Session 1 - The raisin meditation

Before you start…



Nearly every session will introduce you to a new mindfulness practice. There will be recommendations on how many days you should practice the mindfulness as a formal practice. It is in your best interest to follow the guidance.


The course is designed so you can dip in and out but more dipping in than out is needed in the early days to make mindfulness practice and the developing an awareness of your triggers a habit


Some sessions will have some additional reading notes for you to absorb. Read these at your leisure and it’s advised that you make some notes in your journal of learning points you take away. It is also advised that you return back to these notes as you proceed through the course to re-acquaint your self with the messages in the text.



Getting started with this session


Read the guiding notes and listen to the audio to introduce you to the raisin meditation.


Once you have done this proceed to the mindfulness guided recording and when you have completed the practice for the day, reflect on your experience with the guided notes further down the page.

Your mindfulness practice for today

The raisin meditation

Too many people rush through their day jumping from one thing to the next and not giving themselves time to breathe. The downside to this is a lack of mindful awareness of what our present moment experiences are and spending too much time on autopilot. Does this ring any bells for you?


Our course of practical mindfulness is going to help you learn the basic principle of focused attention - being able to focus on a present moment experience and stepping back from the sometimes troublesome autopilot mind.


You are gong to learn how to instil practical mindfulness in your everyday life and on this first day you are going to meditate on a single raisin.



Listen to the recording below to familiarise yourself with the raisin eating meditation and what it aims to teach you. 

Geting Started

Mindfulness is all about being present - the raisin eating meditation will give you the opportunity to experience focused attention and explore the raisin with curiosity using all of your 5 senses. 


The practice will help you recognise how you can have a completely different experience when you choose to focus your attention on a present moment experience. 


You will recognise that when you choose to mindfully focus your attention you have the opportunity to experience the moment as you choose not how your autopilot mind chooses. 


The raisin eating meditation will enable you to experience something that is familiar to you from a completely different perspective.


You are advised to practice the formal raisin meditation 3 times with this recording on this first day of mindfulness practice and then as informal practice any day you choose - but do remember to come back to it.

Important information

  • Making time for your mindfulness practice

    Creating time for mindful practice is to be considered as a time to be yourself and a time for yourself. At first, you may find it difficult to find the time for your practice. 


    One trick is to acknowledge that, in one sense you do not have the spare time for this. You won’t automatically find the time…you will need to create the time. 


    After all, if you had a spare half hour each day you’d have allocated it by now with other ‘important’ things to do! 


    For this mindfulness course to ve successful for you you will want to fully commit to your mindful practice. It can be very difficult to do this but it will need to be done or the mindful practice will get squeezed out by other seemingly higher, priorities. 


    You may find you have to rise a little earlier in the morning and, if you do so you may then need to go to bed earlier so that your practice is not done at the expense of your sleep. Take time to remind yourself of the benefits that mindfulness can have on your wellbeing. 


    Important Reminder on Distractions


    We always remind those who participate in our courses that after they have settled on a time and a place for meditation, it’s important to be warm and comfortable and to tell whoever needs to know what you are doing so that they can deal with interruptions by visitors or by the telephone. 


    If the telephone should ring and no one else is there to answer it see if it is possible to allow it to ring or for the call to be taken by voicemail. 


    Similar interruptions can also arise from ‘the inside’ with thoughts of something you need to do, thoughts that seem to compel you to act now.


     If this happens see if you can experiment with letting the ideas and plans come and go in your mind rather than reacting instantly to them. You always have the breath focus meditation to help you here. 


    Lastly, it is important to remember that when you practise you may not find it enjoyable or relaxing, (although many people do find it pleasant, but not in an obvious way). 


    It’s important to follow the meditations and informal exercises day by day until mindful practice becomes a routine. 


    You will only get from Mindfulness what you put in to it. The outcomes you experience will be unique to you. 


    None of us can tell in advance what there is to be discovered in the present moment and what peace or freedom you will feel when it begins to reveal itself to you. 

  • Managing your expectations

    Before you start, it’s important to know that as you move through this course there will be countless occasions when you’ll feel like you’ve failed. 


    Your mind will refuse to settle. It will race off like a greyhound after a hare. No matter what you try, within seconds your mind may become immersed in thoughts about this and that. 


    At times it might feel that you are fighting a losing battle. You may even despondent that you can’t ‘create’ a calm state of mind. 


    Or, while you listen to the formal mindfulness mediations you may feel sleepy and a deep drowsiness will begin undermining your intention to stay awake. At times you may even fall asleep.


    You may find yourself thinking, “nothing is working for me” but these moments are not signs of failure. They are profoundly important to be aware of. 


    Like trying anything new, whether it’s learning to play the drums or learn an apprenticeship, it can be frustrating when the results do not correspond to the picture of expectation you have in your mind. 


    In these moments it pays to persist with commitment and kindness towards yourself. 


    Apparent ‘failures’ are where you will learn the most. The act of ‘seeing’ that your mind has raced off or that you are restless or drowsy, is a moment of great learning. You are coming to understand a profound truth: that your mind has a mind of its own and that a body has needs that many of us ignore for too long. 


    You will gradually come to learn that your thoughts are not you, you do not have to take them so personally. You can simply watch these states of mind as they arise, stay a while, and then dissolve. It’s tremendously liberating to realise that your thoughts are not ‘real’ or ‘reality’. They are simply mental events. They are not ‘you’. 


    At the very moment when you realise this, the patterns of thoughts and feelings that gripped you may suddenly lose momentum and allow the mind to settle. A deep feeling of contentment may fill your body. But very soon your mind will race off again. After a while, you will once again become aware that you are thinking, comparing, judging. You may now feel disappointed. You might think: “I thought I really had it then–now I’ve lost it”. 


    You simply have to do the practices and learn for yourself. If you do, then every now and again, you will have an ‘Aha’ moment–a flicker of insight that is profoundly calming and enlightening. You will understand what other practitioners have been learning for thousands of years: that worries, stresses and anxieties can be held in a larger space, in which they emerge and dissolve, leaving you to rest in awareness itself.


  • Understand the wandering mind

    It is very common as you begin to practice Mindfulness to be surprised at how little your mind is truly in the present moment. Whether you are engaged in a ‘formal’ or ‘informal’ mindfulness practice your mind will wander away from your Mindfulness practice. 


    This is absolutely normal. This mind wandering may involve thinking about the past, something you said or did or maybe thoughts about the future, an upcoming meeting or holiday. 


    When you notice that your mind has wandered congratulate yourself for noticing this and gently bring your mind back to the point of focus in the present moment. 


    It is often helpful to label the wandering thought that you had. For example: “there's the upcoming Wedding”, “there’s Saturday night”, “there’s the mortgage”. Then gently go back to your Mindfulness or meditation practice in the moment. 


    One of the cornerstones of Mindfulness is being non-judgemental and accepting of your thoughts. 


    As you continue, you will notice your mind wandering off again. This is entirely normal. Again, when you notice this happening, label the thought and bring your attention back to the present moment. 


    You will do this process again and again. To quote Jon Kabat Zinn - "If the mind wanders a thousand times your only job is to bring it back a thousand times"


    Irrespective of how often your mind wanders, always congratulate yourself on noticing that it has wandered and be gentle and compassionate with your mind as you bring it back into the present moment. 


    Indeed, the very moment you notice your mind has wandered is, in fact, you actually becoming Mindful once again. Cultivating compassion for your mind is a very important principle within Mindfulness.


    One of the reasons for this ‘cultivation of compassion’ for your own mind, is that as you evolve in your Mindfulness practice, you will find that this cultivation of compassion towards yourself will extend to others as well.


    As the mind wanders it chooses its own direction. So, while we may not have control of the first thought that fires off in our minds and the associated emotions created by this thought, we do have control on how long we dwell on these thoughts. 


    Research from Stanford University states that we have 60,000 thoughts per day but these thoughts can only happen in our minds, one thought at a time. 


    As you develop your mindfulness practice it allows the opportunity to see your ‘thought stream’ in action. For a brief moment, you will become aware of your thoughts and their generated emotions as they move like clouds across your mind, some big some small. 


    Mindfulness creates a distance between you and these thoughts. As you become the observer of these thoughts you can choose to accept them or reject them. When you become aware of this, it may become tremendously liberating. 


    Remember, at all times you are only ever one thought away from the present moment. Step out of that one thought, focus on what's happening in front of you right now, using as many of your senses as possible and now you are practicing Mindfulness.

  • How often should you practice mindfulness?

    It is advised to carry out each informal meditation for ant individual day at least once but it is advised to create the time to practice the daily informal exercise 2 or 3 times during the day to get the feel for it.


    “WHY?”, many people ask.


    The simple answer is that you are learning a new skill that is probably unfamiliar to you. For Mindfulness to become habit and for it to have a positive impact on your wellbeing, regular practice is required.


    Don’t Have Enough Time?


    Some people say they don’t have enough time; that they can’t fit in the different mindfulness practices. Just think for a minute the times during the day where you aren’t doing anything that requires physical attention or mental attention:


    • Quiet times at home or work.
    • Having breakfast or any snack/meal during the day.
    • Walking to work or the train station. Sitting on a train or bus.
    • Waiting for the children at school.
    • Preparing/cooking a meal.
    • Waiting for the kettle to boil.
    • Sitting on the toilet.
    • During lunch breaks or in the evening or other times where you are ‘free’.
    • What about the amount of time you might spend on social media? Maybe you could choose to be more mindful during your ‘phone time’ and practice Mindfulness during some of these moments.

    Practice Makes Perfect!


    The more you practice Mindfulness, the more it will become part of your day. YES, it will be a little difficult at first because this is not ‘normal’ practice for you:


    • Take time to create awareness of the practice required for each day. 
    • Schedule the time when you believe you can practice. It won’t just happen without your input and commitment. 
    • Set schedules you can keep.
    • Create an effective reminder system, whether that is reminders that ping on your phone, set email reminders or post it notes in convenient places.
    • When you are familiar with the individual mindfulness exercises and meditations, practice them each day without the accompanying recordings.

    If you get into the right mindset of learning and practicing Mindfulness, not only will you see that the practices for each day do not interfere with your day, you will soon recognise that it is easy to develop effective mindfulness practice. 


    It will soon become 2nd nature for you.


The guided recording

Below is the guided recording for the raisin meditation. It lasts for approximately 5 minutes. As this will be your first day’s practice be patient with yourself. 


Mindfulness is something to be learned - not perfected on the first day. 


Before you start, make sure you have read the guiding notes on mindfulness and meditation and for the best results listen to the guided recordings with headphones. 

Reflection after this day of mindfulness

The aim of the raisin meditation:


  • Focus your attention on purpose to experience something that is familiar to you in a different way to how you would normally experience it.

  • Teach you that by isolating your senses you can focus your attention when you deliberately choose to do soenhance an experience of something you are more than familiar with. 


  • Help you recognise distraction and bring your awareness back to the object of focus.



What we might learn from the raisin meditation



When you experience negative thoughts or interpretations, uncomfortable feelings and emotions or urges to respond, you are encouraged to observe any of the phenomena and do so with curiosity and without judgement - just as you have done with the raisin meditation.


For example:  if you feel tense or anxious you’d be encouraged to focus your attention where you feel the tenseness. You’d be encouraged to explore what the tenseness feels like? Basically, explore all aspects of the tense feelings.


It's the same with thoughts - if left unchecked, our thoughts can run away with themselves and cause havoc! Mindfulness prate helps us to recognise the presence of autopilot stimuli, observe their presence and let them pass through simply by choosing to refocus your awareness and choose to experience the moment in a different way.

Your next mindfulness practice for session 2

Session 2 - the formal breath meditation


Tomorrow you are going to start the formal breath meditation. Take a few minutes to read the guiding notes so you can plan ahead and schedule your mindfulness practice.

Session 2 - Formal breath meditation
Share by: