Hi, it's Eve here and welcome to Radio Headspace and to Tuesday.
It's so nice to be back with you.
So at Headspace, we're still fully remote, but I'm really missing in-person interactions.
particularly when it comes to teaching meditation so much of our communication happens non-verbally and that is certainly the case when it comes to leading a practice and holding space for folks to meditate anyway i was leading a session virtually the other day it was a group meditation and then there was a chance for folks to ask questions and one of the questions after the session was
as you've meditated for several years now is your mind totally clear and this question made me think back to my first ever meditation session i understood that my mind would not be totally empty on a practical level but experientially it took a while to understand this what struck me
though was how busy my mind actually was in many ways it felt busier than before i'd meditated and that in itself created some tension.
Was this not supposed to be easing the mind?
It's definitely what I had hoped and expected would happen.
Expectations are a natural part of human behavior,
and we all have expectations that can cause tension in the mind or anxiety with anything that feels uncertain or unknown,
or we feel vulnerable in any way.
And it's very common to have certain expectations when we begin a meditation practice.
In the same way we might when learning any other type of skill or doing something for the first time.
For example, if we're, say, learning to play an instrument,
we might hope for the ability to play a certain tune.
Or perhaps we're taking an art class.
We might hope to create a particular picture.
This kind of expectation is very natural and normal.
The problem arises when we have a lot of expectations in the mind that are attached to specific outcomes.
And when it comes to meditation,