Meditation: The Practice of Recognising Awareness

By Dominik Heliosch | Studio Mettā

Let´s start with this: Hold your right hand in front of you and simply notice any sensation on your skin. Maybe a coolness from the air, a subtle tingling, or a feeling of warmth?

If something came up, congratulations: you just meditated! And if you didn´t notice anything particular, congratulations too - that experience is equally part of the practice.

So what exactly is meditation?

You are not your Inner Weather

When you noticed (or tried to notice) the sensation on your hand just now, something was doing the noticing. That something is your awareness. It's the quiet, steady part of you that observes thoughts, feelings, and sensations without being any of them. And while it might be the most important part of you, it's also the most overlooked.

The clearest way to understand awareness is through a simple comparison: think of space. The vast, open space between the sun and the moon. The space surrounding the Earth. It's always there, always still, and utterly unaffected by whatever moves through it. Your awareness is like that: peaceful, calm, and ever-present.

Now think of weather. Even though the Earth floats in that calm, open space, its weather can be turbulent and dramatic. A long period of dark and rainy clouds and you forget entirely that the peaceful sun ever existed above the clouds. Our inner life works exactly the same way. Thoughts, emotions, and physical sensations are our inner weather, sometimes sunny and warm, sometimes a full hurricane. And when the storm is loud enough, we forget there's any space at all.

The key is: The weather is not you. You are the space!

Your thoughts are not you. Your anxiety is not you. Your mood on a gloomy Monday morning is not you. These are all experiences within your awareness, and your awareness has the innate capacity to recognise them for exactly what they are.

The Recognition Muscle

Awareness is always present. But recognising it consciously and deliberately is a skill. Like any skill, it develops with practice.

When you first sit down to meditate, you'll likely find that you can stay with your experience for a few seconds before a thought carries you off somewhere else. A few minutes later, you'll notice you've been lost in a story about dinner, or that deadline, or something someone said last week. That moment of noticing? That is the practice.

And with regular practice, even just a few minutes a day, two things begin to happen. The gap between getting lost and finding your way back shortens. And gradually, you're able to stay present for longer, and you´ll notice that you got lost again sooner!

But here's something that often surprises people: the most significant benefits of meditation don't happen on the cushion. They happen in daily life. The moment your inbox fills up and you feel your chest tighten, and you catch it. The 2am spiral of anxious thoughts that you suddenly recognise as just thoughts. The frustration that arises in a conversation and, for perhaps the first time, doesn't fully sweep you away. That's the recognition muscle working. And from recognition comes choice!

How to practise Meditation

One of the most freeing things about meditation is its simplicity: as long as you are staying with the core intention of resting in awareness, observing whatever arises without rejection or judgement, you can practise on almost anything.

You can meditate on:

• Sound: music, a flowing stream of water, ambient noise, someone's voice

• Touch: the weight of your body on the floor, a soft breeze on your face, the warm sunlight on your skin

• Smell: in nature, in a steam bath, when lighting up a scented candle

• Taste: while eating or drinking slowly and with full attention

• Sight: observing clouds, plants, animals, a stream of light through the window

• Emotions: the rise and fall of emotional sensations in the body

• Thoughts: the stream of thoughts is the subtlest and most challenging object, you'll know when you're ready

  
  

The only principle to remember is, that everything that arises during practice is allowed! Pleasant experiences are allowed. Uncomfortable ones are allowed. Numbness is allowed. Even judging your experience as "good" or "bad" is allowed, as long as you're aware that you're judging. But then also not recognizing the judgement is allowed, too. There is no correct outcome to a meditation session. There is only the practice of returning to recognition.

When things feel Overwhelming

Sometimes, especially in the beginning and when sitting in a quiet space, difficult sensations or emotions rise to the surface. This is normal. And knowing how to navigate it makes the practice feel safer and more sustainable.

Yongey Mingyur Rinpoche, a respected teacher in the Tibetan Buddhist tradition, offers four gentle approaches to overwhelming experience during meditation:

1. Watch: turn your attention toward the sensation itself. Where do you feel it in the body? What is its quality? Don't name it; simply sense it with curiosity.

2. Shift: if staying with the sensation isn't helping, redirect your attention to something more neutral or grounding: your breath, a sound in the room, the feeling of your feet on the floor.

3. Step back: if the intensity remains, widen your perspective. Is there something feeding the sensation in the background — a resistance, a belief, a subtle aversion? See if you can observe that layer instead.

4. Take a break: if none of the above brings relief, it's always okay to stop. Walk, breathe, move, rest, call a trusted friend. Regulation is part of the practice too.

Where to Begin

The most common obstacle to meditation isn't difficulty concentrating. It's starting too ambitiously. A few minutes of genuine, regular practice is worth far more than an occasional hour-long session driven by willpower.

Start small. Pick one sense as your anchor. Breath, sound, or touch (e.g. the weight of your body on the ground) tend to work well for most people. Sit for five minutes. When you get lost (and you will), simply return. That return, practiced again and again, is the whole thing.

Over time, what you're building isn't just a calmer mind during meditation. You're training a quality of presence, a quality of life, that travels with you wherever you go. Into your work, your relationships, and the moments when it´s quiet and you are alone with your body. It´s a steadiness that doesn't depend on the weather being good.

The space was always there. You're just learning to remember it.

Come meditate with Us

Knowing about meditation and actually practising it are two different things. And because of a natural mechanism called "co-regulation", meditating in a group with a guide helps your nervous system settle into this practice much easier, especially in the beginning.

Every first Saturday of the month Studio Mettā is hosting a small, welcoming Meditation Group in the heart of Amsterdam, open to everyone regardless of experience. Come sit with us, find your stillness, and be supported in developing your own practice.

Studio Mettā | Traditional Thai Yoga Massage & Somatic Coaching | Amsterdam Where traditional Eastern practices meet the modern mind.