When Your Mind Just Won’t Shut Up

Mindfulness is often talked about, but what does it actually mean in practice?

Many years ago, I privately taught a student who was suffering from major depression. After our first lesson, he said, “It was very good. Because it was so difficult (it wasn’t), I had to really concentrate, and I didn’t think depressive thoughts.”

At the time, I thought it was a little too simplistic, but looking back now, I think there was a lot of truth in what he said.

The word ‘mindfulness’ is often used to mean meditation, but of course, it also means mindful awareness. It can be practised in any activity—eating, brushing your teeth, or driving—but yoga is a particularly good platform to practise mindfulness.

The prestigious journal Science once ran an article titled “A Wandering Mind Is an Unhappy Mind.” Although the human ability to think about things that are not happening around us—planning, imagining the future, or reflecting on the past—is a major evolutionary achievement, the article suggests that this “stimulus-independent thought”, or mind wandering, may come with an emotional cost.

Imagine you are sitting by the sea, watching the sunset, or simply enjoying a warm cup of tea. The sea is beautiful, the sunset is glowing, and the tea is fragrant.

But next to you, there is someone constantly talking—about something that happened yesterday, something on the way here, someone who just walked by, what they are going to eat tonight, problems at home, how much they are dreading Monday…

Not necessarily bad things, but just endless, meaningless chatter.

And you really want to say, “Shut up! I want to enjoy the sunset and my tea. I want to soak in this moment. I don’t want to listen to you!”

To me, mindfulness practice is like this.

Do you know what a snow shaker is? Something you might have around Christmas time—a dome-shaped ornament filled with liquid, with fake snow and a small figure (a snowman or Santa) at the bottom. You shake it, and the snowflakes swirl everywhere. But if you leave it for a while, the snow settles, and you can clearly see the figure inside.

If I sit and simply focus on my breathing—letting go of thoughts and gently coming back to the breath—then, if I sit long enough, my thoughts may eventually settle.

The snow falls to the bottom.

The noise quietens.

And I can finally enjoy the cup of tea.

This is something I continue to explore in my own practice, and something we gently come back to again and again in my classes.

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