Twenty years ago, I was traveling in China. It was a journey of self-discovery. I wanted to travel the world. I wanted to have as many adventures as possible. And in the process, I wanted to get to know myself.
During my traveling, I was climbing this very, very high mountain in the Yunnan province. But I miscalculated the time it would take me to get to the top of that mountain. And by the time that I've reached the top, it was too late at night.
I couldn't go down. And I had to find a place where I could spend the night. Oops, I'm stuck. Now, the only place at the top of that mountain was a Buddhist monastery.
So I knocked at the gates of that monastery. I actually remember it as if it was now huge wooden gates. And I'm knocking at the gates and the monks take me in.
And they were very, very kind. They've offered me a small room with a wooden bed. And I went to sleep. Around 4 a.m.
I woke up. I hear sounds. I hear singing. Something weird's going on. So, half asleep, I go down the stairs and I find myself in the meditation hall.
Dozens of monks are chanting together. It was really, really powerful. And I did the only thing that a 20-year-old adventure seeker could do. I joined them.
I have to admit it wasn't as if I was 100% comfortable with the whole event but I thought hey what have I got to lose let's try it out so I sat down I was chanting and the chanting transformed into some sitting breathing meditation we changed into some walking meditation the whole thing took about three hours and at the end of these three hours I felt amazing. I felt transformed. I felt connected to myself and to everyone and everything around me. It was incredible. I was filled with love, I was filled with happiness, I was filled with peace.
And not the conditional ones, you know, it wasn't because someone said something nice to me, or because my boss offered me a raise, not at all. It was, instead of that, it was more as if I found an internal undercurrent river that is flowing within me. And the water of this river, it is filled with this unconditional love and happiness and peace. And meditation is a bridge so that I could swim in this amazing river within me.
And it felt so good. In fact, it felt so good that I've asked the monks whether I could stay there for a longer period of time so that I could learn more about this mindfulness meditation and the things they're doing. I was thirsty to get in touch with more of that experience. And again, they've agreed, and I stayed.
Mindfulness meditation... When we think about it, usually we think about the experience of being present, being here and now, which is very important obviously, but we sometimes forget the quality of that presence. And the quality as part of mindfulness meditation is a compassionate one.
It's a quality which is filled with kindness and gentleness and openness. Deep, deep acceptance towards whatever is happening. It's a very different way of approaching life. And during my time at the monastery, I've learned about mindfulness meditation.
I've learned that it's part of the traditional Buddhist teaching, which is a psycho-spiritual journey. It's a journey that is taking us into positive transformation. Really powerful stuff. And I've learned that as part of that journey, mindfulness meditation is filled in its original intention, in its original context, filled with wonderful aspects of life, such as happiness and hope and meaning in life. and savoring and gratitude and love.
Wonderful, wonderful dimensions of being alive. And I've learned all those as part of my practice of mindfulness meditation back there at the monastery. And this is where I've started conceptualizing my positive mindfulness. I didn't think about it as positive mindfulness back then, but I started thinking about it. Now, positive mindfulness has nothing to do with making you feel good or forcing you to be happy.
Not at all. None of that. In fact, mindfulness meditation is always about the same kind of practice.
You just bring your awareness to the here and now. You have that compassionate attitude. That's the practice. Something about the intention, the vision, the context of the practice, which now we know as part of psychological research, we know that it has a huge impact on the outcome of the practice.
I was amazed by that intention of positive, beautiful, love-filled, happiness-based intention and vision that I've experienced back then. And I can talk about this till the end of times, but I think it would be much, much more powerful if we experience something together, if we practice something. Do you want to practice something together?
Yes! Wonderful. So we're going to practice something called a smiling meditation, sometimes referred to as the inner smile meditation. It's the very famous Vietnamese Buddhist monk Thich Nhat Hanh is talking a lot and writing a lot about this one.
And the particular version we're going to practice today is focusing on savoring, savoring the impact of a smile. So let's see how it feels when we smile, something we frequently neglect to observe. So let's see what happens. I invite you to have both feet on the ground.
Sit in any way that is comfortable for you actually. Just see if you can have your back straight, chest open, so that you create space to breathe into. Have your hands resting on your thighs and knees, wherever they're comfortable. And when you're ready, let your eyes close. We begin with a few deep inhales and exhales.
The kind of inhale that allows awareness to come into the body so we become aware of what's happening inside. And then the kind of full exhale that allows you to soften. Inhale, awareness.
Exhale, softness. And as you soften, I invite you to let your shoulders relax. Let your eyebrows soften, the cheekbones, the jaw surrenders, the whole body is softening.
And we create space within us, space to observe, space to witness ourselves. And I invite you now very slowly and very gradually to allow a smile to spread on your face. Slowly, feel how the muscles of the mouth move towards your eyes and a smile is growing and growing. And as the smile grows, bring your attention into the body and feel what happens inside of you now as you smile. Can you feel something changing now that you smile?
Maybe in your stomach, maybe in your chest, perhaps your throat. the head, the third eye, maybe the heart opens, maybe there's a joyous feeling somewhere. So just observe, breathe into it and notice what happens inside of you as you smile. And now, again, slowly and gradually, let go of the smile.
Let the mouth move back to its neutral position. And as you do that, observe again within the body and see, did anything change compared to how you felt when you were smiling? Do you now feel different when your mouth is in neutral position?
Perhaps the feeling went away. Perhaps something changed inside of you. Just notice. Feel.
Acknowledge what's happening inside. And now one final time, slowly and gradually, let a smile spread on your face. Let it grow and grow and grow.
Feel the smile growing as you bring your attention into your body. Connect with that feeling of smiling, whatever it is that is moving within you, however it is it feels. And let that feeling vibrate inside of you.
Let it spread throughout the body. Let it be infused within you. your body, let your whole being be infused with that feeling of smiling and savoring that feeling. You might even try to really remember that feeling imprinted in your consciousness so that it becomes a resource.
You can always go back to how you feel right now. Simple smile, connect with a feeling and that recess is waiting for you at any challenging moment when you need it. Great.
I invite you now to reconnect with your whole body, the chair where you sit, the room around you, the sound of my voice, your presence, my presence, our presence. It can then take a few seconds, and when you feel ready, you can slowly open your eyes. For every three pleasant events in our lives, we have one that is unpleasant.
This is what we now know from studies and surveys. That's the ratio, three to one. Which means that we have...
an incredible potential for a lot of beautiful moments in our lives as long as we pay attention to what's going on. As long as we don't let those moments just sleep under the radar of our attention. As long as we savor them, as long as we are mindful.
full of them. When I come back home in the evening after work, I open the door, and my girl, she's two, she runs at me. She screams, Daddy!
And then she jumps at me, and she hugs me. The kind of hug that only a two-year-old child can give with her heart and soul. It feels incredible.
And what I probably would have done in the past is I would have quickly hugged her back and then continued with my evening starts because, you know, I'm very busy. I've got things to do. and these days I'm doing something very, very different. When she hugs me the way that she does, I pause. I really, I pause everything.
I don't move, I don't think, I don't plan, I don't try. I pause. And I move inside and I feel her love towards me and I feel my love towards her and I feel our love meet and my heart is melting and I feel her body connected to mine.
I just melt from inside. That's how it feels. And it nourishes me.
The whole evening I feel different compared to an evening where she doesn't hug me. And I've had so many of those heart-melting experiences during my time at the monastery that I thought, wait a second, this is so meaningful. I want to share this with as many people as possible.
So that's what I've done. I went back to the Western world. I became a university psychology professor. I've been researching mindfulness meditation for the last 15 years scientifically. I've also been teaching it, teaching classes and workshops and retreats and meditation teacher trainings.
I was trying to play with mindfulness meditation as creatively as I could. Always with this backdrop and context of the positive stuff that I've learned about as part of my time in the monastery. And I thought that this is the kind of mindfulness meditation that I will find in the West. I thought this is the kind of research practice that I will find as I get in touch with all those things in the West.
But in fact, I was wrong. I was very, very wrong because the mindfulness meditation that I found in the West was very clinical. It was the kind of mindfulness meditation that was dealing with our deficiencies, trying to fix what's wrong with us, right? A mindfulness meditation that is dealing with our stress and with our anxiety and with our depression and with our chronic pain. It always felt to me like a bank that is offering financial advice once I get bankrupt.
Well, it really doesn't make any sense now, does it? Why do I need to get to this point where I'm at this emotional bankruptcy in order to get some advice instead of being supported and get this kind of advice to prevent the bankruptcy in the first place? I used to hear from hundreds of people something similar to, Look, I... I like all this stuff about mindfulness, but to be honest, I have very little stress, very little anxiety, I'm not depressed, so I don't need mindfulness meditation.
And it took me years to realize the significance of what they were telling me. Because what they were actually saying is, hey look, I don't feel bad, so I don't need mindfulness meditation. Again, I don't feel bad, so I don't need mindfulness meditation.
For them, mindfulness meditation... ...with something you practice to deal with some kind of a psychological difficulty, some kind of a psychological discomfort. The result of our approach to mindfulness meditation in the West is...
what these people think because of the way we research it, because of the way we think about it, teach it, write about it. We make people think that mindfulness meditation is something for moments where you don't feel good. Just Google search for books, for articles around mindfulness meditation.
You'll see that most of them are around our deficiencies. Quick Google survey will show you exactly what I'm talking about. You search for mindfulness and stress, you get 35 million.
hits. And then you search for say mindfulness and savoring or mindfulness and gratitude and you get half a million hits. 35 million, half a million, that's the difference I'm talking about.
That's the gap that I would have liked to close. Let's take for example the most popular mindfulness program in the west. It's called MBSR, Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction. It's dealing with our stress, with our anxiety, with our chronic...
pain, even the name itself, right? Mindfulness-based stress reduction very clearly indicates this is what we're here for, to reduce your stress. And if you search, you will see that most of the mindfulness programs in the West are trying to deal with similar psychological difficulties and issues.
Now, don't get me wrong, these programs, they are wonderful. They are very, very beneficial. There are thousands of people all over the world who are being healed by these programs.
All that I'm asking is, is that all? Is that all we can do with mindfulness meditation? Just as we harness it to reduce people's stress, anxiety and depression, can we use it to create programs where people are invited to experience more meaning in life, to be more hopeful, to feel more love, to be more happy, to flourish?
Can we do that? We do have a small number of programs who are trying to achieve that. We've got some mindfulness-based compassion programs.
We've got some mindfulness-based strengths programs. I've created what I call a positive mindfulness program where I brought together mindfulness and positive psychology so that we could practice mindfulness with the intention of flourishing and positive growth and positive transformation. And yet the overwhelming majority... of mindfulness programs in the West are asking, hey, what is wrong with us so that we can fix it? And very, very few ask, what is right with us so that we can have more of that?
As mindfulness meditation is so popular in the West these days, our task... is to create a greater balance with our approach to it. Just as we have so many deficiency-based mindfulness programs in the West, which are important, we need to have more flourishing-based mindfulness programs.
Then, when we do that, we will be able to enjoy and to practice mindfulness meditation, not only to reduce our stress and anxiety, but also to live fully, lead a meaningful life, and be happy here and now. Thank you.