Welcome to the first day of the Loco Meditation Course.  This is Coach Jay.  Before we get started I just want to plug Sam Harris and his app ‘waking up’ which is where much of this stuff is coming from.

Throughout this course we’ll be using several methods of meditation, but they all have their foundation in a practice called mindfulness.  Mindfulness isn’t really a meditation technique, but a quality of the mind itself.  It is really just undistracted attention.  The ability to notice sights, sounds, sensations, and even thoughts and feelings, that are arising in consciousness in each moment in a way that isn’t cluttered or connected to anything else you have going on.

Understanding mindfullness, and the subtle differences between it various techniques will become more clear as progress in this course.  Just like training your body, your ability to pay attention will improve over time.  As you improve we’ll reflect further and consider other ideas about the state of consciousness.

Today we’ll begin with just 5 minutes of meditation.  Using the extremely simple practice of paying attention to the sensations of breathing.  I’ll discuss the  whys of this practice later on,  But for today I just want you to try it for 5 minutes.