing recreational (and other) drugs, going to spas—and any number of creative ways to avoid dealing with