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Mindfully working with your physical heart

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“The principle healing agent with mindfulness is always conscious awareness itself. But there are other emotional and mental healing agents that naturally start to flow in as a result of the primary act of conscious attention.”
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Dear Integral Meditators,This weeks article focuses on the physical heart as your object of mindful attention. Enjoy!

In the spirit of heart,

Toby


Meditating with your physical heart

Mindfulness and meditation have a capacity to help the health of your physical heart, and other parts of your body. These are complementary to other strategies that we have around diet, exercise, medication and so forth. The principle healing agent with mindfulness is always conscious awareness itself. But there are other emotional and mental healing agents that naturally start to flow in as a result of the primary act of conscious attention. With this in mind here are some simple ways to get started. They can be practiced together as a sequence, or individually, as you prefer:

  1. Becoming aware of the physical heat and heartbeat: Here you simply focus your attention in the area of the chest where your physical heart is located, and sense onto it, seeing what you notice. After a while you will have a sense of your heart as an object on your chest, and you will feel the heart-beat. You can also place your hand over the chest over your heart, and use that to sense the heart-beat. Just commune with your heart gently through mindful attention.
  2. Breathing with the flow of blood: With this practice, focus on your heart and heartbeat. Sense the network of arteries and veins thru-out your body. Sense the flow of blood thru your entire body. As you breathe out, be aware of the blood flowing out into your body through your arteries. As you breathe in be aware of the blood flowing back to your heart through the veins. Relax into this process for as long as you wish.
  3. Working with the emotional qualities of the physical heart: As you focus on your physical heart, be aware of any emotions present within the heart. As you breathe in soften and open your heart, allowing yourself to feel them, as you breathe out relax into the emotions present, letting them be released or enjoyed, as feels appropriate to you.
  4. Working with ‘heart qualities’: as a variation on exercise 3, you can select particular ‘heart qualities’ that you want to bring into your heart, for example care, courage, love or compassion. As you breathe in feel the energy of the emotional quality gathering and building in your physical heart, as you breathe out feel it spreading out from your heart into the rest of your body. Build a strong sense of the presence of that emotion in your heart, and feel it gently pumping and flowing our into the rest of your body. Feel a strong connection between your physical body and the energy of this emotion.

When you do these, perhaps it will be the first time that you have ever spent so much time paying attention directly to your physical heart. It can be a very powerful experience, and the beginning of a long, healthy and fulfilling collaboration between you and your physical heart!

Article content © Toby Ouvry & Integral Meditation Asia 2019.


Upcoming classes and workshops

Ongoing on Wednesday’s, 7.30-8.30pm (Restarts 21st August) – Wednesday Meditation for stress transformation and positive energy with Toby (Bukit Timah)

Ongoing on Tuesday evenings (Restarts 13th August), 7.30-8.30pm – Tuesday Meditation for stress transformation and positive energy with Toby  (East Coast)

Tuesday 12.30-1.30 – Integral Meditation classes at Space2B on Stanley Street

Saturday mornings 9-10.15am, June 15th, 29th – Qi Gong workout and meditation class

Starts Sunday November 3rd – A six week mindfulness course for adults with ADHD

Re-Starts Monday November 4th, 6-7.30pm – The Men’s Group – The path of conscious manhood


Integral Meditation Asia

Online Courses 1:1 Coaching * Books * Live Workshops * Corporate Mindfulness Training *Life-Coaching *  Meditation Technology

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A Mind of Ease creative imagery Inner vision Integral Meditation meditation and creativity Meditation techniques Mindful Resilience Presence and being present

Taking the big picture view

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“One big source of stress and dis-ease in our life is that we often get caught in the small picture, the details of what we are doing or participating in. We lose our sense of the big picture, and the objectivity and balance that it gives us”
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Dear Integral Meditators,

One ‘mindful position’ that delivers a lot of value to almost all my coaching clients is practising the discipline of holding what I call the ‘big picture view’. This weeks article has a look at what this means, and how to start!

 In the spirit of the big picture,

Toby

 

 


Upcoming classes and courses:

This weeks Wednesday evening classes will be focused on how to rest at ease in meditation and in life by overcoming our Top-dog/Underdog complex. Its a lot of fun to do, and it opens up a whole new world of loving self and loving others!

Also, I just wanted to give the heads up for two new courses starting at the beginning of November, both unique!:
Starts Sunday November 3rd – A six week mindfulness course for adults with ADHD
Re-Starts Monday November 4th, 6-7.30pm – The Men’s Group – The path of conscious manhood


Taking the big picture view

One ‘mindful position’ that delivers a lot of value to almost all my coaching clients is practising the discipline of holding what I call the ‘big picture view’. One big source of stress and dis-ease in our life is that we often get caught in the small picture, the details of what we are doing or participating in. As a result, we lose our sense of the big picture, and the relative objectivity and balance that comes from this position. The following exercise is a visual and imaginative form that we can use to reconnect to the big picture, and release our often-compulsive obsession with the details.

Step 1: Imagine your current fixation with the ‘small picture’ is like being caught up in the swirl of a busy city, with people milling all around you, all sorts of noise and activity pulling you her and there. Its difficult to stay in balance! Now imagine a place that you know, for example at the top of a hill or mountain, where when you are standing there you have a large, ‘big picture view’ of the landscape around you. You can see the valleys and plains below, perhaps in the distance a town or city. There is a big sky above and around you. The clouds pass, the sun shines, you feel the bigger rhythms of nature. You can feel yourself reconnecting with your objectivity, your big picture, and as a result you feel your body, mind and heart relaxing. As you sit, simply breathe and relax as you look over your landscape. Explore what it feels like to be centred in the ‘big picture view’, not just mentally, but emotionally, and as a feeling in your body. Stay here as long as you like, let yourself ‘soak’ in the experience.

Step 2: Shortly before you finish the meditation, bring to mind some of the things that you have gotten caught up in in your life, where you have lost the big picture view. Practise seeing them with this new ‘big picture view’ as if viewing them like a landscape from a high position.

Step 3: When back in your daily life, occasionally come back to your experience of the ‘big picture view’. Notice whether you are still in touch with it or not. If necessary, spend a few moments re-connecting to your objectivity, and relaxing as you regain your perspective.

Related articlesThe conscious self in the landscape of the mind
Letting your inner landscape come alive
Article content © Toby Ouvry & Integral Meditation Asia 2019.


Upcoming classes and workshops

Ongoing on Wednesday’s, 7.30-8.30pm (Restarts 21st August) – Wednesday Meditation for stress transformation and positive energy with Toby (Bukit Timah)

Ongoing on Tuesday evenings (Restarts 13th August), 7.30-8.30pm – Tuesday Meditation for stress transformation and positive energy with Toby  (East Coast)

Wednesday 12.30-1.30 – Integral Meditation classes at Space2B on Stanley Street

Saturday mornings 9-10.15am, June 15th, 29th – Qi Gong workout and meditation class

Saturday October 19th, 4-5.30pm – Get your meditation pratice started now – The shortest and most time effective meditation workshop ever

Weds 30th Oct & Friday 1st Nov, 7.30-8.30pm – Samhain Meditation – Acknowledging the gifts and wounds of our ancestors

Starts Sunday November 3rd – A six week mindfulness course for adults with ADHD

Re-Starts Monday November 4th, 6-7.30pm – The Men’s Group – The path of conscious manhood


Integral Meditation Asia

Online Courses 1:1 Coaching * Books * Live Workshops * Corporate Mindfulness Training *Life-Coaching *  Meditation Technology

Categories
Life-fullness Meditation and Psychology Mindful Confidence Mindful Resilience Stress Transformation

Choosing to be on Your Own Side

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‘Are you for yourself or against yourself?’ 
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Dear Integral Meditators,

Of the articles I have written, this is one of  my favorites.

In the spirit of being on our own sides,

Toby


Choosing to be on Your Own Side

When you take a creative chance in your business and it does not come out ideally, do you berate yourself for being stupid, or do you congratulate yourself for your creative courage and learn from what you did and what happened?

When you are experiencing a difficult emotional state, do you take the time to express support and warmth to yourself or do you just try and bury the emotion and distract yourself from what you are feeling because of the discomfort?

When you are tired do you let the physical fatigue turn into a series of negative thoughts about yourself, your life and those around you, or do you consciously extend support to your tired body and make the effort to create a positive inner dialogue to help cope with the fatigue until you can get some rest?

When you ask someone you fancy out for a date and they say no, do you make a point of feeling good that you had the emotional courage to ask, or do you cringe with self-embarrassment and wallow in self loathing?

Are you for yourself or against yourself? 
This is one of the most productive mindfulness questions to ask yourself, every day. Each day in many ways, in thought and deed, in subtle and not so subtle actions, we are either expressing warmth, support and friendship to ourself, or we are expressing the opposite; coldness, judgment, self-loathing, self-sabotaging, self-isolating and so on.

To be for yourself is not negatively selfish, it is simply to recognize the your most important intimate relationship is ultimately with yourself; you are the one you have to spend 24 hours a day with, if you get your relationship to yourself right you are setting the stage for success in your life on multiple levels.

No one else can make your relationship to yourself right for you, you have to tread the journey to being truly for yourself alone. You can receive help and advice of course (this article pointing the way for example), but the moment to moment effort to be on your own side can only be exerted by you for you.

Today are you going to be the one supporting and encouraging yourself to the next level of creative expression in your life, or are you going to be the main thing that is holding you back, keeping you scared?

Be on your own side, be for yourself, not against youself. You do have a choice, it is up to you.

Related Article: Life-fullness

Article content © Toby Ouvry & Integral Meditation Asia 2019.


Upcoming classes and workshops

Ongoing on Wednesday’s, 7.30-8.30pm (Restarts 21st August) – Wednesday Meditation for stress transformation and positive energy with Toby (Bukit Timah)

Ongoing on Tuesday evenings (Restarts 13th August), 7.30-8.30pm – Tuesday Meditation for stress transformation and positive energy with Toby  (East Coast)

Wednesday 12.30-1.30 – Integral Meditation classes at Space2B on Stanley Street

Saturday mornings 9-10.15am, June 15th, 29th – Qi Gong workout and meditation class

Saturday October 19th, 4-5.30pm – Get your meditation pratice started now – The shortest and most time effective meditation workshop ever

Weds 30th Oct & Friday 1st Nov, 7.30-8.30pm – Samhain Meditation – Acknowledging the gifts and wounds of our ancestors

Starts Sunday November 3rd – A six week mindfulness course for adults with ADHD

Re-Starts Monday November 4th, 6-7.30pm – The Men’s Group – The path of conscious manhood


Integral Meditation Asia

Online Courses 1:1 Coaching * Books * Live Workshops * Corporate Mindfulness Training *Life-Coaching *  Meditation Technology