The multitasking mind

[MiM]

When I'm doing sitting meditation in silence and with my eyes closed it is usually very easy for me to still my mind. I just feel like sitting in a big dark cave, where nothing moves except my breath and maybe a fleeting thought passing by now and then.

Mindful walking is a completely different experience for me, I have noticed that I can keep a very keen eye on my surroundings while chanting a mantra and still have a continuous semiconscious narrative running in the back of my mind - and noticing all of this is happening simultaneously. How many different threads can people usually keep in their head?

[JonW]

'How many different threads can people usually keep in their head?'

If I'm meditating, whether sitting or walking, my intention is to maintain a single pointed attention - on the breath, on the sounds of nature, whatever. If I notice thoughts bubbling up, I'd simply register that, then return my attention to my chosen anchor. That's my meditation.
It's not a question of how many 'threads' I can keep running at once. That's not meditation.
Jon

[MiM]

No, no. I was not trying to describe anything I try to achieve as a meditation practice, just how my mind goes running wild on its own.

[JonW]

OK. So, during meditation, what happens next when you notice that your mind is running wild on its own?
Jon

[MiM]

During sitting meditation it is quite easy for me to do as you say and register the thought and then return to the anchor. But when I try mindful walking it is almost impossible for me to keep focused, so I've started to "double anchor" with a mantra and simultaneously focusing on what I see,or sometimes on feelings in the body. So those two are what I am returning to.

[Mindsfull]

The walking style meditation may be slightly different to yours. My experience is really similar but also different... I normally focus on my feet the same way as I would the breath, so every time I'm pulled away I try to come back to the feet. I find there's lots of stuff going on mentally and at times around me that is distracting. At times I have to lower my gaze or do some slow blink type stuff to get my focus back to the feet.

I also count the footsteps like the breath as they pass... so 1-2-3-4... up to 10.

I don't have really have a place to do the slow style walking meditation other than in my garden which again is a different experience altogether.

But yea I focus on my feet mostly just as I would the breath. More recently I experiment with noticing things visually and bringing curiosity to them as I've never seen them before but at the moment I think I get more out of trying to focus on my feet.

[MiM]

The Narrative, the bloody narrative,... how can I loose it (or don't I need to)?

Very typical experience for me today. I went on a quite unplanned walk in a nearby area I have not visited before. The terrain was quite demanding and my shoes were not chosen for the occasion, so I had to put a lot of concentration just on how to move safely, a quite exciting and pleasant experience. But then at some point I came to think of writing about my experience here or on another forum, and that's where it started. From that point on I could not stop my mind from making a narrative of everything I experienced, putting everything into words, carefully formulated and reflected on, so as to fit in a forum comment or a blog text. The language I used in my mind even changed based on the language of the forum I was currently thinking of writing to (English is not my first language, but I think fluently in it). And this mind-tape just went on and on, swapping story focus to accommodate the different audiences on different forums, but with me completely incapable of stopping it, even though I was fully aware of what was going on.

Do other people have similar experiences and what do you make of it?

[JonW]

I still get carried away by the thought stream from time to time, usually when I'm facing some challenging life event. I always come into my body. Works every time.
Jon