Your brain has one job and one job only.

Its function is to identify patterns that signal whether new input from the external world is safe or a potential threat. It does this by measuring new experiences against previously stored ones to look for familiarity. This is how your worldview and internal dialogue develop. Your past experiences paint a picture of words and images that depict your memory and therefore your emotional function whenever your brain recognizes parallels in your current experience.

How meditation works

Unlike the upper, logical part of your brain, the lower, emotional part cannot tell time. Hence, when it registers a familiar pattern it takes you right back to how you felt in the memory it recalls, for better or worse. Meditation is a useful tool to grapple with the effects this can have on your mental health because it helps your brain acknowledge the difference between its function and the current experience triggering your emotional memory.

The way you create space from your emotional brain in order to reach the logical part is through practicing presence. Presence is something many people struggle with today because we live in a society that urges us to obsess over planning for the future and/or dwelling in the past. Therefore, there are hundreds of thousands of people suffering from diseases like anxiety and depression who rob themselves of the therapeutic benefits of meditation due to their inability to live in the present.

If you have tried to subscribe to meditation, you might have felt discouraged when you sit down and can’t get your mind to stop racing. Maybe you told yourself you weren’t doing it right, or that it just “wasn’t for you”. However, that was not the case. That was exactly what it was supposed to feel like. The key to wrestling the discomfort of your mind is simply sticking with it.

The most undervalued skill you can gain from a consistent meditation practice is learning to be present. You hear this all the time and now understand why it’s important- but how do you actually do it?

How to practice presence

The next time you sit down to meditate, try this.

Every time a thought pops into your mind that snags your attention, label it. Try to be as minimal and simplify the thought as much as possible. I like to visualize my mind as a blank screen with only one word on it that labels the thought or emotion that comes up.

For instance, if you feel a physical sensation, like a sudden gust of wind hit your body; imagine a blank screen with the word “cool”. If you feel a cramp in your stomach, label it as “discomfort” or “pain”. Don’t go into any more detail than that.

Maybe a specific memory is pulling your attention. If this is the case, label the emotion as plainly as possible (i.e. “guilt”, “shame”, “excitement”, etc.). Oftentimes the hook of distraction will be a worry about the future, in which case, you can use the label “fear”.

Labeling your thoughts and emotions as they pop into your head is how you create space between your triggers and reactions. This is what it means to “sit with your emotions”. Remember to simplify your labels as much as possible. Once you get the hang of this presence practice with yourself, you can take it with you into your interpersonal communication and watch how it drastically improves your relationships.

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