The Mindfulness Blog

This month-- which happens to include World Mental Health Day-- I've been attempting to nudge others toward recognition of meditation as an effective means of addressing a challenge that confronts all of us: Self-regulation of difficult thoughts, feelings and emotions. Colloquially speaking, I'm talking about, "getting a grip".

Others have lent their voices to the promotion of meditation as a panacea for everything that ails us, and while that message is certainly attractive and efforts to promote it are doubtless well-intended, my focus (the focus of what I refer to as Secular meditation) is more singular: the challenge of response, as opposed to reaction-- with a big tip of the hat to the holocaust survivor and prolific Austrian psychiatrist, Viktor Frankl.

Between stimulus and response, there is a space. And in that space lies our humanity. Secular meditation (as I conceive it) is, 100% about finding that "space". The immediate goal is to learn to better self-regulate-- beyond that initial aspiration, lie fields of other potential health and behavioral benefits, that practitioners can pursue as they deem fit.

The world is filled with challenge but rather than allow us to be distracted by all of them, let's focus on one particular challenge-- the challenge of better governing the person we are closest to, and should best know-- ourselves. How best to do that? My suggestion is simple: Meditation. How best to develop and maintain a meditation practice? Through Secular meditation, which is conceived to engage both seasoned practitioners and skeptical newbies.

In my mind, any moment of meditation, is better than no meditation, at all-- and learning to walk, before learning to run is a philosophy I wholeheartedly embrace. Meditative Moments, Led meditation and Self-Guided meditation-- they're all different, and they're all good. And they all contribute to a meditation practice that is flexible, as well as practical-- sustainable.

Educate and encourage meditation-- can't we all get behind that?