meditation: Softening Around thoughts
From Seeing to sensing
Many people come to meditation believing that the practice is about stopping thoughts, quieting the mind, or achieving a particular state of calm. When this does not happen…and it often does not…they conclude they are “doing it wrong.”
This week’s meditation, Softening Around Thoughts: From Seeing to Sensing, invites a very different relationship with the mind. Rather than trying to control experience, the practice gently explores how awareness naturally shifts when we stop resisting what is already here.
tension, effort and the habit of ‘looking’
For most people, attention is effortful by default. Even with the eyes closed, awareness often feels as though it is positioned behind the eyes, looking out at experience. This “seeing” quality of attention is subtle, but it is surprisingly persistent.
In meditation research and contemplative traditions alike, it is widely recognised that many practitioners begin and remain in this attention-based mode for much, or even all, of their meditation practice. Attention is placed on the breath, the body, or an object, and then held there through effort. While this can be useful, it often keeps awareness subtly contracted and head-centred.
When attention is sustained primarily through effort, thoughts tend to be experienced as interruptions. The mind feels busy. Thinking feels like a problem to solve.
from seeing to sensing
Rather than trying to look more carefully, the practice explores what happens when the effort to look begins to soften.
As attention relaxes around the eyes and face, awareness naturally drops into the body. Experience shifts from seeing to sensing. Instead of observing the breath from a distance, awareness meets it directly, feeling breath from within the chest, belly, or wherever it is most comfortable.
This is not something to force. It is an allowing.
When awareness rests in sensing rather than looking, many people notice:
Less effort and more ease.
A felt sense of being in the body rather than in the head.
A natural settling of breath without trying to control it.
Importantly, this shift also changes how thoughts are experienced.
thoughts are not the enemy
Thoughts arise naturally. They do not need to be invited, and they do not need to be pushed away. The difficulty is not thinking itself, but how closely we identify with thought.
When awareness is effortful and head-centred, it is easy to become inside a thought without realising it. Attention narrows, energy lifts upward, and the body fades into the background. In these moments, there is no awareness of thinking…there is only the story.
At some point, awareness recognises:
“Oh. The mind is thinking.”
This recognition is not another thought. It is a shift in relationship.
The story may continue, but we are no longer inside it. Often there is a felt softening in the body, a sense of space, or a gentle dropping back into breath and presence.
This is a crucial insight:
Awareness does not get rid of thoughts. It changes how we relate to them.
why effortless practice matters
Many people try to manage thoughts by tightening attention…focusing harder, resisting, or trying to quiet the mind. Paradoxically, this often causes thoughts to repeat or intensify.
When thoughts are allowed, when they are noticed with a gentle curiosity rather than opposition, they often unwind on their own. Not because we made them stop, but because they are no longer being resisted.
An effortless approach to working with thoughts offers several benefits:
Less mental fatigue and self-judgement.
Greater capacity to notice when we are caught, without needing to “fix” it.
A more embodied, grounded sense of presence.
Increased resilience in daily life when difficult thoughts arise.
Over time, this practice cultivates trust in awareness itself. We learn that we do not need to control the mind for clarity to emerge.
meditation as an invitation
This meditation is not about achieving a particular state. There is nothing to accomplish and nowhere to arrive. It is an invitation to notice:
The difference between effort and ease.
The shift from being in a thought to noticing a thought.
How the body responds when awareness softens.
Everything is welcome. Silence is welcome. Thinking is welcome.
If you would like to explore this practice directly, you can join me in class on Wednesday 22nd April 2026 7-8pm at Soul Wellness Hub, Sowerby Bridge. You may find that, with time, the relationship to your thoughts becomes less adversarial and more spacious, revealing that the mind does not need to be fixed, only met with awareness.