Beneficial Meditation Attitudes – (based on Kabat-Zinn, 1990)
The mental states that we develop through mindfulness meditation, (Vipassana meditation) are wonderful aids to guitar practice. Hopefully, the following list will help you turn your practice session into a relaxing refresher for mind and body.
- Non-judging – The habit of immediately judging every event as good or bad interferes with our ability to choose our responses to events. We react spontaneously and sometimes unwisely. A beginning meditator might judge his/her efforts as inferior and doubt his/her ability to gain any benefits. A meditation session is not a competition.
- Patience – Tolerance and understanding toward mind and body when they don’t immediately perform in the desired manner. Of course the mind wanders. Meditation is in large part the gentle art of beginning again, of inner listening, and of kindly training the wanderer as one would train a frisky puppy to sit. Notice where he went, bring him back to you, and tell him once again to “sit”.
- Beginner’s Mind – Openness to new experiences and possibilities helps prevent reactions based on past experiences. Imagine a teachable and enthusiastic child.
- Trust – Trust in the inherent abilities of your mind and body to return to a restful state.
- Non-striving – Allowing an event to happen, rather than making it happen, is one of the principles of mindfulness meditation. Active goal-setting, planning, and trying interfere with the process.
- Acceptance – The meditator becomes an impartial witness to his/her own bodily sensations, thoughts, and feelings. A willingness to see things as they are and experience each moment as it is enables the meditator to adopt a third-person perspective and gain greater awareness.
- Letting Go – Mind and body hold on to thoughts, feelings, tensions. During meditation, the non-judging, patient, trusting, non-striving, accepting person with a beginner’s mind lets them go.
Examples from activities: eating, walking, music, art, sports and recreation
Mountain Meditation
One of my favorite meditations is the Mountain Meditation form Jon Kabat-Zinn’s book, Wherever You Go, There You Are. I have done this one a lot and find that it adapts well to guitar practice.
First, the main points: 1) You are the mountain, rooted firmly in the earth. 2) Time passes by, and the seasons change, but you remain unmoved. 3) Life events (storms) rage around you, but you just calmly sit. You are strong and calm like a mountain.
Then, the adaptation. When I am playing, I usually hold a mental image of a natural phenomenon or force like a flowing stream or a breeze. Sometimes it feels as if I become that stream. As you might imagine, that is a lovely feeling. Try it. You’ll like it!
Wherever You Go, There You Are: Mindfulness Meditation in Everyday Living. Jon Kabat-Zinn, (1994). New York: Hyperion.
