I am currently running my online positive psychology course, “Coping with Climate and COVID Anxiety,” and my wonderful co-leader, Merran, has asked for help with mindfulness meditation. So, here is the relevant chapter from one of my writing projects, which has the working title The Hole in Your Life: How to cope with grief.

Thinking only hurts when you do it. You can’t switch it off, and don’t need to, but you can convert it into a meaningless background like the babbling of a creek. The training tool for achieving this is mindfulness meditation.

If you already have the skill, use it. If not, here is a mini-instruction manual. Put it into practice. At first, meditate a few minutes at a time. As you get better at it, extend the length.

In addition to formal sessions, I meditate on occasions like when stopped at a red light, in the waiting room of a doctor or dentist, standing in line at the supermarket, while on hold on the phone (though the stupid music can get in the way, especially if announcements are laced into it).

Ever since I stopped distance running, I have been slow to get to sleep. So, I settle myself, then spend half an our or more meditating. I don’t know how long I manage, because I do drift off to sleep somewhere along the line.

OK, how do you do it?

Pick something to focus on. The breath is often used, but it could be a candle flame, the back of the person in front of you in the line, the sound of rain on the roof, the smell of dinner cooking, the movement of the muscles in your legs while walking—approximately anything.

In Vipassana meditation, you do a body scan, shifting your focus to gradually and systematically over all the body. So, it might be full, 100% focus on your left little toe, then during the next breath the fourth one… all the way to the top of your head. But this is an advanced skill, and unnecessary for our purpose here.

Put all your attention on your chosen focus. Other things are guaranteed to intrude: sounds, movements in your peripheral vision if your eyes are open, an itch on your back, thoughts… The essence of mindfulness meditation is to allow such distractions rather than trying to send them away. As soon as you notice one, thank it, then simply return your attention to your focus. It is perfectly all right to scratch an itch, to take note of a movement or a sound, to acknowledge a thought. Having done so, return. You will find this cycle easer and easier with practice.

And while you are meditating, you are not hurting. It is a holiday from worry, grief, anger, guilt, anxiety, sadness. Those emotions can be there, but because you keep returning your attention to your focus, they stay as background, more and more distant and of less and less importance.

And once this is easy, you can start living mindfully. Use whatever you are doing as the focus. So, this instant, I am writing, which is a complex activity. I need to keep in mind the message of this section, what I want to say in this paragraph, how to word it. Then there are the more mechanical aspects of grammar, spelling, punctuation, touch typing on my keyboard.

This multiple activity is my focus, and it shows that the object of focus can but need not be something unitary like the breath.

Suppose you are trying to focus on your breath, but your heartbeat keeps intruding into your consciousness. One trick is to include it: the focus can be pulse AND breath. Deepak Chopra has described a form of mindfulness meditation in which you keep your awareness on as many different things as possible. He says some people can manage twenty. I can routinely do eight, but it’s not a contest, and there is no need to show off. But if some noise keeps pulling you away from your chosen focus, you can add it as something additional to focus on.

Jon Kabatt-Zinn calls focusing on everything around you “living in the nowscape.” It is a marvellous state when you are able achieve it. I have illustrated it with a cheeky little story—but a bit of fun is healthy, whether you are grieving or not. It is Walking, boring?

Let’s stop a moment. While you were reading about mindfulness meditation, were you calm? The searchlight of attention was on my words, and everything else became background.

That’s how mindfulness works.

You may be driving a car. Drive with full attention, the focus of your meditation being the many and complex tasks of staying safe, keeping to the correct path and, hopefully, obeying the law.

When weeding your garden, all your attention can be on identifying plants you don’t want there, gently but firmly removing them, shaking the soil off the roots… this moment, this instant, THIS is all there is.

Feel the peace.

Next moment, you may lose the peace, and suffering may return, but the past is history, the future is a mystery. All that is real is this moment. So, quietly return to living with full focus on this instant, and the peace will return.

So, to go full circle, do mindfulness meditation whenever you can, and it will build into a haven you carry around with you.