This guided meditation helps you become interested in your desires so you can break free from unhealthy habits.
Want to overcome habits that aren’t serving you. But what happens when you get curious about what you want instead of trying to get out of it?
We often assume that our actions are the result of choices and awareness, which means we can be more critical of ourselves when we’re struggling with habits that aren’t serving us. But habit science and empathy researchers have found that much of our decision-making is the result of an unconscious neurochemical loop that reinforces itself over time.
In this meditation, author and researcher Judson Brewer introduces a thoughtful approach to bringing true awareness and choice back into the equation when cravings arise.
This guided meditation was recorded live at the Center for Mindfulness at the University of Massachusetts Medical School.
- First, find a comfortable position. We can start by simply settling into a comfortable posture, whatever that is for us at the moment.
- Now, tune into the physical sensations. Check in with your body. What does your body feel in this moment – do you hold tension in any places? Maybe check with the feet and other touch points: knees, hips, our hands, our shoulders. Even this breath, itself is breathing. Just being really curious: what’s alive for us right now in our bodies.
- Name the desires in your mind. For the next few minutes we will play with working with wishes. Once we’re settled and anchored in this body, just think of something that really gets our juices flowing, whether it’s food or something else we really like. We’re also bringing to mind the itches we feel we have to scratch. Many of us are in “inbox zero,” a constant race to keep our inboxes and our email accounts as small as possible. We can think of this: What does it feel like? When I open my computer and the last time I have 58 new emails. So whether it’s something pleasant, or it’s something unpleasant that we feel like we have to deal with, just bringing the situation to mind. Really checking to see what the urge to do something feels like in our body. The desire to stop the pleasant or the desire to remove the unpleasant.
- Now, notice how compassion manifests in your body. As we identify where it is in the body, we can dial down the curiosity. How does it feel? Maybe even naming the physical sensations that are most important to yourself. We can even explore how this feeling shifts and changes as we bring this curious awareness to it. We can even dial the curiosity up a bit. If we have to choose it more on the right side or on the left side of our body? Is it in the front or back of our body? And what happens to just curiously discovering where it is? How long does this feeling last? Is one sensation replaced by another that becomes more dominant? And if we see that the thrill that was evoked by imagining that meal or email inbox is fading.
- Notice how it feels now to just rest in body awareness. Consider what it feels like to be aware of these feelings—that we don’t have to be slaves to our desires, that we can explore them with curiosity, moment by moment.
- Finally, explore another desire or desire that is at this level. For the next few minutes. Simply resting in awareness of our bodies. Pursuing these desires: The urge to get lost in fantasies or urges to beat yourself up about something that may have happened earlier in the day or in the week. Just diving right in. Holding each sensation with such, curious awareness.
This meditation guide provides additional information to a feature article titled “Constant Desire” that appeared in the April 2018 issue of Mindful Magazine.
