What I Do When Meditation and Mindfulness Practice is Too Much

The benefits of simple, deep rest sessions as an alternative to the baggage of a practice

Photo by rayul on Unsplash

The internet is saturated with content about mindfulness. You’ll be hard-pressed to find a more widely discussed phenomenon in a wider array of different spaces — from business to technology to mom-blogs to the world of sports. The buzz about mindfulness continues to be loud. There are apps, journals, classes, books, podcasts, and so on. Each with its own method and practice to advocate for.

I’m guilty of having jumped on many of these bandwagons myself. I’ve tried, and still have on my iPhone, many different mindfulness and meditation apps. Despite having gotten into Buddhism and meditation long before the iPhone was even released, I still felt the pull of the new and fresh technological takes on this ancient idea.

But what I’ve lost in all of this buzz about mindfulness — and what I think many of us have lost — is the simplicity of it. And the thing about mindfulness is that the more simple you keep it, the better it tends to work. For one, you’re much more likely to keep mindfulness a habit if it’s simple. Any steps to follow or pre-work you need to do before you become mindful will eventually be a barrier to actually doing it.