When we talk about attention, we often use active and extractive verbs: pay, give, court, leverage. In mindfulness, attention isn’t a commodity to be used; it’s a gift to be nurtured. What might it feel like to rest our attention?
This week, teacher Sharon Salzberg offers a guided meditation that’s down-to-earth and deeply restorative as we practice holding our awareness with the lightest touch possible
A Meditation to Rest Your Attention
Read and practice the guided meditation script below, pausing after each paragraph. Or listen to the audio practice.
- In this meditation, you can sit comfortably or lie down. Close your eyes, or if you’re keeping them open, just find a spot in front of you to rest your gaze.
- Center your attention on the feeling of the in and out breath, at the nostrils, at the chest, or at the abdomen. Just the normal, natural breath.
- When I become silent, that’s the signal for you to put into practice what I’ve just suggested.
- As you feel the sensations of the breath, you can make a very quiet mental notation of breath. With the in breath, and then again with the out breath. Maybe it’s once or maybe it’s twice that you silently repeat the word breath as you breathe in, breath as you breathe out.
- Think breath when a thought or a feeling arises that’s strong enough to take your attention away from the breath. Simply note it silently as not breath: It’s not the breath and you can recognize it in just that way. So we have breath and we have not breath.
- It’s important to understand that it doesn’t matter if it’s the most beautiful thought in the world or the most terrible thought in the world. It’s simply not the breath. You don’t have to judge yourself. You don’t have to get lost in a thought or elaborate it. You recognize it’s simply not the breath Very gently let go and bring your attention back to the feeling of the breath.
- Some of your thoughts or feelings may be tender, caring. Some might seem cruel or hurtful, but they’re not the breath. You can see them, recognize them, let them go, and bring our attention back to the feeling of the breath. These thoughts and feelings are like clouds moving through the sky. Some are very light and fluffy looking, very inviting. Some are quite ominous and threatening, but they’re all not the breath. We just let them go.
- Our habitual tendency is to grab onto a thought or a feeling, to build an entire world around it or push it away, struggle against it. Here we stay even, balanced, calm. We simply recognize it’s not the breath. Very gently we let it go. We bring our attention back one breath at a time
- When you feel ready, you can open your eyes or lift your gaze, and we’ll end the meditation.
