Month: June 2023

Categories
Energy Meditation Integral Awareness Meditation techniques mind body connection Mindful Breathing Mindful Resilience Presence and being present Qi gong Stress Transformation

How to meditate when you are ill or sick

“When you are ill, trust your body and it’s capacity for healing. Relax and get yourself out of the way. Dropping into short spaces of non-doing really helps to stay stable and keep on keeping on, even when your energy is low and you are feeling somewhat dis-oriented”

Dear Integral Meditators,

This weeks article is a personal reflection on some of the basic meditation techniques I use when I get ill. They are relatively simple positions that, if you can remember to do them make a huge difference! If your going through a  stage where your being exposed to bugs at the same time as having to work hard (like I am with a pre-schooler in the house), then having a meditation plan around sickness is a game changer…

If you enjoy the article, then you might be interested in the Meditation and Mindfulness for Self-Healing and Creating High Levels of Energy workshop that I will be doing on Saturday the 8th July 9.30am-12.30pm as a live & live-stream session.

In the spirit of health & energy,

Toby 

How to meditate when you are ill or sick
 
This last week I have been a little under the weather with a flu and cough bug. Even a minor illness has quite a lot of power to incapacitate our meditation efforts, so what I have done below is to outline a few positions I use when I am ill to navigate the process smoothly, and also maintain the basic momentum of my practice even though I’m not feeling great.  
 
Basic positions: Being primarily present & maintaining functional breathing  
Your basic task as a meditator is to establish your awareness as being primarily present in the moment, and secondarily thinking about stuff. This is the easiest and most essential position to stay with. You can take your body and breathing to do this, and it’s surprising how calm it can make you feel, even when you’re not feeling great.
Within your ‘primarily present’ position, you can then pay attention to your manner of breathing, and focus on ‘functional breathing’, which is breathing through your nose, and sending the air down into the lower lungs on your inbreath, connecting your nose to your belly. This is often one of the first things to go when you get ill, sustaining it helps your body to get on with its job of healing.
These two practices are your basic ‘navigation tools’ while you are sick. If you stay with them, the journey whilst you heal will be very much a part of your meditation journey.
 
Extending compassion to yourself & your body
Your body and you are suffering from the illness, so basic care and compassion is a no brainer that is easy to overlook. Will doing this help your body to heal faster? Maybe. It will certainly ease the process of the journey.
 
Trusting your body & non-doing
Trust your body and it’s capacity for healing, relax and get out of the way! One of the best ways to help your body is to do nothing, not just physically, but mentally and emotionally. If you are not able to stop working to recover, then dropping into short spaces of non-doing really helps to stay stable and keep on keeping on, even when your energy is low and you are feeling somewhat dis-oriented.
 
Context through appreciation
Just because you are ill doesn’t mean there is suddenly nothing to appreciate in life. Recognizing this and appreciating what there is to feel good about undoubtedly helps you get through a bout of illness.  
 
Minimalist meditations
If normally I would do let’s say 100 Medicine Buddha Mantras per day, I might change that to five-ten mins of the following pattern:

  • Three mantras, followed by a pause (back to basically present & functional breathing), three mantras, pause, and so forth

Less is more!
 
Mindful pro-activity
Final ‘active meditation’ is to ensure that you put together the best ‘healing protocol’ that you know regarding that illness. Creating and following such a routine is empowering. I have a routine of eastern and western supplementation, power napping (and prioritizing sleep in general) and gentle movement I follow for flu-type sickness. As so as I notice the signs, I activate the plan, and use the strategy to minimize the ability of the sickness to get a grip on my system.
I hope this give you a few ideas for when your next feeling under the weather!

© Toby Ouvry 2023, you are welcome to use or share this article, but please cite Toby as the source and include reference to his website www.tobyouvry.com



All upcoming classes and workshops at IMA:

Ongoing – Weekly Tuesday, Wednesday Online class schedule

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

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

Ongoing, Tues/Weds evening 7.30-8.30pm– Becoming a self-determining entity – A six-week course in Mindful Self-Leadership

Saturday the 8th July 9.30am-12.30pm – Meditation and Mindfulness for Self-Healing and Creating High Levels of Energy

Saturday July 15th, 9.30-11.30am – Monthly Qi Gong & Taoist Breathwork Clinic & Mini-retreat

Integral Meditation Asia

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

Categories
A Mind of Ease Energy Meditation Life-fullness Mindful Breathing Presence and being present

Four functional breathing meditations

Dear Integral Meditators, 

“The average adult breathes 20,000 times a day, and 7 million times a year. We are breathing all the time, and the way we breathe both reflects and affects our physical, psychological, and spiritual equilibrium. Since we are breathing all the time, if we have good breathing habits then our breathing is working to support us in life as we go through it”

Dear Integral Meditators,

This quote from the article below gives an indication of the potential value of mindful breathwork.
 
In the spirit of the the breathing,

Toby 

Four functional breathing meditations
 
Functional & dysfunctional breathing
The average adult breathes 20,000 times a day, and 7 million times a year. We are breathing all the time, and the way we breathe both reflects and affects our physical, psychological, and spiritual equilibrium. Since we are breathing all the time, if we have good breathing habits then our breathing is working to support us in life as we go through it. Correspondingly if we have bad breathing habits, these are undercutting our efforts toward wellness and effectiveness thru-out the day.
I’ve placed some past articles I’ve written on the breathing at the end of this article, but here I just want to outline the basic characteristics of functional and dysfunctional breathing:


Functional breathing is – Breathing in through the nose and down into the belly. You breathe in through the nose, sending the air down into the lower lungs. As you do this you will notice that you activate the diaphragm, and your belly moves out. Then is you breathe in, your belly moves back to resting position.


Dysfunctional breathing is – breathing in through the mouth and into the chest. To quote Alexia Conda on mouth breathing “Mouth breathing is the catalyst for the diaphragm to stop working and become lazy in the process of breathing. Mouth breathing is dysfunctional breathing, or over-breathing, and has a detrimental impact on your health, especially over a period of time.”
 
Some of the benefits of nose to belly breathing

  1. Increases lung function
  2. Promotes diaphragm breathing
  3. Is the body’s filtration system of the air coming into our body
  4. Builds immunity and strengthens the immune system
  5. Helps to balance the acid and alkaline levels in the body
  6. Stimulates the nerve endings at the base of the lungs that are sending messages to the brain to activate the relaxation response
  7. Triggers the release of hormones, endorphins and dopamine, which elevate mood and reduce pain

See full list here.
 
Four functional breathing meditations
Here are four very simple ways to meditate with functional breathing. With each of them the basis is simply establishing a pattern of functional breathing, and using it for the duration of the session.


On the breathing itself – The first method is simply to get comfortable with this pattern of breathing, and establishing it as a habit. As you are doing it during meditation, the functional breathing will help your body-mind to move towards equilibrium and balance, and you simple enhance that by concentrating on the experience with relaxed focus.


For muscle relaxation – Mouth breathing tends to produce excess tension and muscle effort in the chest and shoulders. In this second exercise you practice functional breathing, observing the movement of the belly and diaphragm. As you do so, and relax the muscles in chest and shoulders, noticing how it feels. Of course, you can relax other muscles in the body too, but the main point here is to get your breathing process using only the muscles it needs.


Witnessing– Here we establish functional breathing and either simply watch our thoughts coming and going. As we do so we notice our body’s response to these comings and goings, all the while sustaining our functional breathing pattern.  


Smiling to the internal organs – Establishing functional breathing we then explore our torso cavity. When we notice discomfort or fatigue in any part of the torso, or in an internal organ, we direct our attention there, breathing in and out of that organ as we smile gently to it.
The practice during the day is to simply notice our breathing and try and keep nose-to-belly breathing our default method, establishing it firmly as a habit.
 
Related article: Deep breathing – How to and the benefits
Pro-activity in the face of life & breathing pro-actively

© Toby Ouvry 2023, you are welcome to use or share this article, but please cite Toby as the source and include reference to his website www.tobyouvry.com

All upcoming classes and workshops at IMA:

Ongoing – Weekly Tuesday, Wednesday Online class schedule

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

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

Starts Tues/Weds, June 13th/14th – Becoming a self-determining entity – A six-week course in Mindful Self-Leadership

Tues 20th/Weds 21st June – Summer solstice balancing & renewing meditation

Saturday June 24th, & July 15th, 9.30-11.30am – Monthly Qi Gong & Taoist Breathwork Clinic & Mini-retreat

Integral Meditation Asia

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

Categories
A Mind of Ease creative imagery Enlightened Flow Essential Spirituality Insight Meditation Integral Awareness Integrating Ego, Soul and Spirit Life-fullness Meditating on the Self Meditation and Psychology Meditation techniques Mindful Self-Leadership Presence and being present

Empowering (& then dropping) the self

“In meditation we practice both building a stronger more powerful self, and dropping, or letting go of the self. This enables us to lead ourselves consciously and strongly though our life challenges, and at the same time strategically put down our sense of self, and relax into the regenerative space arising when we do so”

Dear Integral Meditators, 

This week’s article focuses on the self, and using meditation to strengthen it in contrasting but complementary ways. If you enjoy it, then do consider participating in Becoming a self-determining entity – A six-week course in Mindful Self-Leadership which starts this Tuesday & Wednesday evenings.

In the spirit of empowering & letting go, 
 
Toby 

Breathing with your power – Empowering & then dropping the self
 
In meditation we practice both building a stronger more powerful self, and dropping, or letting go of the self. This enables us to lead ourselves consciously and strongly though our life challenges, and at the same time strategically put down our sense of self, and relax into the regenerative space arising when we do so. As well as practising both individually, it is very important to practice the transition between them, so that we can move from one state to the other in a skillful & flexible way at different times during the day. This article explores how to do this.
 
Step 1: Empowering the self
Centring: Sit comfortably with your spine, neck and head aligned. Spend a little while relaxing and focusing your body-mind by breathing. As you do so breathe through the nose, and down into your lower lungs, so you are connecting your ‘nose to your belly’
 
Recognizing your self as the centre of your life:

  • Breathe into the centre of your torso, somewhere between your chest and solar-plexus. Become aware of your physical body and sensory world, recognize the sense of self that is at the centre of this experience, in the centre of your being.
  • Become aware of your mind; thoughts, ideas, feelings and desires. Observe the sense of self that lies at the centre of this experience.
  • Recognize that the ‘self’ at the centre of your bodily and mental experience is the primary causal power in what you experience and do in your life. Ideally it should be this self that leads, chooses and decides the path your life takes. If not you, then who else?
  •  Breathe with this recognition for a while, feeling the power and agency of the self that lies within you

 
Step 2: Dropping the labels around your ‘self’
This second exercise involves noticing, and then dropping all the labels that you associate with yourself;

  • The roles you play in your family
  • The roles and titles you have professionally
  • Your identification of qualities with yourself eg: strong/weak, masculine feminine and so forth

Drop all these labels that you associate with but that are not you, so that you become a man or woman of no rank or position. You can even drop the label of man, woman, human, and just become a being. Notice that the ‘self’ you now experience is mere presence and being, that you can relax into the spaciousness and freedom of.
 
Practising the transition
Either of these meditations are good to do by themselves, but it can be nice to alternate between them in a single session, for example over a 20minute meditation you could spend 5 minutes on step 1, five minutes on step 2, and then repeat. This would give you a 20minute practice where you are practicing both positions and the transitions between them.

© Toby Ouvry 2023, you are welcome to use or share this article, but please cite Toby as the source and include reference to his website www.tobyouvry.com

All upcoming classes and workshops at IMA:

Ongoing – Weekly Tuesday, Wednesday Online class schedule

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

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

Ongoing Tues/Weds, 7.30-8.30pm – Meditations for thriving and energy creation – An eight week course

Starts Tues/Weds, June 13th/14th – Becoming a self-determining entity – A six-week course in Mindful Self-Leadership

Tues 20th/Weds 21st June – Summer solstice balancing & renewing meditation

Saturday June 24th, 9.00am-5pm – Taoist Breathwork Day Meditation Retreat

Integral Meditation Asia

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

Categories
creative imagery Energy Meditation Enlightened service Life-fullness Meditating on the Self meditation and creativity Meditation and Psychology Meditation techniques Mindful Resilience Mindful Self-Leadership Mindfulness Motivation and scope Presence and being present spiritual intelligence Stress Transformation

Making yourself big

“It can be helpful to work on changing our idea of our inner self, and the scale on which it is able to work”

Dear Integral Meditators, 

Do you have a question about meditation or mindfulness?
If you have a question about meditation & mindfulness, either that you have been wondering about, or you may have asked people before but not received a satisfactory answer? If so then please send me a message with it to: info@tobyouvry.com. I’d like to start integrating some questions into my articles and videos, and it would be fun to do it with questions from you!

New course coming up: Do check out the mindful self-leadership workshop & six week course that I’ll be putting on over the weekend (the workshop), and then beginning next week (six week course).

And finally, please find below the article relating to this weeks Tuesday & Wednesday class. 

In the spirit of mindful questioning, 
 
Toby 

Making yourself big
 
When we get onto some kind of evolutionary path, we start to develop bigger intentions and aspirations. Rather than simply thinking about ourself and our close circle of family and friends in a material and temporary manner, we start to think in terms of benefitting the planet and the evolution of humanity. When this happens it can feel intimidating, ‘What can someone as small as I do in the face of such large forces? Can I really make any kid of significant impact?’
If we continue to identify our ‘self’ as being a small being trapped in a small physical body, then this can indeed feel overwhelming, as there is a mismatch between ‘self’ and ‘goal’. It can be helpful therefore to work on changing our idea of our inner self, and the scale on which it is able to work. A traditional Hermetic meditation technique is to visualize yourself as becoming very big, literally! Here is a source quote from a text called ‘the Corpus Hermeticum’:

“Increase thyself to an immeasurable height, leaping clear of all body, and surmounting all time, become eternal and thou shalt know God. There is nothing impossible to thyself. Deem thyself immortal and able to do all things…become higher than all height, and lower than all Depth…to be everything at the same time in earth and sea and heaven. Think that thou art as yet begotten, that thou art in the womb, that thou art young, that thou art old, that thou has died and art beyond death: perceive all things together…and thou shalt know God. But if thou shuttest up thy soul in thy body, and abasest thyself and sayest ‘I know nothing, I can do nothing, I am afraid of earth and sea, I cannot mount heaven, I know not what I was or what I shall be;’ then what hast thou to do with God?”

The basic idea here is that, if I identify myself as a small, limited, ignorant being, then I won’t leap beyond that limited idea of myself into my true potential. There are a lot of ideas to work with in the quote, but to make it very simple, as you sit in meditation you could imagine your body becoming larger, to the size of the room, then the house, then the apartment block, then your feet on the floor your head above the clouds, then country-size, then Planet size….You can go as big as you want or feels appropriate. As your body expands, feel your consciousness expanding with it, experience your everyday personal worries as insignificant, and yourself as a powerful effector of positive change on a great scale. If you relax and start to experiment with this, you will find your consciousness, and your sense of who you are and what you are capable of will change significantly. If you do it in a positive, balanced way all these changes can be used for the good.
 
But will I become delusional?
One fear that we may have in doing this is that we will simply become delusional, using this as a way of evading our reality and getting a completely inappropriate sense of who we are and our importance in the world. So of course, everything has to be held in balance here. If we understand the purpose of the exercise is to transcend our limited self-concept, freeing us to work in a way that currently we cannot. Understanding this specific purpose, we can do this exercise safely and get the benefits without falling into any potential dangers. It is also an exercise you can do when your ‘small self’ is simply feeling overwhelmed by life and its challenges. It can change the context of your experience very powerfully for the good.
 
Enjoy working with your ‘big body!

© Toby Ouvry 2023, you are welcome to use or share this article, but please cite Toby as the source and include reference to his website www.tobyouvry.com


All upcoming classes and workshops at IMA:

Ongoing – Weekly Tuesday, Wednesday Online class schedule

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

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

Ongoing Tues/Weds, 7.30-8.30pm – Meditations for thriving and energy creation – An eight week course

Saturday June 10th, 9.30am-12.30pm – Mindful Self-Leadership: A Three-hour mindfulness & meditation workshop

Starts Tues/Weds, June 13th/14th – Becoming a self-determining entity – A six-week course in Mindful Self-Leadership

Saturday June 24th, 9.00am-5pm – Taoist Breathwork Day Meditation Retreat

Integral Meditation Asia

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