Hi, it's Andy here and welcome to Radio Headspace and welcome to Monday, the start of the week.

So I wonder how much time you spend in your life reacting to things out of habit.

I think most of us spend quite a lot of time doing that sort of knee-jerk reactions to situations,

almost as though we feel like we don't necessarily have control over where our mind goes,

where our words go, where our actions go.

Of course, as an alternative, there's the opportunity to train the mind to create a little bit of space

in the mind so that in any given situation we can respond rather than reacting.

And when I was thinking about this, it reminded me of a time in my life when I was training

in different monasteries and following a set of guidelines.

Ain't often they refer to as rules.

I always thought of them as guidelines, ways to become more mindful.

You know, in some monasteries it was more than 200, in some it was more than 100,

but there were a lot.

And friends at the time were often kind of fascinated at what you were and weren't allowed to do.

And there was one in particular that seemed to capture people's attention.

And that was that we weren't allowed to scratch.

It sounds like such a strange thing.

And their questions would be, well, what happens?

Like, do you get punished if you scratch?

Kind of like, what's the purpose of it?

What's the meaning of it?

There was no punishment.

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