What To Do When Your Mind Won't Quit | Bart van Melik
Meditation teacher Bart van Melik addresses common meditator challenges like forgiveness, boredom, and worry. He shares Buddhist tools, including a specific breathwork technique for anxiety, and emphasizes the importance of community and creative approaches to practice.
Deep Dive Analysis
13 Actionable Insights
1. Practice Exhale Heavy, Calm
When experiencing fear or worry, pay extra attention to your out-breath, making your body feel heavy with each exhale, and silently or gently say “calm” as if soothing a child. This technique, learned from Yongey Mingyur Rinpoche, helps induce relaxation.
2. Redefine Forgiveness Mentally
Understand forgiveness as the act of giving up all hope for a better past, rather than forcing a feeling of being “over it.” This reframe allows for a more authentic and less pressured approach to processing past events.
3. Embrace Community for Practice
Recognize that friendship and community are essential, even the “whole of this practice,” for sustaining meditation and not feeling alone. Being part of a community provides crucial support and connection.
4. Investigate Boredom with Curiosity
When boredom arises, especially in meditation, recognize it as a worthwhile state to explore rather than avoid. Become curious about boredom’s nature and how it manifests, as it can reveal insights into daily habits like picking up your phone.
5. Find Embodiment Activities
Identify specific activities where you naturally feel connected to your body, such as mindful salsa dancing, swimming, or even vacuuming, and engage in them to foster a sense of being embodied. This helps get you out of your head and into physical awareness.
6. Interpret Disconnection as Signal
When feeling disconnected from others or your life, consider it an intuitive signal that you might need time to turn inward and reconnect with your internal awareness. This self-compassionate approach allows you to address an overwhelmed system.
7. Don’t Force Forgiveness
Do not try to force forgiveness; instead, allow it to be a process that unfolds over time with a changing attitude. Forcing it can be a form of bypassing difficult emotions rather than truly processing them.
8. Ask Two Questions About Boredom
When bored, ask “What is this?” and “How does it feel?” to explore its manifestation in your body. This shifts your focus from the narrative of “why am I bored” to the direct experience of the sensation.
9. Recognize Worry as an Obstacle
Understand worry as a powerful mind state that hinders clear seeing, making it difficult to perceive the good in yourself, others, or situations. Identifying “what if” thoughts can help you recognize when worry is present.
10. Redirect Attention from Overwhelming Worry
If worry becomes too much to hold, kindly redirect your attention, specifically to mindful breathing, rather than forcing yourself to stay with the difficult state. This is a compassionate choice when you are too tired or overwhelmed.
11. Listen to Old Tapes with Awareness
Allow yourself to revisit “old tapes” of regret or past interactions, bearing witness to them with a changing attitude over time. This practice empowers you to be with difficult experiences rather than trying to make them disappear.
12. Value Difficult Meditations
Understand that challenging meditations, rather than consistently blissful ones, often provide the most valuable learning for applying practice to real-life difficulties. These are the sessions from which you learn the most.
13. Ask What Kindness Would Do
In any moment, especially when facing difficulty, ask yourself “What would kindness do right now?” for your body and mind state. Kindness is presented as the greatest protection in the world.