Hey everyone, it's K-Sunga here. I just want to let you know that we've launched a brand

new call and advice podcast called Dear Headspace. Each week the headspace teachers, along

with some amazing new friends, are answering your questions about relationships, work,

life, mindfulness, and just about everything else. It's so different from anything we've

ever created and we're so excited for you to hear it. Dear Headspace comes out every

Tuesday on the Headspace app and anywhere that you listen to podcasts. Thanks for listening.

Hi, Sam here and welcome to Tuesday Morning. I hope it's a pleasant one so far.

So today I want to continue on the theme of best practices and mindfulness by talking

about something I discovered when I was still pretty new to meditation. One of the biggest

obstacles to meditation is the restlessness that we feel when we're new at sitting still,

attempting to do pretty much nothing. When I was first starting my practice I found

the busyness of my own mind to be pretty annoying. I felt urges to open my eyes or shift my

body and I kept thinking about how the meditation was going so far. And for a while I often

gave in to these urges. I would shift my position or I'd get up before the time I allotted

was over. And as I began going to more meditation groups and trainings I was taught the importance

of sitting still and what I've come to call urge surfing.

Surfing is just like it sounds. You notice urges, you get curious about them and how they

feel, you watch them get intense like a swelling wave and then you notice how they fall away

eventually. You can start to surf the urge to scratch an itch or shift your body or get

up before the time you set for meditation is up. When we give in to every urge it makes

it hard to reach deeper levels of concentration and we don't get a chance to see how fleeting

that urge can be. But when we urge surf we can see how our thoughts are often automatic

...