Week 1

John Lothes
Jun 22, 2023
4 min read

Updated: Jun 26, 2023

Week 1

For this first week of mindfulness we are going to do one of the foundational mindfulness practices that most people do when getting started: Counting the Breath Practice

How to do Counting the Breath Practice

This practice will do just what it says, we will count our breath. For doing this practice you are going count each inhale and exhale as a 1 count (See cadence below). Now, let's talk some tips/trick/strategies, whatever you want to call them to help you on this mindfulness journey. Especially since we are in week 1. The first thing is don't get too caught up in if you are doing it right (remember from the intro post the only wrong way to do mindfulness is to not do mindfulness). We are trying to do this as effectively as we can at this point in our journey.

One very important thing we need to talk about is your mindfulness posture to get you started. There are multiple variations of how to do this. See the link below for 8 of the most common postures used in meditation/mindfulness:

https://www.skepticspath.org/blog/the-8-best-meditation-positions/

I came up training aikido, so I often sit seiza when I do my meditations. However, I also have bad knees from martial arts, running, soccer, etc and some days they are not happy. On those days, I am often doing chair meditation. I would strongly suggest early in your practice that you do not do lying down meditation, at least to get started. Historically for myself as well as with my patients I have found that lying down meditation often becomes a nap. This is not what we are going for here. Can meditation be used when we are trying to get to sleep at night with lots of racing thoughts or when we are having trouble winding down, TOTALLY. Going back to our exercise analogy, I want you to get proper form first. Then we can experiment with different variations.

For the counting practice we are going to do just that, when you inhale count 1, when you exhale count 2, etc up to 10. Then start over (see counting cadence below). I want to address some tips, ticks, tid bits to help you when you are getting started with this. If you start thinking about something else, don't judge it, don't judge yourself and come back to your counting. Another thing early I want you to be aware of is if your mind wanders and you start having other thoughts you DO NOT need to restart your counting. Just pick up on the last number you remember. Sometimes people feel like they have to restart every time their mind wanders and may never to get 10, and then feel like they have "failed" at doing the practice. This is not true, as long as you are trying you are doing. Sometimes we refer to this as training our monkey mind or puppy dog mind. If we think about this when we first get a puppy and take them for a walk they are all over the place, new sights, new sounds, new smells, new stimuli, plus they are just curious. So are our minds, and this is a good thing!!!!

A wondering mind used to be a safe mind, if we think about our hunter gather days, if my mind wasn't wander (what is that sounds? did I see something in the bushes? etc) then we may have become part of the food chain instead of surviving. However, over the years, decades, centuries, we have lost our ability to figure out what we NEED to pay attention to and what we can LET GO of. I do not need to check my phone. I do need to pay attention while driving. This counting practice will help you start to train your puppy dog mind.

Also being mindful just like with a puppy we train it kindly and with compassion. I don't yell at my puppy or reprimand it or be mean to it because it wanders on it's leash. I redirect it back to what I want it to do, and even from time to time, give it a treat when it does what I want it to.

This is where the really fascinating neuroscience nerd stuff comes in. The more we do mindfulness the more we rewire our brain (for the better!!!!). And the old adage that you can't teach an old dog new tricks was wrong!!! We can teach old dogs new tricks and we can rewire/retrain old brains. Does it maybe take more work than a young brain, yes, but our brains are still malleable even when we are older. YAY, good news for us!!!!!

Now let's start training that puppy

Doing the practice

Inhale - 1

Exhale - 2

Inhale - 3

Exhale - 4

Inhale - 5

Exhale - 6

Inhale - 7

Exhale - 8

Inhale - 9

Exhale - 10

Start over 1-10