Goal

Learning to be present with a person with full awareness. The goal of this practice is not just to relax (which might be nice), but to get more grip on the turbulence in your own mind.

Why?

We are often distracted. your mind is always busy with everything and nothing, without being aware of it. your thoughts can go to what happened in the past, or what is expected to happen in the future. Or you can lose ourselves in images or judgments about the person, or float away on a cloud of  associations in your mind.

Practice

• Go sit in a quiet place, try to relax and go with your attention to one point. This can be an object to look at, music to listen to, or your breath to feel. The last is most convenient, because if you learn to focus on your breath, you can do this practice wherever you are.
• Keep your focus and every time when your mind wanders away, just notice that and go back to your focus. Don’t blame your mind nor yourself for being distracted.

You can do this practice a couple of times during the day for a few minutes. Sometimes it seems – especially in the beginning – that you are even more distracted. That seems so, but it actually means that now you are more aware of your distractions.

Application in daily life

You can bring this practice into your daily life by focusing during simple activities, which do not ask to much concentration, on the activity with full awareness. And every time when your mind floats away, you go back with your attention to the activity. After doing this with simple activities, you try it when you are in interaction with another person and listen to what he/she is telling you.