Infuse Joy Into Your Mindfulness Practice

(air hisses) (mouse clicks) (bright music) Headspace Studios. Hi, it's Andy here, and welcome to "Radio Headspace," and a Friday morning. So given that it's the end of the week, I thought it might be nice to focus on the lighter side of looking after the mind, training the mind, finding a greater sense of fun and joy and maybe taking ourselves a little less seriously. And as I was thinking about this, I was reflecting on the journey of training in many different kind of monasteries and the different types of teachers that I met along the way, had the good fortune to meet along the way, and the impact of those different approaches, 'cause there are lots of different approaches to training the mind. Some are very serious. I think they can almost appear from the outside as, I mean, I've heard them described as worthy and pious and almost ritualistic in nature. And there are other ones that kind of seem to take a broader expanse. And look, each of us needs to find our own way. I know when I set out, I was looking for something quite strict. I wanted that sense of discipline, I wanted that sense of seriousness, but that was more of a wanting to control the mind. And I thought that if I could find that externally, then, you know, that would naturally lead to internal control as well. And again, this works differently for everybody, but what I found was that... Actually, it was quite exhausting actually. It's quite a tiring sort of way of looking at things, and, actually, it didn't bring about a lot of joy. You know, it brought about a lot of attention brought about a lot of awareness, and it brought about a sort of a conceptual understanding of things like love and kindness and joy, but not really the feeling of it. You know, that was obviously more from my own inability to take those teachings and incorporate them into my practice, rather than the style necessarily. But I feel like it was a style in those monasteries, and the teachers presenting that, you know, that was kind of the vibe that they gave off. And I remember one day going to a completely different kind of monastery, and the first interaction I had with the teacher there really blew me away. You know, he sat there, he was laughing, he was making jokes, and I kind of almost didn't know what to make of it. I mean, he seemed to have all of the awareness, the wisdom, the compassion. and everything else that any other teacher I'd met had had, but there seemed to be something more there. There was a lightness, there was a playfulness. And he even said to me, as if he could see my sort of thoughts in some way, he sort of said to me, he was like, "Look, you know, you spent all these years blocked up...