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@ Zenpai
2025-05-19 05:14:59The one certainty you will experience if you sit down to meditate, is that you will lose focus. It's guaranteed, your mind will wander, you will get lost in a story of the past or the future.
Meditation is a practice of stillness in an ocean that never sits still. Finding balance within the turmoil is fundamental to practice. One excellent way to do this is with an anchor. It's like it sounds, an anchor for a boat keeps the boat tied down in a specific location. If it wanders too far out the anchor will pull the boat back and keep it centered. We use the same tool in meditation.
Popular methods are the breath, sounds, sights/feelings in the body or environment. What's important is that you pick something consistent and reliable. When your mind wanders and you have the awareness to recognize it you can come back to your anchor to reset yourself entirely.
It's a routine, and an anchor is the beginning of your routine.
The loop goes something like this
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sit down
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focus on your anchor
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get distracted
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notice you're distracted
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focus on your anchor
Whether you keep this up for 20 minutes, 10 minutes, 5 minutes, or even 1 minute a day, as long as you come back to the anchor you are reinforcing a commitment to focused attention to the present moment.
One anchor I have recently been experimenting with is a gratitude anchor. I use the phrase "Thankful to be alive". In my practice when I face negative emotion, discomfort of any kind, unease, agitation, boredom, or any other unpleasant circumstance I bring myself back to the moment by repeating the phrase "Thankful to be alive". I'm reinforcing to myself that no matter what circumstance I find myself in physically, mentally or emotionally, I can find gratitude and stability in those moments and not let them linger for longer than necessary.
As always experience is an excellent teacher give an anchor a try in your meditation practice.
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