The Importance of Practice

There are so many questions one could ask about practice: What does it mean to “practice” mindfulness? Is it necessary to practice in a formal way, such as sitting meditation or yoga? If one is going to have a formal practice, then how long and how often? Or is it enough to let the practice opportunities come spontaneously, such as remembering to pause (STOP) at a tense moment, or fully experiencing your surroundings in the middle of a busy day? These are not questions anyone else can answer for us – each of us must find our own way to renew or maintain mindfulness in our lives, one that resonates with who we are. This is a continual journey, one that is a practice in itself.

There are countless ways to practice mindfulness. If you look at Miribai Bush's Tree of Contemplative Practices, you'll see that only one of the many practices described is a sitting meditation - others include yoga, journaling, Tai chi, walking/hiking. PS - In the Introduction video, Dave mistakenly says that "art" is not one of them, but art is there, too, in various forms ("take photos - journal - draw", "write - play music - dance").

Whatever form our meditation takes, it's important to consider the "why" of meditation. As Pema Chödrön says in 5 Reasons to Meditate:

"If meditation was just about feeling good (and I think all of us secretly hope that is what it’s about), we would often feel like we must be doing it wrong. Instead, meditation is about a compassionate openness and the ability to be with oneself and one’s situation through all kinds of experiences. In meditation, you’re open to whatever life presents you with. It’s about touching the earth and coming back to being right here. While some kinds of meditation are more about achieving special states and somehow transcending or rising above the difficulties of life, the kind of meditation that I’ve trained in and that I am talking about here is about awakening fully to our life. It’s about opening the heart and mind to the difficulties and the joys of life—just as it is. And the fruits of this kind of meditation are boundless.'”

A powerful adjunct to regular meditation practice is participation in silent retreats. Silent retreats are an important part of many contemplative traditions and there are a number of retreat centers world-wide that offer them (see Retreat Opportunities). In "Other readings related to this topic" are some excerpts from Silvia Boorstein's book, Don't Just Do Something, Sit There.

In the first two segments of Bill Moyers' interview of Pema Chödrön, Pema touches on the importance of meditation retreats (toward the end of the first segment and into the beginning of the second). In this interview, Pema provides wonderful insight into her life and her work, including some rare glimpses into her life before becoming a Buddhist nun.

Videos and Readings for this module

Supplementary Resources

Excerpts related to this topic



For those seeking balance in their lives, a certain flexibility of approach is not only helpful, it is essential. It is important to know that meditation has little to do with dock time. Five minutes of formal practice can be as profound or more so than forty-five minutes. The sincerity of your effort matters far more than elapsed time, since we are really talking about stepping out of minutes and hours and into moments, which are truly dimensionless and therefore infinite.

So, if you have some motivation to practice even a little, that is what is important. Mindfulness needs to be kindled and nurtured, protected from the winds of a busy life or a restless and tormented mind, just as a small flame needs to be sheltered from strong gusts of air. If you can only manage five minutes, or even one minute of mindfulness at first, that is truly wonderful. It means you have already remembered the value of stopping, of shifting even momentarily from doing to being…

Forming the intention to practice and then seizing a moment - any moment - and encountering it fully in your inward and outward posture, lies at the core of mindfulness. Long and short periods of practice are both good, but "long" may never flourish if your frustration and the obstacles in your path loom too large. Far better to adventure into longer periods of practice gradually on your own than never to taste mindfulness or stillness because the perceived obstacles were too great. A journey of a thousand miles really does begin with a single step. When we commit to taking that step - in this case, to taking our seat for even the briefest of times - we can touch the timeless in any moment. From that all benefit flows, and from that alone.

- from Wherever You Go, There You Are by Jon Kabat-Zinn

Always remember that in training a puppy we want to end up with the puppy as our friend. In the same way, we must practice seeing our mind and body as "friend." Even its wanderings can be included in our meditation with a friendly interest and curiosity. Right away we can notice how it moves. The mind produces waves. Our breath is a wave, the sensations of our body are a wave. We don't have to fight the waves. We can simply acknowledge, "Surf's up." "Here's the wave of memories from three years old." "Here's the planning wave." Then it's time to reconnect with the wave of the breath. It takes a gentleness and a kind-hearted understanding to deepen the art of concentration. We can't be present for a long period without actually softening, dropping into our bodies, coming to rest. Any other kind of concentration, achieved by force and tension, will only be short-lived. Our task is to train the puppy to become our lifelong friend.

The attitude or spirit with which we do our meditation helps us perhaps more than any other aspect. What is called for is a sense of perseverance and dedication combined with a basic friendliness. We need a willingness to directly relate again and again to what is actually here, with a lightness of heart and sense of humor. We do not want the training of our puppy to become too serious a matter.

- from A Path With Heart by Jack Kornfield

Excerpts from Don't Just Do Something, Sit There by Sylvia Boorstein:



Since mindfulness practice is a way of being in the world rather than a specific technique that can only be practiced on certain occasions, being on retreat seems extra. If alert, balanced presence in our lives is the goal of practice, why not practice in the midst of life rather than in seclusion?

There is a good reason. Of course the truth is available in every moment, and we could wake up to wisdom and freedom in the supermarket as well as on a meditation cushion on a retreat - but a retreat is different. There are no diversions. There is nothing to entertain ourselves with. Since there is no place to hide from ourselves, there's a good possibility that we will know ourselves better after a retreat than we did before.

But self-knowledge is only the beginning. Liberating understanding comes more from seeing how things are than how we are. Seeing the truth of the cause and the end of suffering begins to allow us to live more freely. Being alone, with no diversions, sets up ideal conditions for beginning to see...


My favorite tranquility story comes from my friend Anna, a teaching colleague at Spirit Rock Meditation Center. Long ago, during a period in which she was doing intensive meditation practice, Anna discovered a "completely new mind state": She describes being aware of its newness and its unfamiliarity, and says, "For a while, I wondered what it was. Then I realized it was calm.”

Usually when Anna describes that experience people laugh. I think the laughing is only partly caused by her witty way of telling the story. The rest, I think, comes from ruefulness. People realize they rarely feel calm...


Equanimity doesn't mean keeping things even; it is the capacity to return to balance in the midst of an alert, responsive life. I don't want to be constantly calm. The cultural context I grew up in and the relational life I live in both call for passionate, engaged response. I laugh and I cry and I'm glad that I do. What I value is the capacity to be balanced between times...


Whatever your retreat experience was, it was enough. There is absolutely no way of evaluating mindfulness practice on the spot. Feeling ecstatic, or even feeling good, is not necessarily a criterion. There are lots of ways to temporarily alter experience that aren't necessarily conducive to wisdom. On the other hand, if you are finishing your retreat feeling saddened, that's not necessarily a sign that you did it wrong. Maybe you learned an important truth that you've been hiding from yourself. That would be progress.

If you feel relaxed, that's great. But if you don't, even if you feel unnerved, it could mean you are on the way to some new understanding. You never know. Perhaps you are thinking, "Oh, I'm just now catching on to how every moment arises and disappears, and now I have to go home!" Every moment arises and disappears at home just the same as on retreat. You can go home.

My friend Sharon describes mindfulness practice by using the image of a farmer sowing a field of seeds. She says, "Seeds get thrown all over the place. Some sprout immediately, and others, because the soil isn't warm enough or wet enough, sprout later.” I used to hear Sharon's image in terms of my own garden. I'd think of the things I routinely did to prepare the soil. Meditation practice seems like ongoing soil preparation.

A big part of practice is intention. In traditional texts, intention is discussed as "inclining the mind in the direction of insight." I believe that the very act of setting aside time to practice mindfulness, just doing it, "inclines the mind."


- from Don't Just Do Something, Sit There - A Mindfulness Retreat with Sylvia Boorstein

© 2015 Palouse Mindfulness Inc.