What is Meditation? Try Headspace: Brilliant things happen in calm minds

Meditation isn’t about becoming a different person, a new person, or even a better person. It’s about training in awareness and getting a healthy sense of perspective. You’re not trying to turn off your thoughts or feelings. You’re learning to observe them without judgment. And eventually, you may start to better understand them as well.

What is mindfulness?

Mindfulness is the ability to be present, to rest in the here and now, fully engaged with whatever we’re doing in the moment.

Meditation is a skill

Learning to meditate is like learning any other skill. Think of it like exercising a muscle that you’ve never really worked out before. It takes consistent practice to get comfortable. And it’s usually easier if you have a teacher. We’ve got you covered there.

It’s meditation practice, not meditation perfect

There’s no such thing as perfect meditation. Sometimes your focus will wander or you’ll forget to follow your breath. That’s OK. It’s part of the experience. What’s most important is to meditate consistently. It’s one of those things where the journey is more important than the destination.

The mind can be a weird place

It takes time to get comfortable with your mind. There might be setbacks along the way but that’s part of meditating. Keep practicing. You’re doing great just by showing up.

What is Headspace?

It’s hard to talk about Headspace without talking about Andy Puddicombe. So let’s start there. In his early twenties, Andy cut his Sports Science degree short to become a Buddhist monk. For over 10 years, his meditation training took him across the world to Nepal, India, Burma, Thailand, Australia and Russia. Eventually, he was ordained at a Tibetan monastery in the Indian Himalayas.

After completing his monastic commitment, Andy returned to the UK with the huge-yet-simple goal of teaching meditation and mindfulness to as many people as possible. To demystify the mysti-cal, Andy set up a meditation consultancy and be-gan working with politicians, athletes (that sports science background fnally came in handy), and business leaders.

That’s when Andy met Rich Pierson, who need-ed help dealing with the stress of the advertis-ing world. Before long, Andy and Rich were skill-swapping meditation for business advice. That’s when Headspace was born.

Headspace was offcially launched in 2010 as an events company, but attendees wanted to take what they learned home with them. Andy, Rich, and a small team decided to make Andy’s techniques available online so more people could experience the benefts of meditation anytime, anywhere. And that blossomed into the Head-space you see today: guided meditations, anima-tions, articles and videos, all in the distinct Head-space style.

Headspace has one mission: to improve the health and happiness of the world. And with 20 million users in more than 190 countries, we’re well on our way. Headquartered in Santa Monica, California, we also have offces in San Francisco and London.