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I don’t think I can say this often enough: Meditation is not about shutting off thoughts. In fact, thoughts are included in meditation. Learning to allow thoughts to come and go without judgment takes patience and practice. One of the ways to build this skill is to put your attention on thinking, not on what you’re thinking, but on how you’re thinking. In this way, you can learn a lot about your relationship with your thoughts.
The practice I want to share with you today is similar to the practice of putting your attention on strong emotions (you can check out Episode 24 for more on that). This practice involves sitting in meditation and turning toward your thinking so you can observe it.
I recommend starting with a few minutes of breath meditation to get yourself settled. Then, let go of the breath as object of meditation and put your bare attention on how you’re thinking. Observe whether you think in pictures or in words. Notice whether the images, if any, are in colour or black and white, or something else. Notice whether they’re fuzzy or sharp.

Peaceful Moment of the Week: Black Bear, Lake Louise, Alberta

Next, notice how you react to your thoughts. Do they bother you, or concern you? Do you think they carry a lot of weight, that is, do you think you should believe them? Do you believe you should you let them tell you how to act or feel?
Do you get hooked into your thoughts, that is, do you follow them without realizing that you’re getting caught up in them? Or, are you able to sit back and watch them come and go? Do you flit quickly from thought to thought? Does a thought ever repeat over and over?
How do you feel about your reactions to your thoughts? Do you judge yourself for the way you’re reacting? Do you shrink away from your thoughts, trying to distance yourself from them? Do you take sides, that is do you try to decide whether you agree or disagree with the thought?
At any point in this exploration, you can observe how your body feels about both the thoughts and your reactions to them. Scan the body to find a place where the thought or reaction has an effect and just observe the raw body sensations. When you attend to body sensations, you are putting your body and mind in the same place. That’s pure mindfulness.
Remind yourself that you’re just observing. No matter what you notice, you will allow it to simply be present.
After noticing the qualities of your thinking for a while, you might like to try to bring more spaciousness to thinking. You might like to see if it is possible to step back from the thoughts or the feelings and reactions they evoke. See if you can simply observe them without getting caught up in them.
With practice, you will learn that it is possible to sit back and let thoughts and feelings flow through you without feeling disturbed in any way. You will be able to be mindful of thoughts without getting hooked by them or judging them. Simply put, you are not your thoughts.
Let's Practice
The following is a 12-minute guided meditation that coaches you to put awareness on your thoughts.

Up Next Week
I hope you enjoyed this meditation. Next week’s podcast topic is awareness of awareness. Mindfulness is about cultivating awareness, so it pays to put your attention on the qualities of your own awareness to learn more about it. 
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