Category: Mindful Self-Leadership

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Happiness or impulse fulfilment?

Dear Integral Meditators,

In this day and age when so many of our impulses can be fulfilled at the click of a button or browser, managing your impulses mindfully is an increasingly important life skill. The article below looks at how we can distinguish between impulse fulfilment and actions that lead to genuine happiness.

In the spirit of attention to impulses!

Toby


‘Engaged Mindfulness – What mindfulness is and how we can apply it to our daily lives‘
Last two days to purchase Toby’s new book at the 20% launch price discount! (up until 31st August)

 

 

Happiness or impulse fulfilment?

When you do something are you doing it because it is really going to make you happy? Or are you doing it simply out of impulse and habit? This is an important question to ask yourself, because having the impulse to do something doesn’t mean that that action will result in fulfilment, wellbeing or happiness.

Defining happiness
For our purposes right now, let’s say happiness has two types; goal oriented happiness and non-goal oriented happiness. These two are interrelated but:

  • Goal oriented happiness is functional. We derive it from actions which lead to achievements. For example, if I keep my attention focused on my work and writing this morning, I will get to lunch and experience the happiness and satisfaction of having achieved my work goals. Goal oriented happiness may involve discomfort, sacrifice and the setting aside of short term impulse fulfilment to achieve, and this is very important to understand!
  • Non-goal oriented happiness is our capacity to rest at ease in the moment, feeling good not because we have achieved something, but because we are in touch with life as we experience it in the moment, on a slightly deeper level. This can be prompted consciously through mindfulness meditation, or it may come upon us when walking or running, listening to music, being with a loved one and so on…

The defining factor of both types of happiness is that they make us feel good in a real and appropriate way.

The deception of impulse fulfilment
Deceptive impulses are ones that prompt us to do something that we think will make us happy, but in reality lead neither to goal oriented happiness or non-goal oriented happiness. Rather they lead to more discontent, insecurity, anxiety and so on. Two examples:

  • I wake up in the morning. I’ve got work to do, but I’m tired, so I switch on my phone and surf the online paper for a while. The impulse to do this is an avoidance tactic to delay the effort of starting work. While I read the news I’m not feeling great because deep down I know I’m avoiding what I need to do. When I finish reading, I don’t feel happy, I’ve dissipated my (already finite) energy, and I haven’t gotten closer to my work goals, and thus am farther away from my goal-oriented happiness. So the impulse to surf my phone promised me happiness, but it didn’t deliver – it was merely an impulse that took me further away from what I want.
  •  I have had just the right amount to drink at a party, but I have the impulse to take another (and perhaps another!) This does not lead me to be any happier ‘in the moment’, and later in the evening/next morning I might even feel substantially worse! So the impulse fulfilment did not lead to happiness in the goal-oriented or non-goal oriented sense of the word. The impulse actually took me away from my happiness.

The practice  
So the mindfulness practice here is simply to challenge ourself when we notice certain impulses within ourself by asking the question ‘Will this action lead to happiness for me, or is it just impulse fulfilment?’ By asking this question we activate our wise intelligence and willpower to make better choices that will serve our happiness in the long term, and not just erode our wellbeing by pandering to our deceptive impulse fulfilment!
In this day and age when so many of our impulses can be fulfilled at the click of a button or browser, managing your impulses mindfully is an increasingly important life skill.

© Toby Ouvry 2016, 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

Upcoming Courses at Integral Meditation Asia:

Ongoing on Wednesday’s, 7.30-8.30pm (next class August 10th) – Wednesday Meditation Classes at Basic Essence with Toby

8th & 17th September, 7.30-8.30pm – Free book talks on ‘Engaged Mindfulness’ by Toby

Integral Meditation Asia

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The freedom of limitation

Dear Integral Meditators,

If we normally think of limitations as an obstacle to our freedom, how can deliberately creating limitations in our life paradoxically help us find the freedom that we crave? The article below explores this theme!

In the spirit of liberated limitation,

Toby

The freedom of limitation

One way of thinking about meditation is as the freedom of limitation. In meditation we spend a period of time deliberately limiting the activity of our mind. The purpose of this is threefold:

  • In order to gain freedom from the limitation of our own compulsions, addictions and psychological habit patterns.
  • In order to specifically work on developing our mental strengths in a focused manner and
  • To gain access to progressively higher, deeper and more powerful states of conscious awareness.

Normally in our daily life we are not really setting mindful, conscious boundaries around or thoughts and what we focus on. Our mind goes here and there, darting from one object to another. When we sit in meditation, we deliberately set ourself a task, the boundaries of which we remain within to the best of our ability for the duration of the practice. Examples include:

  • Focusing on the body in order to release stress and regenerate energy
  • Focusing on the breathing in order to build concentration
  • Taking the position of the witness or observer of our mind rather than the participant
  • Extending sustained feelings of compassion toward ourself and others
  • Watching the spaces between our thoughts in order to slow our thinking and gradually become comfortable with a state of pure conscious being, or non-thought

The number of examples is as varied as the types of meditation that there are, the thing that they have in common is that each involve limiting our activity in order to gain benevolent control over our compulsive mind, build mental strengths that lead to greater wellbeing, and access deeper, more powerful/peaceful (I put those two adjectives together deliberately) states of consciousness.

The freedom of limitation in daily life
Practising the freedom of limitation can also be applied mindfully to daily life to enhance happiness and increase our productivity (If we practice the freedom of limitation in meditation, this will improve our ability to practice in daily life, but it is not essential).
Here is an example: I got back mid-afternoon today to my apartment, I now have a couple of hours to devote to the things I most want to achieve next. There are many options crowding my mind, many things I could be doing. I mindfully sift through the options and isolate three that I want to focus on in the time I have; that I most need/want to do:

  • Hanging the laundry (sometimes after long neglect this has to come to the top!)
  • Write my newsletter article (right now)
  • Shower and meditate

So, for the next two hours, these are the three activities that I limit myself to and focus my attention upon, a bit like a moving meditation. By limiting myself to these three activities, my mind has the freedom to relax, stop worrying about other stuff, and I can apply my full creative attention to the task at hand (Yes, creative laundry hanging!) The result of this mindful limitation is increased productivity, greater peace of mind and the satisfaction of coming to the end of those two hours having done that which I most want/need to do. I find if you break up the significant periods of your day like this, using the freedom of limitation technique, it’s a naturally mindfulness-strengthening process.
There you are then. Two ways to practice the freedom of limitation, in your daily life and in formal meditation practice!

Related article: The yoga of limitation and choice

© Toby Ouvry 2016, 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

Upcoming Courses at Integral Meditation Asia:

Ongoing on Wednesday’s, 7.30-8.30pm (next class August 10th) – Wednesday Meditation Classes at Basic Essence with Toby

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Practical Rapture (On rapture, beauty and mindfulness)

Dear Toby,

Rapture is a state of mind and body that we all experience sometimes, the article below explores how we can build our experience of it through mindfulness, and then start putting it to use…

In the spirit of rapture,

Toby

Practical Rapture (On rapture, beauty and mindfulness)

Rapture –  a state or emotion of wonderment, bliss and heightened perception. A state of feeling deeply and primally connected to life and aliveness felt not just in the mind and heart, but in the body.

Peak rapture
We are all familiar to a greater or lesser degree with times when we have had a peak experience of rapture; when listening to music or contemplating art, in moments of new love or romance, in powerful landscape, when we are in a highly creative state, enthused by an idea or an ideal, the temporary peaks we dip into in good meditations. What are the moments in your life where you have felt most closely connected to a state of rapture? Memories like this are important for us to be mindful of as often they are powerful enough to re-trigger a little bit of that peak rapture in the moment we are in right now.

Everyday rapture
If we are mindful, we also start to notice that there are quiet invitations to rapture all around us; in the wind through trees, in the sight or a flower or cloudscape in the sky, in the feeling of comfort on our skin as we sit in a comfy chair. Rapture almost seems like the ‘hum’ of life that you can connect to anytime that you dip your awareness beneath the surface of your mind and what you are experiencing in the moment. To be in touch with your life and the feeling of being alive is to feel slightly blissful, slightly rapturous.

Accessing rapture through mindfulness
Mindfulness meditation by its nature invites us to dip below the surface of our attention, moving to deeper states of awareness that naturally contain some rapture. For example, within the forest monk tradition of breathing meditation there is a stage called ‘the beautiful breathing’. At this stage, which comes after achieving a certain level of competency focusing attention upon the breathing, the body starts to feel effortlessly comfortable, the breathing becomes smooth and even, and the mind moves toward a state of calm rapture. Once this is achieved, then we become able to access a feeling of quiet, everyday rapture at will, or at least more and more often in our daily life.

Thinking and acting from a place of rapture
You can cultivate your experience of rapture then by:

  • Being mindful of your past experiences of peak rapture, and the ones that come up for you in your daily life.
  • Noticing the everyday moments of rapture that are available to you whenever you take the time to notice them.
  • Cultivate a daily practice of mindfulness, where to learn to consciously dip into sustained states of calm rapture regularly.

One fun thing that you can then try doing is thinking and acting from a place of rapture, which is to say:

  • A place that is creative, playful and a little wild.
  • A place that is fulfilled in the moment.
  • A place that contains natural compassion.

Within the boundaries of what feels appropriate, try bringing your rapture mindfully into your everyday life, relationships and tasks. What might start to change in your life today if you did??

© Toby Ouvry 2016, 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

Upcoming Courses at Integral Meditation Asia:

Ongoing on Wednesday’s, 7.30-8.30pm (next class August 10th) – Wednesday Meditation Classes at Basic Essence with Toby

 

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The yoga of limitation and choice

Dear Integral Meditation,

Is choice always a good thing for us? How can we use limitation to our advantage? The article below looks at how we can use mindfulness to approach both choice and limitation with confidence…

In the spirit of the journey,

Toby

The yoga of limitation and choice

The yoga of limitation and choice are two types of mindfulness practice centered around the process of decision making. In situations where our choices are very limited and where we have multiple choices there are both:

  • Opportunities for specific types of inner growth, happiness and wellbeing.
  • Challenges to our peace of mind and factors trying to sabotage our sense of inner wellbeing

Allowing ourselves to be disciplined by limitation
When I was a monk I deliberately chose to limit my options in life:

  • A very minimal income
  • No sexual or romantic relationships
  • No intoxicants (except the odd expresso!)

Because of this my choices became very limited, which meant I had to practice ‘the discipline of limitation’ living within my means and boundaries. My limitations also enabled me to focus and accomplish the goal of becoming a meditation and mindfulness expert, but even without that I observed that simply having fewer choices makes your life clear and simple; the limitations of your choice give rise to a certain amount of peace if you are able to accept them.
So, to practise the yoga of limitation simply means to be content and accepting of the limitations of your life as you find them each day. This doesn’t mean that you don’t make plans to increase your choices and opportunities in life; it just means you are take advantage of the limitations you find each day, and are not made unhappy by them.

The discipline of choice
Now that I am a layperson in the middle stages of my life I have many choices and options

  • Which personal and business relationships do I pursue?
  • How best to spend and save my money?
  • Am I insured enough?
  • Private or public education for my child?
  • Where to go on holiday?
  • Where to live?

Endless choices, and the more wealth I have, the more choices are born from that…
The interesting thing that I note as I observe my own experience of choice (and many of the people that surround me) is that having all these options can give rise to a lot of anxiety and unhappiness (what if this is the wrong choice? Someone tell me what to do!) In order not to be made unhappy and over anxious by my many choices, I have to be disciplined, decisive and mindful.  When you no longer have the luxury of limitation, mindful, conscious decision making really comes at a premium.

What are the circumstances in your life right now where you need to practice the yoga of limitation; allowing yourself to be disciplined by and content with your absence of choices?
What are the circumstances where you need to practice the yoga of choice; managing the anxiety of having options, and making choices consciously, responsibly and positively?

If you are a mindfulness practitioner, you will know how to take advantage of both types of situation, and have an ongoing experiential grasp of the saying that the time to be happy (in whatever form you understand that) is always now.

© Toby Ouvry 2016, 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

Upcoming Courses at Integral Meditation Asia:

Ongoing on Wednesday’s, 7.30-8.30pm (next class July 6th) – Wednesday Meditation Classes at Basic Essence with Toby

Integral Meditation Asia

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Three levels of non-striving

Dear Integral Meditators,

Is it possible by letting go of our striving to then learn how to strive better? That is the topic of this weeks article!

Mindful goals coaching offer ends tomorrow, 8th June.

In the spirit of non-striving,

Toby


Three levels of non-striving

In a previous article on non-striving I defined non-striving as “a refusal to be in conflict with yourself and your life. Put another way, rather than seeing yourself in an adversarial relationship to yourself and your circumstances, you practice accepting and working with what is there”.
What I want to explain here is three levels of non-striving that we can work with in our mindfulness practice. These three stages are:

  1. Noticing your inner conflict and striving
  2. Practising non-striving
  3. Striving better

Noticing your inner conflict
This first stage is simply about awareness. You sit down and notice all of the tension, conflict and striving that you have within yourself at this point in time. Without trying to change it, simply notice the tension you may feel about a conversation you had earlier in the day, an unfinished project, an uncertainty that you can’t control, a mistake that you wish you hadn’t made and wish to rectify, something that you are looking forward to and can’t wait for, something that you are sad about and wish hadn’t happened. Simply breath and be present to all of the different types of conflict and striving you notice. Is there one above all of the others that is stronger and stands out? Perhaps, perhaps not.

Relaxing into non-striving
In this stage the object is to progressively drop the different levels of striving and conflict that you feel within yourself.
Take a few breaths to center yourself, then encourage yourself to move into a state of acceptance of yourself, what you find within you, and whatever circumstances you find yourself in. Alternate for a while between the breathing (to center and focus yourself) and entering into a state of easy, relaxed non-striving. With each round of breathing and relaxing, try and enter one step deeper into the feeling of non-striving; learn to move easily and smoothly with whatever it is you find within. You can stay with stage two for as long as you like, it’s good to really immerse yourself in it deeply when you can.

Striving better
In stage one you practiced mindfully noticing the different types of conflict that you have in your life currently. In the second stage, non-striving, you practiced stepping out of that conflict refusing to be in an adversarial relationship to yourself, going with what you find with acceptance. In the final stage, ‘striving better’ you come back to the conflicts that you notice in stage one and ask yourself the question ‘is there any way I can strive better and more harmoniously in this situation?”

  • You might choose to strive more patiently with the project that is stressing you out
  • You might choose to make good for a mistake made without using the fact that you made it in the first place as a hammer that you keep hitting yourself over the head with
  • You might choose to emphasize being playful in a situation that you have been taking overly seriously

There are infinite potential discoveries that you might make and decide to focus on implementing at this stage, the point is that you are using your mindful intelligence to make the quality of your striving wiser, more ergonomic, more realistic.

By using these three stages we learn not just to relax by practising non-striving, but to combine our striving and non-striving into a mutually strengthening and re-enforcing whole. As always with integral mindfulness its ‘both/and’ rather than ‘either/or’!

© Toby Ouvry 2016, 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

Upcoming Courses at Integral Meditation Asia:

Ongoing on Wednesday’s, 7.30-8.30pm – Wednesday Meditation Classes at Basic Essence with Toby

Saturday 11th June, 10am-5pm – An Introduction to Meditation from the Perspective of Shamanism

Saturday June 18th, 2.30-5.30pm – Meditation & Mindfulness for Creating a Mind of Ease, Relaxed Concentration and Positive Intention – An Introduction to Contemporary Meditation Practice

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Lazy compassion

Dear Integral Meditators,

This weeks article is about how to use mindfulness to be as ergonomic as possible in the development of your deepest compassionate potential.

In the spirit of our naturally compassionate awareness,

Toby

Lazy compassion (compassion & care through awareness)

I was doing mindfulness coaching with some executives last week. At one point in the session I asked them to complete the sentence ‘Compassion to me means…’ a number of the replies went something like this:

  • – listening more
  • – being more empathetic
  • – paying attention to the needs of others
  • – caring
  • – taking the time to understand

If you look at all the way in which they completed the sentence, you can see that all of them are a direct consequence simply of directing awareness to ourself or others.

  • Listening more begins by paying attention to others, or to ourself
  • Being empathetic and/or aware of people’s needs follows from greater awareness
  • Caring and taking time to understand comes quite naturally from focusing mindfully on a person or situation

From this we can see that if we want to develop our compassion and caring, all we need to do is practice being more mindfully aware, and increasing the quality of our attention. You can understand this from your own experience; if you recall the last time you really felt that someone was extending their compassion to you, you’ll see that much of that experience came from the feeling that they were paying you attention fully, in a way that made you feel understood and valued.

So ‘lazy compassion’ comes from simply recognizing that all you need to do to begin developing and increasing your compassion is to pay attention; to yourself, to others, to your environment. When you practice non-judgmental awareness of any of these things, the warmth of your own human compassion will begin to extend quite naturally to your objects of attention.

Sky and sun
If you think about your awareness as being like the space of the sky, and your compassion as being like the rays of the sun.  Just practice bringing your sky-like awareness to people and things, and then let the sunlight rays of your natural compassion follow the direction of your attention. In the Buddhist teachings where I first learned meditation your natural compassion was called ‘Buddha nature’; whenever our minds become clear and unclouded our natural compassion begins to shine out.

Practicing
Bring your attention to your body, sustain gentle non-judgmental awareness upon the body for a short while, recognize that all you need to do to extend compassion to your body is to bring your attention to it. If you do that then caring and compassion will follow that awareness. Do the same with your mind and emotions. Extend it out to include significant others in your life, then perhaps to people you don’t know or even have a difficult relationship with. Extend your awareness to aspects of your environment, to the non-human creatures that are there. Make the circle of your compassion as large as you like!
In your daily life, whomever you are paying (mindful) attention to, allow your compassion to connect with them through the simple act of awareness.

© Toby Ouvry 2016, 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

Upcoming Courses at Integral Meditation Asia:

Ongoing on Wednesday’s, 7.30-8.30pm – Wednesday Meditation Classes at Basic Essence with Toby

Saturday May 28th, 2.30-5.30pm – Finding Liberation Through the Witness Self – Connecting to Peace, Abundance and Creative Freedom Though Mindfulness Practice

JUNE
Saturday 11th June, 10am-5pm – An Introduction to Meditation from the Perspective of Shamanism

Starts Thursday June 9th – Thursday Evening Integral Meditation Classes @ Bencoolen Street

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Independent Interdependence

Dear Integral Meditators,

How can we be more mindful of the space that lies between us as individuals and ourselves as members of a community that we depend upon? This weeks article looks at how we can start to investigate important dimension of mindfulness practice in a practical way.

In the spirit of our inter-relationship,

Toby

Independent Interdependence

To be independent as a person means to be able to think for yourself, form your own (evidence based) opinions, be responsible for your own actions and life direction, as well as fundamentally trusting your own mind and judgment. The benefits of becoming truly independent include becoming a self-determining person who is able to go against the path of least resistance, ignore popular opinion (where appropriate), be alone and do what is necessary to find a way of life that leads to genuine fulfillment of your deeper needs, aspirations and ambitions.

To recognize interdependence means that, whilst being individuals we are also dependent upon others for our basic well being. The bus I took into work this morning, the computer hard and software I am using to type this article, the food I will buy for lunch after I finish both depend upon a huge chain of interdependence from which I benefit directly. In many ways I am completely dependent upon this chain of interdependence, my wellbeing and yours relies upon the community and networks which support us. One benefit of recognizing interdependence is that it encourages us to see the clearly what we receive from others and from our community every day, thus naturally developing appreciation, warmth and a wish to reciprocate that benefit back to others.

So then, to practice independent interdependence means to fully committed to realizing our individuality whilst at the same time recognizing that we are dependent upon the help and support we receive from others, our networks and communities. Interdependence encourages us to feel positive and grateful for what we are receiving, and encouraged to give back in whatever way we can.

There are two extremes that we want to avoid when practicing independent interdependence:

  • Allowing our individuality to be negatively compromised for the sake of ‘fitting in’ to a network we are interdependent with
  • Becoming a negative individualist in the sense of always valuing our personal wellbeing over and above the interests of the communities within which we co-exist. As individuals we see ourselves as equal with others, no more or less important. Indeed, if we learn to value our own individuality appropriately the effect of this is that we will come to value the individuality of other people more, not less.

Finding the middle way
Think about a situation that you may be experiencing right now in your life, perhaps one that is posing a few dilemmas for you. As yourself the questions:

  • What is my individuality asking of me at this time?
  • What are the legitimate needs of the community or network upon which I am dependent in this situation that should be honored?

Your practice of mindful independent interdependence lies in the middle of the dance between these two questions.

© Toby Ouvry 2016, 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

Upcoming Courses at Integral Meditation Asia:

Ongoing on Wednesday’s, 7.30-8.30pm – Wednesday Meditation Classes at Basic Essence with Toby

Saturday  April 16th, 2.30-5.30pm – Living Life From Your Inner Center – Meditations for Going With the Flow of the Present Moment – A three hour workshop

Thursday 21st April 7.30-8.30pm – Monthly Thursday Evening Integral Meditation Classes @ the Life Chiropractic Centre with Toby

Saturday April 30th, 2.30-5.30pm – Mindful Self Confidence: Developing your self-confidence, self-belief & self-trust through mindfulness & meditation

Integral Meditation Asia

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

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The Middle Way

Dear Integral Meditators,

What might a mindful path of balance & harmony look like? This weeks article examines this using the paradigm of the middle way.
For those in Singapore please note in addition to the weekly Wednesday evening class there is also an additional monthly class in the centre of town starting on 21st April: 7.30-8.30pm – Monthly Thursday Evening Integral Meditation Classes @ the Life Chiropractic Centre with Toby

In the spirit of balance & harmony,

Toby

The Middle Way

The Buddha talked about his path as ‘the middle way’. As I understand it and practice it, essentially the middle way is the path of balance and harmony, facilitated by engaged, mindful awareness.
The middle way as I experience it in my own life this means that I am always walking the middle way between two poles or opposites, holding the tension between the two. If I move too far toward one pole, I move into state of imbalance, if I move too far in the other direction then I become imbalanced in another way. For example:

  • Aspiration and ambition – If I am too ambitious in my work I will find myself continually dissatisfied/frustrated, but if I am not ambitious enough then I will not reach my full potential
  • Attachment and non-attachment – If I don’t allow myself to feel any emotional empathy and attraction to other people then I will become negatively detached, but if I feel those emotions too intensely I may find myself obsessively attached and co-dependent
  • Anger and assertion – If I feel too angry about what someone has done to me I may act in ways that cause the relationship to deteriorate further, but if I do not assert myself powerfully enough, then the other person may continue to walk over me, or behave inappropriately
  • Over and under preparation – If I don’t prepare enough for a talk I am giving then I may mess it up in one way, but if I prepare too much, then the detail may get in the way of delivering the speech also
  • Focus and Relaxation – If I try too hard to focus in my mindfulness meditation session, then the effort of focus will get in the way of developing a single-pointed state of mind, but if I relax my effort too much then the over-relaxation will cause my mind to wander anyway

A question
So, in every situation there is a middle way between two opposite or opposing forces in your life. So then the question becomes ‘What are the two opposing forces in this particular situation right now, and what is the middle way between them?’ Asking a question like this stimulates our mind and awareness to seek out these polarities and find the harmonious, balanced middle way between them.

The point of harmony and balance is always changing
The challenging thing about the practice of the middle way is that it is always changing, because the reality around us is always changing; in the morning the middle way may be to act, in the afternoon to sit back. At times it requires us to make a judgment call, other times to refrain from judging.

An Image
The path of the middle way is a bit like riding a bicycle; you are always having to seek out and sustain your point of balance. Sometimes sustaining the balance is relatively simple, such as when you are riding at steady speed down a straight road. At other times it can be quite complex and demanding such as when you are racing, going across rough terrain or in a busy street. In these circumstances finding the middle way requires constant, active & mindful adjustments.

Getting started
In the material above there is an image and a question that are designed to help mindfully direct you along the path of the middle way. If you like you can start working with them in your daily life, using them as guide posts for you to start seeking and sustaining your own middle road.

© Toby Ouvry 2016, 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

Upcoming Courses at Integral Meditation Asia:

Ongoing on Wednesday’s, 7.30-8.30pm – Wednesday Meditation Classes at Basic Essence with Toby

Saturday  April 16th, 2.30-5.30pm – Living Life From Your Inner Center – Meditations for Going With the Flow of the Present Moment – A three hour workshop

Thursday 21st April 7.30-8.30pm – Monthly Thursday Evening Integral Meditation Classes @ the Life Chiropractic Centre with Toby

Saturday April 30th, 2.30-5.30pm – Mindful Self Confidence: Developing your self-confidence, self-belief & self-trust through mindfulness & meditation

Integral Meditation Asia

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

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Awareness and insight Insight Meditation Integral Awareness Life-fullness meditation and creativity Mindful Self-Leadership Mindfulness Presence and being present

Effortless Effort – The Cycle of Mindful Growth

Dear Integral Meditators,

The path of mindfulness when engaged in properly can offer us a relatively effortless, gradual, ergonomic and aesthetically beautiful path of personal growth. In the article below I break the process down into four essential stages that can be applied to any area of your life that you may wish to work with using mindfulness. Its simple. Not always easy, but simple!

The Integral Mindfulness On line Course starting on Feb 4th is now passed its early bird offer, but up until until 29th Jan you can still get 10 bucks off the price. And there are still 10 days before the January 20% offer on 1:1 coaching expires, so do have a look if you are interested!

In the spirit of effortless effort,

Toby

Effortless Effort – The Cycle of Mindful Growth

Mindfulness invites us upon an experiential journey of learning and self-knowledge. How does it do this? I’m going to break the process down into four stages:

Intention – To begin with we start with the intention to investigate something that we wish to understand more deeply – our emotions, our beliefs, our relationships, anything that we want to work with.
Attention – Secondly we then practice placing our attention or focus on that area of our life or experience. This is not just for a few seconds, but over an extended period of time.
Enquiry – With our attention we then dwell upon our object of observation, not trying to ‘solve it’, ‘fix it’ or ‘judge it’, but simply seeking to see it clearly and understand it.
Insight – The point of our focused enquiry is to produce insight; an essential, experiential new understanding of what is happening. This experiential insight then enables us to make positive changes in our life.

Unlike other personal growth methods, mindfulness focuses upon change and growth through experiential insight and understanding rather than through sheer willpower. Because of this the change that we facilitate through mindfulness (when done well) is gentle, natural and relatively effortless. When we see what is going on clearly, we change naturally. When we do not see what is going on clearly our efforts to change generally miss the point – It’s difficult to have an effective strategy to change something you don’t understand.

A simple example:
Let’s say I am feeling confused. Firstly I develop the intention to investigate and understand the nature of my confusion.
Secondly I sit, turn my attention inward and focus it upon how the confusion shows up in my body, emotions and mind.
Through my attentive enquiry I notice that the feeling of confusion is centered physically in my brain – It feels like a fog sitting in the frontal part of the brain and forehead.
Through my enquiry I discover the insight that simply by placing my awareness gently upon this front part of my brain I can clear the fuzzy feeling and my head feels clearer, and so I find a solution to this aspect of my confusion.
As a result of my had feeling clearer I can then start to see clearly the emotions in my heart and chest that are causing the confusion on a deeper level, and so the cycle of mindfulness continues to go from attention to enquiry to insight in a circular process helping me to deal with my experience of confusion on progressively deeper and deeper levels in different ways.

What area of your life would you like to practice the cycle of mindfulness with today, or this week?

© Toby Ouvry 2016, 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

Upcoming Courses at Integral Meditation Asia:

JANUARY 2016

Ongoing on Wednesday’s (Jan 13th, 20th) 7.30-8.30pm – Wednesday Meditation Classes at Basic Essence with Toby

Saturday January 16th, 9.30am-12.30pm – Transforming Your Stress into Happiness – Meditation & mindfulness for cultivating a state of optimal flow in your mind, body, heart and life – A three hour workshop

Saturday, January 30th, 2.30-5.30pm  – Meditations for Transforming Negativity and Stress into Energy, Positivity and Enlightenment – A Three Hour Workshop

Starts 4th February – Transforming Stress into Happiness – An Introduction to Integral Mindfulness Meditation – A Five Week On line Course

Click the link to find out about the special 1:1 meditation and mindfulness coaching offer in January!

Integral Meditation Asia

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

 

Categories
Integral Meditation Life-fullness Meditation and Psychology Mindful Resilience Mindful Self-Leadership Mindfulness Motivation and scope Shadow meditation Stress Transformation

The Eye of the Storm – Finding peace in the non-peace

Dear Integral Meditators,

What would happen if in the moments when you were feeling most disturbed and out of balance you were able to find a place of peace within that same moment? The article below explores how you can begin to do so.

In the spirit of the eye of the storm,

Toby

The Eye of the Storm – Finding peace in the non-peace
 
It’s always pleasant and valuable to seek out peaceful times and places in your day where you can cultivate your inner peace mindfully, but it can also be hugely valuable to learn to notice the peace that is present in the midst of the most stressful situations that you find yourself in, for example

  • When you have multiple demands upon your time
  • When your relationships are in crisis
  • When your health is not good
  • When you face setbacks nervousness or uncertainty

If you think about any of these type of circumstances in your mind or life as being like a storm, to find the ‘peace in the non-peace’ means to go looking for the eye of the storm in that moment; to locate and hold your awareness in that center point. You don’t wait for the storm to subside or go away; you actively look for the point of stillness within it as the activity goes on around and within you.
This is a very powerful way to learn to experience peace, as it is directly contrasted with the stress, movement and turbulence of your circumstances. Cultivating peace in this way also makes you more resilient, as your capacity to endure and relax into stress increases.
So, the next time you find yourself experiencing non-peace, remember the eye of the storm and look for the still point within the turbulence, placing your attention and awareness in that place. Find the peace within the non-peace.

© Toby Ouvry 2016, 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

Upcoming Courses at Integral Meditation Asia:

JANUARY 2016

Ongoing on Wednesday’s (Jan 13th, 20th) 7.30-8.30pm – Wednesday Meditation Classes at Basic Essence with Toby

Saturday January 16th, 9.30am-12.30pm – Transforming Your Stress into Happiness – Meditation & mindfulness for cultivating a state of optimal flow in your mind, body, heart and life – A three hour workshop

Saturday, January 30th, 2.30-5.30pm  – Meditations for Transforming Negativity and Stress into Energy, Positivity and Enlightenment – A Three Hour Workshop

Starts 4th February – Transforming Stress into Happiness – An Introduction to Integral Mindfulness Meditation – A Five Week On line Course

Click the link to find out about the special 1:1 meditation and mindfulness coaching offer in January!

Integral Meditation Asia

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