Embrace the Gentle Return: Transform Your Meditation Practice

When you're meditating, let's say you're focusing on something like your breath or a candle, and your mind wanders. Do you scold yourself for having a wandering mind or do you gently guide your mind back to what you're focusing on?

There's an important distinction here. That process of coming back to what you're focusing on is called "the return". The return is a gorgeous opportunity to help you entrain your being, your mind, your body, into focusing, into dropping away the notions of body and mind. But if we scold ourselves back into submission, as it were, we kind of miss an opportunity to love ourselves.

So I practice what I call the "gentle return". The gentle return: My mind wanders off, a thought comes in, and then I just give it no energy. And the thought dissolves or moves on, and I come gently back to what I'm focusing on.

The gentle return is so much more wonderful than the scolding return.

Check it out.

And, if you’d like the video version of this, click here.