Many people are concerned about their wandering minds — a k a monkey mind — during meditation.

We say excellent – noticing that your mind is wandering is an important step in achieving mindfulness throughout your day, not only while meditating. Simply put, observing the distraction, making no judgment, and then returning to the breath is awareness.

And to recap: the definition of mindfulness is present-moment awareness. So embrace your thoughts and distractions!

It is normal to have you attention drawn away over and over again as you sit in meditation. You are bombarded with your thoughts and feelings and outside sounds and smells. We certainly do not live in a quiet world, and one of the most active part of everyone’s being is our thoughts.

Awareness sees the big picture, letting us experience life actively and fully. When we notice our intruding thoughts and distractions we begin opening to a greater consciousness and changing our neural pathways. The gongs that go off in our amygdala begin to soften and our prefontal lobes begin to get thicker, making us more focused and ready to deal with life. Awareness brings stillness, stability and strength and changes our reactions to well-thought out responses.

All we have to do is meditate. Just 20 minutes of meditation most days of the week will change your life. Forever. Consider it me time, a chance for you to sit quietly and breathe.

Gradually, as your practice continues, the auto-pilot that many of our lives are working under begins to disengage. It’s a gradual process, but as we become more aware, we begin to notice that our thoughts are just thoughts, sensations just sensations, sights just sights, and sounds just sounds.

We are living the opposite of a disengaged life. The unconscious state we once thought we thrived in begins to fade away and we begin to see everything more clearly.