Carl Jerome, longtime mindfulness teacher and director of North Shore Meditation & Dharma Center, explains what mindfulness is—and what it’s not.

Why sit in silence? In this conversation, Carl describes how unguided meditation builds internal confidence. Without someone leading you, you begin to trust yourself to sit, stay, and return to the present.

What if we could step back from our thoughts and observe them? Carl describes how mindfulness cultivates metacognition—the ability to notice thoughts as mental events—and how this practice creates space between stimulus and response.