All It Takes is 10 Mindful Minutes

In November of 2012, Andy Puddicombe gave a speech at the TEDSalon in London called, All It Takes is 10 Mindful Minutes. During this speech he discussed the benefits of meditation and slowing down our lives. He started his speech off by asking the audience a question about the last time they did nothing. He related to the audience through humor and situations that happen to all of us. After he describes these situations he states the fact that we do not take time to take care of our minds. Since we do not slow down to take care of our minds, we get stressed which causes us to get overwhelmed and distracts us from the wonderful things in life. He tells the audience about a person experience he had as a child about going to a meditation class with his mother. After explaining his experience, he uses a metaphor to compare meditation to aspirin for the mind. He then gave another personal story about when he was around 20 years old because a lot of things were happening in his life at that time so he decided to drop his college major and became a monk in the Himalayas. After his story, he explained how meditation works, by using a visual aid of juggling and by using metaphors to compare meditation to balancing your concentration on the juggling. To conclude, he discussed the fact that we are so distracted in our lives that we do not get to enjoy our lives. Through meditation, we can take a step back and collect ourselves and enjoy our lives.

Andy Puddicombe uses great metaphors, visual aids, and he relates to his audience. He used very few, if any logical fallacies and he was interesting to listen to. He kept me on my toes and awake through humor, stories, and visual aids. It was and all­around very good speech and he was a very good speaker.