Monkey Mind Calming With Meditation, How Does It Work?
What is the monkey mind? How can we calm him down and become friends with it? For example with meditation? Read on to discover this …
We all have a monkey mind – What does this analogy mean?
Having a monkey mind … What does this striking and humorous analogy mean?
Remember that we have around 50,000 different thoughts every day. You could imagine that every thought is a branch, and that you, or at least the attention of your conscious mind, are a monkey all day long meanders from the thinking branch to the thinking branch.
This may sound nice and cheerful, but our thoughts are often filled with fear and bustle: “What happens if I lose my job? Is my partner still happy in our relationship? What if I don’t have enough money when I retire? “
And that analogy of that monkey is of course beautiful and poetic, but it is pretty annoying if this monkey rules our thoughts while we should be in charge.
Yet the monkey is not for nothing …
We need the monkey mind: the mind is a fantastic tool
Look at it, there the monkey is worried about your date from next Tuesday, oh, and now he is in that tree and is criticizing your performance at last week’s work, and look: now he reminds you that the car is servicing need.
The point, however, is that we need the monkey on our side. It is useful because it monitors everything in our busy lives. The problem occurs when, like all small monkeys, he becomes too busy and takes control.
But the monkey mind that is not sufficiently trained exhausts us
It is not for nothing that De Boeddha already taught this metaphor 2,500 to the people: the result of a monkey mind that is not adequately trained leads mainly to mental and physical fatigue.
We have all had days in which it feels like we have achieved nothing while we feel there is another mountain to climb tomorrow. And yet we cannot relax.
How can you tame your monkey?
The problem is that you cannot fight or force the monkey to submit. But you can tame and understand him so that you can live in harmony with your furry companion.
How? Meditation in silence. Through the view and understand the monkey mind, the monkey feels as if he is being listened to and understood.
You can also do the monkey mind give a task: watch the breathing. Now that the monkey has calmed down with this task, it appears that the terrible thoughts – for example of not being enough – are actually not that bad.
Other techniques that can be used to harmonize yourself with your monkey include moving meditations such as Qigong, Yoga and Tai Chi. After all, sitting still and not thinking is difficult for us in the beginning. That is why moving attention to the body is always a good idea.
So: become friends with the monkey
The monkey lives in us, but he does not control us if we are aware of his presence.
