Hi, my name is Andy and welcome to Radio Headspace. So it's Tuesday morning and I wonder

if you've already done some kind of meditation, some kind of physical exercise today.

You always interest me how people think about looking after the mind, training the mind.

And obviously I know a lot of you probably do some kind of meditation, something like

dad, if you're listening to this show. But I know some of you won't as well. You may

well have a broader interest in health.

I meet many people who say, I don't meditate, running my meditation, or whatever it might

be. It's interesting because many of those activities, although there is a mindful quality

to them. In fact, some of them I would say even help cultivate a mindful quality. So really

important, really, really useful. They're still fundamentally different from meditation

and training the mind in that more formal capacity. And there's a good reason why. If you

imagine that you are in a difficult situation, this is an argument with a partner or somebody

where maybe it's even your boss at work. And it's getting very stressful and you feel

yourself getting increasingly tense. It's very difficult in that situation. If you are

dependent on, let's say, running, if running is your meditation, if running is the place

that you go to to find the place of calm and clarity in your mind, in that moment, it's

very difficult to bring that about. We don't really have that luxury in life. Whereas

if we've trained in meditation, it's not that we need to stop and meditate. We are carrying

with us that quality of mind. You know, we could say the same for all of those activities.

There is something that happens when we are still in meditation, where we somehow deepen

our awareness so that it becomes part of our everyday being. It doesn't just happen

when we are engaged in activity. It actually remains part of our life. So when we're

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