Intentions - Connecting with why we meditate

You might have heard the word intention thrown around a lot in meditation and wellness spaces at this time of year [Jan].

Indeed, I love bringing reflections on intentions into my classes in January. This still point of the year lends itself well to turning inward and realigning ourselves with what is most important to us and how we want to show up in the world over the coming year.

But what do we actually mean when we talk about connecting with an intention? In terms of mindfulness practice, I think of this as the deep inner why that motivates us to practice. It’s the reason we practice, the way we want to show up in the world that mindfulness practice supports us with. For example, it could be to cultivate compassion and wisdom, to be more present with our loved ones or to help us manage our emotions.

Connecting with our whys for practicing mindfulness is important because practicing mindfulness meditation isn’t easy, it takes commitment and persistence and there will be a lot of times when we really don’t feel like it. This is totally normal by the way, meditating isn’t pleasant all the time, it’s not meant to be! It’s often boring, frustrating and can feel like you aren’t really getting anywhere. Reconnecting with why we are practicing it can help us motivate ourselves, it puts some fuel back in the tank.

Whilst preparing for this episode, I was reminded of the very first interview I made for my podcast, Meditation Inspiration, where Dr Rebecca Crane said she meditates because she cares about the world. And I am not sure where I heard this, but I always remember the well-known meditation teacher Jon Kabat-Zinn, say that he meditates because it’s the best way he knows to love life. I love these whys, they feel really powerful and connected to their deepest inner values.

My own intentions for practicing mindfulness are to feel more alive, to cultivate kindness and compassion, to be more present in the precious moments of my life rather than off in repetitive worries about the past or planning the future.

Knowing why we are practicing mindfulness is key to us keeping going over the years. And we are likely to find that our whys will shift and change. For example, like many people, I first came to mindfulness practice to improve my mental health and learn how to be kinder to myself, and over the years that expanded to bringing more compassion and presence to my day-to-day relationships, and more recently has expanded outwards again to how can I bring more compassionate action to the way I relate to the wider world and planet?

And we can bring this reflection on intentions to anything we want to do in our life that’s important to us. Maybe this year you want to do yoga twice a week, start painting, run a marathon or do a course. It’s so helpful to ask ourselves, why is this important to me? This helps us to check in if this goal is actually aligned with our core values and to make sure it’s really something we want to dedicate our time to. For example, do we want to run the marathon to challenge ourselves and connect with nature or is it just because our friend really wants us to do it with them and we are scared to say no?

And again, like with our mindfulness practice, when the going gets tough, we can remind ourselves of why we are doing this to help motivate us to keep going, oh yeah the whole point of this was because it is hard and I wanted to challenge myself and develop more strength and resilience.

Knowing the intentions beneath our goals can also support us when we fail. For example if we get injured and don’t actually finish the marathon, we can remind ourselves that we have been challenging ourselves all the way - in fact this injury is challenging me even more in some ways and all the training has been connecting me with nature the whole way through. And it might help motivate ourselves to pick ourselves up and try again when we have recovered.

Coming back to mindfulness practice, we always bring in this reflection on intentions at the beginning of mindfulness courses, dropping questions into a meditation like “Why are you here?” or “What is it that really matters to me that this course will support me with?”

So my invitation to you is to connect with your whys beneath cultivating a mindfulness practice, maybe even pause and do this right now. This is something you can come back to again and again - especially when you notice motivation is waning or you have let go of practice a while or aren’t really sure why you are doing it any more.

You can listen to the podcast version of this article below ⤵️