A very famous thing we like to do in mindfulness practice is to not scratch your itches, or to not move during meditation. Not because it’s wrong to move—it’s not. The invitation is: Can you notice the impulse to move before you do? And then, you have a choice. You could say, “I absolutely need to move or to scratch”—that’s totally up to you. But there’s something powerful in approaching it with a sense of playfulness or curiosity: What happens if I don’t?
And what can happen is usually one of three things:
- The itch stays the same.
- It gets worse.
- Or—it goes away.
Sometimes, especially with itches, it can feel like, “I’m going to drop off this chair if I don’t scratch this—it’s unbearable!” But we also know… sometimes things just itch. And we’ve never really explored the possibility of not scratching. I love the saying, “We live in a scratch-your-itch society.” So many of us have so many things immediately at our fingertips. If we want something, we can usually get it—fast. And yeah, that can feel good in the moment. We scratch the itch. But how many times have we done that and then thought, Why did I get that? Why did I do that? This isn’t about right or wrong. It’s about having a choice. That’s what mindfulness offers us—the space, the pause, the gap that allows us to choose instead of react.
Here’s a simple example: you feel a really bad itch during meditation, and you don’t scratch it. You just notice it. You sit with it. And before you know it, your mind is off somewhere else. Have you noticed that? You’re thinking, This is so bad, I can’t stand it, and then a minute later… it’s gone. You’ve moved on, without even realizing it. The itch? Forgotten. That tiny moment teaches a powerful lesson. In that pause, you allowed something slightly uncomfortable to be there. You didn’t react. And it passed. What if that could be true for other things in life?
We have impulses all the time—impulses to move, to speak, to act, to stay silent, to quit, to scroll, to shop, to lash out, to hold back. Constant impulses. That awareness gives you a choice. So next time you feel an itch—literal or metaphorical—pause. Notice it. Be curious. You don’t have to react immediately. You might just discover a little freedom in that space.
Edited excerpt from Christiane Wolf’s talk, Mind the Gap.
Listen to her full talk on our Youtube channel, InsightLA Meditation.