 one of the things that we can begin to realize that meditation is not just one thing. So those people that say like, or the people that I've encountered that go, oh, I've tried meditation, but didn't really work for me. I kind of question what they mean by work for me. Usually when I hear them, they say, well, I tried meditating and I just kept thinking and thinking and thinking and thinking. And so I felt like I was doing it wrong, right? Or I was meditating and I felt really uncomfortable and so I didn't feel zen-like or peaceful. And those are some of the myths that I break about meditation that meditation is not about feeling calm. It's not about feeling relaxed. Sometimes it's a side benefit through practice over time, but it's not it's not the primary aim. And so when I share meditation or mindfulness, it's really about targeting for processes that that we human beings go through or can skillfully begin to incorporate into our lives. And so one is that there's an opportunity to enhance self-awareness. And the thing that you become self-aware of as a human being through meditation is we only go through a few processes in any given second of our lives. I got the breath, I got the five senses, I got feelings and sensations in my body, and I got thoughts and images going through my head in any given second. And what you first learn when you try to sit with yourself, whether it's the breath or just listening to the sound, is that there's one aspect of your experience that dominates you and that's thinking, that's thought. And thought pulls you away from the present moment and pulls you into an imaginary future that hasn't happened yet or a past that's no longer here. And sometimes that past is not so pretty and can create suffering or that future can create worry and anxiety. And so you can begin to be self-aware of that and then as a skill, you can also learn to contact the present moment. Kind of going back to earlier, the mind has a constructed side and destructed side. So when my mind is not being helpful or useful in creating lies that appear real, we can begin to shift our awareness and attention to the skill in the here and now, come back to the safety of the here and now, which can look as simple as I'm a human being sitting in a chair, I got the breath, there's the ground, there's laptop, there's some sounds and that's way kinder than whatever my mind might be saying about the future. And then we could also, through meditative practice, target these skills of learning as best as we can to be a neutral observer of our sensations in our body, as well as our thoughts. And I'll kind of start with that second part, like why would I want to be a neutral observer of my sensations or enhance that capacity? Well, usually when we're trying to move towards meaningful things in our life, whether it's, oh, I want to talk to that attractive person over there, and I just want to say hello, or I want to ask for a job promotion, or I want to do something new and it's totally unknown. The heart might race a little bit, you know, you might feel a little queasy in your stomach, your chest might tighten, and naturally, because it's almost like even where biological hardwired to move towards pleasure and away from pain, when that occurs in our physical body, we just go, okay, I'm just going to not go in that direction so I can soothe myself and feel okay. But one of the things that you can enhance as an ability is to begin to shift your relationship to those sensations, because all sensations or feelings, they come and go in their nature, you can just check your experience, even intense ones, then you don't want to let them dictate whether you move in that meaningful direction or not. And then secondly, you can enhance this capacity to see, which is the most revolutionary thing I think a human being at any age can discover is seeing thoughts as thoughts. And the more you begin to see thoughts as thoughts, as opposed to thoughts as truth or thoughts as facts, the more you're able to see like, my mind's being helpful here, and my mind's beating me up here, or oh, this is an old thought that I took on because my mom or dad when I was growing up said it a gazillion times, like I'll just make up one, like I'm not good enough just to say, as an example, let's just say, if that thought keeps coming up in different scenarios, like is that really my own thought, or was that handed to me, you know, because of a personal history or some experiences that I had that were challenging, or that's just one way my mind's limiting me, and I need to enhance my ability to go, hey, that's not necessarily me, even though my mind's claiming that's me, but that's actually just a thought amongst other thoughts. And when we're able to build that ability to shift our relationship, not easy, it's a skill, we can discover this capacity to move in more authentic ways. And then lastly, when I'm sharing meditative work with my clients, and meditation, I say, this is kind of the deeper essence of meditation that you could touch into, which is discovering who and what you are beyond your mind. So usually when it comes to our identities, we go, I am my job, I am my relationships, I am the amount of money I have my bank, I am my body, I am, you know, that thing that happened to me in the past, I am the judgy inner critic that comes up and beats me up. And one of the things you can discover in meditation is, oh, wait, that's stuff I took on in my life, it's not my essence, it's not my essential nature. And different traditions use different words for what it is. So some in like theological traditions might, oh, you are spirit. Some science people might say, oh, you're consciousness. Other traditions might say, hey, you're awareness, or you're the noticing being. But one of the things that's valuable from a psychotherapeutic standpoint of, or just living life to discover that sense of self that's grander and bigger than any of those other things that we typically identify with is there's a sense of wholeness that could be tapped into. And especially if those things like, hey, I got the body and I don't got the body anymore, I got the relationship and divorce just happened, or I got the money and now I'm broke. Well, if I'm not defining myself by those external things, that's useful because those things are going to come and go at some point in our lives. And so we have this capacity to touch back into a deeper sense of wholeness and then go after all those things. If you're interested in it, if it's coming from a whatever an authentic place might look like for each of us, you know, go for the relationship, go for the money, go for the body, go for all that. But it may come from a different place when you touch back into this deeper sense of wholeness. And so I see meditation as a practicality. There's many other reasons why I share meditation, but those are kind of four primary reasons. It's self awareness, learning to contact the present moment as a skill, helping ourselves become a neutral observer of thoughts and sensations, and then discovering who and what we are beyond our minds. And then through all of that, more clarity, freedom, and inner peace is a possibility.