Handling Hormones, with Rosie

(bright music) Head Space Studios. Hi folks. Ooh, have we got a good show for you today. My pal Rosie and I will be answering your questions about distractions during meditation, depression during your period, and feeling anxious over the start of new semesters. Here we go. (bright music) Have you ever wished you had a wise meditation teacher on speed dial? Someone you can call after a long day. Someone you could lean on for their advice. Someone to listen and help you to see things differently. Welcome to Dear Headspace, a podcast where I sit with a meditation teacher and we answer your questions. (chill music) Hello, hello, hello, Rosie. Oh my God, it is so lovely to see you. Oh, it's always lovely to see you, Robin. I kind of forced you to say that, but that's all right, with my dramatic pause. (laughs) Wait, but I have to admit, I have to tell you something. One of the questions that we are gonna answer today, I picked just for you, and so I will be interested to see, I'm gonna check in at the end of the episode to see if you can figure out which question. Okay, I'm excited. Okay, all right. Now, with the challenge accepted by Rosie, I think that we should play our first question from Lucian. Take a listen. Hello, my name's Lucian, and I'm from Maryland. I've been having some trouble focusing when I meditate. Whenever I get to the part of the meditation where I count my breath as it rises and falls, I tend to get distracted easily and lose focus of the feeling. Even though I lose focus of the feeling, I'm still somehow counting my breaths, even though I'm not focused on it and I'm thinking about something else. Is this natural? And how do I fix this? Thank you. Oh, I love this question, but what I love about it is how he's like, is this natural? And how do I fix this? I love this question. That's so true. I love the answering his own question. I know, I know, I know. He's like, I don't think it is, help me. (both laughing) Yeah. And yes, Lucian, I think that you are right on. It's like correct on both, right? Yes, it's natural and there are ways to mitigate the distraction. There are ways to practice different types of thought focus when that happens. But I mean, just to really answer this question in the most basic way, it's totally natural. It happens all the time, in fact, the practice of meditation allows us to become more aware. And the word meditation, one of the definitions that I love is to become familiar with. And so the more familiar we become with our own practice and our own tendencies, because we all have them, right? We have those distractions that come in when we're processing a recent thought. For example, for me, if I'm doing...