Areas › Your body › Grounding and settling
Your mind wandering off during meditation is not you failing at it. Noticing that it went, and coming back, is the whole exercise.
People with restless attention often try meditation, find their head full of noise, decide they are uniquely bad at it and never go back. Nobody empties their mind, including people who have practised for decades. The aim is fewer trips away and a quicker return, not silence. If you came back twice in five minutes, you did the thing twice.
Qur’an and Sunnah
We know what his soul whispers to him (Quran 50:16). The inner chatter is taken as a given and not held against you.
وَلَقَدۡ خَلَقۡنَا ٱلۡإِنسَٰنَ وَنَعۡلَمُ مَا تُوَسۡوِسُ بِهِۦ نَفۡسُهُۥۖ وَنَحۡنُ أَقۡرَبُ إِلَيۡهِ مِنۡ حَبۡلِ ٱلۡوَرِيدِ
We created man––We know what his soul whispers to him: We are closer to him than his jugular vein––
Qur’an 50:16read it in the library
Translation: M.A.S. Abdel Haleem, The Qur'an, Oxford University Press, 2004.
What the research says
A meta-analysis found that even very brief mindfulness training, from a single session to a fortnight, produced small reductions in negative feeling. Small is the honest word: a short practice is not worthless, and it is not a transformation either. Setting the expectation there tends to keep people going rather than quitting in disappointment.
Schumer MC, Lindsay EK, Creswell JD. (2018). Brief mindfulness training for negative affectivity: A systematic review and meta-analysis.. Journal of consulting and clinical psychology doi
Strength of evidence: one line of research. A single study, or a theoretical account.
Why it works
Coming back is the repetition that trains the skill, so a wandering mind is what gives you something to practise on.
This one is still a draft. It is waiting on a scholar and a clinician to read it before it is published.
Near this one
Learn one plain standing position and keep coming back to it: feet under hips, hips under shoulders, ears above shoulders, chin drawn back a little, arms hanging.
To come down, move slowly and rhythmically: rock, sway, walk at half speed. To come up, move properly: jog on the spot, jump, dance fast, or carry something heavy.
You do not need a diagnosis to be worth teaching this to. Something that takes seconds, costs nothing and travels with you is worth having before you need it.