In this fourth episode of an eight-part series on meditation and mindfulness, the discussion focuses on being mindful of thoughts. Amanda recently received her certification to teach meditation. She explains how thoughts are mental processes influenced by various factors like environment, culture, and emotions. The episode debunks the myth that meditation aims to stop thoughts, highlighting instead the importance of noticing them. It covers the neural basis of thoughts and offers practical advice on using breath as an anchor during meditation. Personal anecdotes and stories from the classroom demonstrate the significance of observing and questioning thoughts to reduce suffering and promote self-compassion and in turn compassion toward others, including students. The episode concludes with a guided meditation exercise aimed at helping teachers and listeners become more aware of their thinking patterns.

00:00 Introduction to Mindfulness of Thoughts
01:08 Understanding Thoughts and Their Influence
03:43 The Practice of Noticing Thoughts
07:16 The Power of Noting and Naming Thoughts
10:03 A Touching Story on Mindfulness
12:46 Judgment and Bias in Education
16:58 Exercise: Counting Your Thoughts
23:18 Guided Meditation for Noticing Thoughts

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Transcript

Amanda: [00:00:00] Today I want to talk about mindfulness of thoughts. This is part four in an eight part series, all about meditation and mindfulness. Part one was about the breath. Part two was about the body. Part three was about emotions, and this is part. Four thoughts. The reason that I’m doing this series is because I recently received my certification to teach meditation.

I was part of a two year program called M-M-T-C-P, and I graduated, and I’m just really, really excited to share this with teachers, especially on their summer break when they have a little bit more space for themselves. I hope. Welcome to the Empower Students Now podcast. A podcast about equity, neurodiversity, mindfulness, and [00:01:00] student engagement.

There’s a lot that needs to change in our education system. The good news is teachers have the power to make these changes now. So what are thoughts? Well, thoughts are mental processes in the brain that involve the manipulation and organization of information stored in the brain. They can range from simple perceptions and sensations to complex reasoning, problem solving, and imagination.

They can be conscious and we can be aware of them, but they can also just sit in the background without us really being fully aware. They’re influenced by many factors, including the environment that you live in, your culture, your beliefs, the way that you were raised, your conditioning and your emotions, and your sensitivities when [00:02:00] it comes to your emotions, when we perceive something.

Neurons in different parts of the brain communicate with each other through electrical and chemical signals. The communication forms neural NA networks or pathways that become well worn. The prefrontal cortex is involved in higher level thinking, decision making, and planning. While the hippocampus plays a role in memory retrieval and storage.

Neurotransmitters and hormones such as dopamine and serotonin, play a crucial role in the brain as well. Giving feelings of pleasure, satisfaction, and motivation, and controlling mood, sleep, learning, concentration, and memory. One of the best analogies I’ve ever heard about thoughts in the brain are that [00:03:00] they are.

Like saliva, like what our mouths do when we secrete saliva. Our brains are secreting thoughts all the time, and a lot of people think that meditation is about stopping that process and trying to. Clear your mind of thoughts, but that’s a really huge misconception. When you start to practice meditation, you’ll start to notice it’s almost impossible to stop thoughts or to clear your mind.

So meditating on thoughts is really about just noticing them. And in the first three parts of this series I talked about how meditation really is that process of noticing, [00:04:00] uh, what’s happening inside our bodies, um, with our emotions, the physical sensations that we have, and also what, what. Is coming up for us in terms of our thoughts.

So it’s more about just noticing them. And I talked about choosing an anchor to. Bring yourself back to. So my favorite, and I think the classic anchor is your breath. And so as you meditate, you’ll start to notice as you, you, you focus on your breath and you bring your attention to your breath and you’re noticing the sensations.

Maybe you’re counting your breath and then suddenly you start thinking, and that moment. And maybe you think for a while before you notice your thinking, and that happens to me all the time. But that moment of noticing, I’m thinking it’s [00:05:00] a magical moment because. It’s the moment when you’re training your brain to notice, and it sounds so simple and silly, but it’s actually quite hard ’cause a lot of people, they’ll notice that they are thinking negatively about themselves when they think like berating themselves for thinking, and that’s thinking too.

So if that’s a pattern of yours, you can start to name and notice it. So one of my favorite authors, um, his name is Michael Singer, and he wrote a book, hauled The Untethered Soul, and he talks about this human capacity to get lost in thought and to believe our thoughts wholeheartedly, and that. [00:06:00] When we, when we believe them and we don’t question them, how painful that is and how much suffering that can cause.

I do recommend that book, uh, because he really made me start to think about my thoughts differently and, and so why is it that when we think we believe what we think. We think it’s true. I just, I think it’s an important question to reflect on, like what is it that’s so captivating and animating about our thoughts that we, we, we sort of get caught up in them, a lot of us, so how do we become familiar with this, this.

Process that happens in our brain every day, almost every second. How do we start [00:07:00] to familiarize ourselves with the landscape of our own thoughts without getting caught in them? Without getting caught in the idea that we have to get rid of them or clearing them and. It, it really is just a very simple process of noting the noting practice and you get better and better at it.

The more that you carve out time to sit and, and meditate, uh, and then you start to apply this, this ability to name the thoughts that keep coming up. And you can name them, note them, and you start to notice patterns. This is a wonderful quote from Buddha. [00:08:00] Who is your enemy? Mind is your enemy. No one can harm you more than a mind.

Untrained. Who is your friend? Mind is your friend. No one can assist you and care for you better than your mind. Well-trained, not even the most loving mother or father. So mind can create suffering, but it can also create self-compassion and understanding. And we are so good at labeling. Our minds are so good at labeling.

At judging, at analyzing, problem solving, imagining, and really I think an untrained mind. It’s out of control, and I think I spent most of my [00:09:00] life with out of control thoughts? Just thoughts that were going unquestioned and. So it really is a huge, um, moment, an epiphany, a turning point when a person learns that they don’t have to believe their thoughts, that thoughts are just secretions of saliva, but they’re secretions of of thoughts.

So why would you benefit from being able to note your thoughts? Well, and especially as a teacher, and then obviously later I will share a guided meditation to help you with that process of noting thoughts. Um, but for now, I want to. Give you really a, [00:10:00] a really touching story. I wanna share a touching story with you, um, about a child and just the importance and just the power of being able to notice your own thinking, um, especially as an adult working with children.

So there is a meditation teacher named Larry Ward, and he is friends with Jack Cornfield who started, uh, spirit Rock, which is a beautiful meditation center where you can go to retreats and Larry Ward teaches there and Jack Kornfield shared this story. Um, during my program, M-M-T-C-P, and I’d like to share it with you, but it was actually a story told by, by Larry Ward.

So during a course called Power of [00:11:00] Awareness. So here’s the story. Am I gorgeous? My child asks, drawing the word out, like pulled taffy. Yes. I say you are. The pink and teal dress is probably made of some highly flammable material. Some chemist’s approximation of satin pudgy fingers decorated with pink polish Trace this Quin on the bodice.

I love this. A giant pair of bubblegum. Pink wings flap, slowly little feet dance and sparkly red slippers. I’m just like a real princess. Yes. I say you are curly hair, joyful smile, flawless skin. This child is the epitome of beauty. This child, my son, he’s [00:12:00] four years old and prefers to wear dresses. Maybe it’s a phase, maybe not.

Even as I wonder how I produce such an angelic looking creature, I wish he, I wish he would put on some pants and go back to playing with toy tractors. Not because it matters to me. It doesn’t, but because I’m already hearing in my head the name calling he will face in kindergarten.

I’m definitely feeling a lot of emotions reading that to you right now, and

I think the story really, really demonstrates our conditioning and that we all have bias, that we all have these ideas in [00:13:00] our heads about. The way that we think the world should be, the way that we think people should behave, and we’re just, we’re judging creatures. It’s what we do. It’s what we were built for.

We’re labeling creatures and these labels,

if they go unchecked, if these thoughts go unchecked. They can harm others, children, our students, and I don’t want to place any judgment on anyone for judging. We all do it. We all do it. We, we make assumptions about our students. Some of the common ones that I’ve made are, this student is lazy. This student is.

[00:14:00] Um, not taking school seriously. This student’s family isn’t being supportive. There’s so many different ways that we can judge our students and their families. And what’s so incredible about beginning to practice meditation and beginning to notice these judgements. Is that we can start to separate ourselves from them.

It’s actually called taking the seat of awareness and you start to realize you are not your thoughts. Your thoughts are from your conditioning. They’re from your, your past, they’re from your ideas about the way you think things should be, what you were taught. And so the more that we can notice them, them, the more we can.

Start to [00:15:00] separate ourselves from them and just become more aware rather than attached. Because if we do become attached to, um, a biased idea about students, like for example, assuming they’re cheating, using ai, that’s another one. Just always feeling hypervigilant about cheating. I know I felt that. As a high school English teacher, just questioning that, you know, yes, cheating is happening, but am I going to label a student as um, or all my students as unethical and dishonest?

No. I don’t wanna do that. I don’t want to label them that, [00:16:00] because when I do, it affects the rest of the encounters that I have with that student. Maybe a student cheat. Maybe a student is dishonest. That’s one day. That’s one moment. It’s one decision that they made. It’s not all of them. And the world that we’re living in today, the pressures, I know maybe you’re thinking excuses, excuses, but this is the reality.

Students today, the pressures they’re facing, the amount of information that’s bombarding them, it’s, it’s incredibly overwhelming and, and unprecedented. Growing up today is not like growing up when I was a kid. I’m an eighties kid, nineties kid. So let’s just do a [00:17:00] quick exercise. This is, uh, not the guided meditation yet.

It’s just a short exercise. So what I’d like you to do is. You know, if you’re not driving, um, and you’re in a safe place and, and you feel comfortable, I’d like you to close your eyes and take a few deep breaths. And just for the next 30 seconds, I want you to try and count the number of thoughts that come up.

And yes, you can use breath as your anchor if you want, but just, just try it, try and count. The number of thoughts that come up in the next 30 seconds. Okay. I’m gonna, I’m gonna go ahead and stop talking for 30 seconds while you participate in this exercise.[00:18:00]

All right. It’s been about 30 seconds. What was that experience like for you? For me, when I’ve done this, it’s been. Quite confusing and overwhelming because there’s so many different, um, types of thoughts right there. Like, you might hear a sound and have a thought about that. You might suddenly have a picture in your mind.

Is that a thought? Um, are you thinking in words? Are you maybe. You’re breathing and then you think, oh, I’m not thinking, yay. And then suddenly that’s a thought, right? Or maybe you’re thinking about your breathing. Is that a thought? [00:19:00] It is really, really hard, uh, to identify thoughts, isn’t it? It, and, and how many do you think you had in that 30 seconds?

And something else to notice about your thoughts is often. Actually all the time they’re repetitive. And, um, and they’re the same thoughts that you had yesterday, which is really strange, isn’t it? And as you do this more and more, you’ll start to notice, um, what Jack Kornfield calls the top 10 hits. So, you know, maybe your thoughts are.

Mostly about the future. Maybe they’re mostly about the past and, and maybe ruminating, maybe they’re mostly thoughts about how annoying things are. Those are. That’s actually probably my number one hit is just being annoyed, having thoughts of [00:20:00] annoyance and um, also. Um, Jack Kornfield, he’s so funny. He talks about how a lot of our thoughts are fake news, which is so funny, but it’s not funny, right?

Like a lot of them are so, so out there, you know, and we don’t even really know if they’re true or not. And, and often they are. So. General, that there’s no way they could be true. You know, for example, going back to the student, uh, example of some, a student cheating, just labeling that student dishonest, labeling that student a cheater, that is one aspect of them.

In that one moment, there are so many other layers to who that student is. And there’s probably a lot of things that [00:21:00] occurred that led to that moment of cheating, underlying issues that we’re not aware of, and we’re not really labeling because we don’t know about them. We’re not, we’re not, we’re not thinking about that.

We’re just thinking about general labels and. And these can be really, these really harsh judgements can be so harmful. And maybe you’ll start to notice that you are a critic of yourself. This is something that I noticed. Um, I always thought of myself as a confident person because I’ve just done a lot of public speaking.

I’ve put myself out there a lot. I mean, I’m a teacher in front of a class every day. But when I started meditating, I realized how mean I am to myself and how high my expectations are of myself. And [00:22:00] it’s harmful. It’s harmful, and I, you can’t really do anything about these harmful thoughts unless you’re aware of them.

And so that’s why this is such, such a powerful practice of noting when you’re meditating and throughout your day when you’re trying to, you know, be mindful. So some things you might note as you’re noticing your thoughts are that you are planning. I mean, you’re remembering, you’re judging, you’re criticizing, doubting, imagining, feeling, gratitude.

Um, I mean that’s another thing that, you know, I’m making thoughts sound so negative, but they can be really, really positive and helpful as well. And you know, in my program it was really emphasized that thoughts aren’t your enemy. And [00:23:00] they’re not something you can ever really get rid of. They’re there all the time, but what you can do is notice them and not get so attached to them and feeling like they’re true.

I wanna end with before our guided meditation, uh, a story that Jack told. About a letter he got from a sixth grader and teaching this to students. It’s just, it’s just such a beautiful way to empower them. To give them these tools, and this is one of the reasons I’m, I’m giving them to you so that you can give them to yourself and to your students.

So here’s, um, here’s, uh, the letter that Jack got, Jack Kornfield got from his, uh, sixth grade, a sixth grader. Dear Jack, I came to your meditation center with my school. When I [00:24:00] went, I did not take any of the meditating seriously. And then Jack told us that the student spelled seriously, C-E-R-I-S-L-Y, till I started to get in big fights with my parents and myself.

I recalled the time we spent meditating and how good it felt because I was quiet in my own little world. So I took the little knowledge I got about meditating one night after a long fight with my mom and went out into the yard and started meditating. I tried to do what you told us to do, and when I opened my eyes and went back into my house, I was not as mad.

I don’t know what it is about meditating that helps me, but I do know it helps me let go of my thoughts and my anger. Thank you a thousand times for the gift you’ve given me.

It [00:25:00] really is such a huge gift to learn that you don’t have to believe your thoughts, that you can separate yourself from them. So let’s practice

begin by taking a posture that allows you to be comfortable and relatively still. A posture that helps you feel relaxed and at ease, but also alert. Take about five deep breaths, just feeling a sense of calm and peace as you breathe in through the nose and out. Through the mouth.[00:26:00]

There’s nowhere to be. There’s nothing to do, but sit and let relaxation wash over you.

Breathe in calming energy. Exhale, any tension.[00:27:00]

Sense. Where do you feel the breath? Do you feel it in your nostrils, in your chest, in your belly?

Now allow your breath to find its own rhythm.

As we sit together and notice the breath,

you could choose to count your breaths up to 10. In [00:28:00] and out is one. In and out is two. And as you do this even now, if you notice your mind wandering thinking, note the thought.

With kindness and compassion. Note it, call it thinking, and then come back to your breath.[00:29:00]

We can include the thought process itself as part of the meditation when you realize you’ve been thinking instead of feeling frustrated or discouraged, appreciate. Yourself for noticing, thinking is happening. Bring your breath, bring your attention back to the anchor of your breath.

Keep breathing [00:30:00] in and out.

I am going to be silent for the next three minutes as you either count your breath to 10 or just breathe in and out. And if you notice you lost, counter your thinking. Just note it. Say Thinking, thinking, and come back to the breath.

Repetitive thoughts are sometimes fueled by emotions. Underneath them. If a thought pattern keeps arising, you might ask yourself, what am I feeling right now?[00:31:00]

If it’s clear, there’s an emotion underneath that’s very strong, you might name it. And again, if you feel able come back to the breath, each time you become aware of thinking or an arising emotion, acknowledge it. Appreciate that you’ve become aware and you’re back in the present. It doesn’t matter how many times you wander, each time you become aware of thinking.

And you return to the present and to your breath with patience and kindness. It’s a liberating moment of mindfulness.[00:32:00]

When you’re ready, gently and mindfully come back to the moment you’re in. Open your eyes, look around your environment.

Notice the sensations in your feet and your fingers.

I hope you feel pride in taking time to do this vital work of noticing the landscape of your  mind [00:37:00].