There's a beautiful paradox at the heart of mindfulness meditation practice, and it's captured perfectly in Jon Kabat-Zinn's phrase: "Meditation is not what you think."

Not what you think it is. And not about thinking at all.

Most of us come to meditation hoping it will quiet our minds, make us calmer, or fix what feels broken. We imagine we'll finally stop the endless mental chatter, achieve some peaceful state, or become a better version of ourselves.

What if the power in meditation wasn’t about stopping or changing your thoughts? That's a bit like trying to stop the waves in the ocean. And not about becoming calm, though that often happens. And certainly, not about fixing yourself into some ideal version you've been told you should be.

It’s about something far more radical: coming home to the lived experience of being in your body, right here, right now.

Beyond the thinking mind

The thinking mind is brilliant and useful, but it can get us into trouble when it’s running the show.

We live so much of our lives spinning stories about what just happened, might happen, could happen or should happen.  Strangely, awareness of the body opens a doorway to a different kind of knowing. When you feel the tightness in your shoulders, the flutter in your belly, the warmth of sunlight on your skin - you're accessing direct experience before the mind labels it, criticises it, or tries to change it.  The marvellously wise neuropsychologist Rick Hanson writes:

What we experience being - thoughts and feelings, memories and desires, and consciousness itself - is constrained, conditioned, and constructed by the body via its nervous system. The fabric of your mind is woven by your body.

Further, being aware of your body and its signals gives you useful information about your deeper feelings and needs. Tracking your body's subtle reactions to others also tells you a lot about them.

Coming home to your body helps you feel grounded, and it gives you reassuring feedback that you're alive and basically alright. It's exhilarating to feel the vitality of the body, even sitting quietly, and to experience the pleasures of the senses.

Experiencing your body as a whole activates networks on the sides of your brain. These lateral networks pull you out of the planning, worrying, obsessing, fantasizing, and self-referential thinking - "me, myself, and I". Consequently, abiding as the whole body draws you into the present moment, reduces stress, increases mindfulness, and lowers the sense of self to help you take life less personally.

This isn't about transcending thought or achieving some special state. It's about recognizing that you have a capacity for presence that's always available, underneath the mental noise.

Join us — no pressure, no perfection, just practice.

The 8-week Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) course - is a powerful way to hit pause, reset your nervous system, and build tools to meet life with more clarity, integrity and confidence. This isn’t fluff. MBSR is backed by decades of research and has helped thousands of people shift out of burnout, trusting their own intelligence in order to meet what matters in their life. 

You'll be joining a supportive group of fellow travellers, all exploring what it means to inhabit this moment, this body, this life more fully.

You don't need to be good at this….

There's no such thing as being "good" at mindfulness. There's only showing up, again and again, to whatever is here. Your wandering mind, your restlessness, your scepticism - all of it belongs. All of it is part of your life and therefore will show up when you practice.

What if your direct, felt experience in this moment held more wisdom than all your thoughts about how things should be?

This is the invitation.

Ready to explore?

I'd be delighted to have you join the next MBSR course. Whether you're completely new to mindfulness or want to refresh your practice, you're welcome exactly as you are.

Courses are happening across Australia, in person and live online – starting soon!

—Timothea Goddard