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creative imagery Enlightened Flow Inner vision Integral Meditation Life-fullness Meditation techniques Mindful Resilience Mindful Self-Leadership Presence and being present Zen Meditation

Interiority – the cave of the heart

Dear Integral Meditators,

This weeks article is kind of a sister article to last weeks on the cave and the market place. It focuses on the inner confidence that comes from learning how go within yourself competently.
If you enjoy the article then  do consider joining us live or online for the first of  The Wisdom of Awakening Series: Meditations for bringing integration, depth & vividness to your life , on Tuesday or Wednesday.

In the spirit of interiority,

Toby


Interiority – the cave of the heart

INTERIORITY
The disciple asked for a word of wisdom.
Said the Master, “Go sit within your cell and your cell will teach you wisdom.”
‘But I have no cell. I am no monk.”
‘Of course you have a cell. Look within.”

The confidence of going within
One of the things that this (very) short story by Anthony De Mello speaks to is the confidence that comes from going within. As an ex-monk, and as someone who has sat and gone within a lot, I know that, even if my life-challenges seem insurmountable, if I can just sit quietly and really go within the cave of my heart, after a few minutes I will start feeling better as I rest in the stillness. After a little while longer I’ll start to hear and have ideas arising from within that give me new positive perspectives around the problems I’m having. This for me is what the Master means when he says: “Go sit within your cell and your cell will teach you wisdom.”

Committing to go within, listening compassionately and courageously
The challenge for many people is that they do not yet have the confidence that by really committing to going deep into the cave (or monastic cell) of their heart, they will discover many of the answers to their problems. In fact, the first thing that we have to face going within is a more direct awareness of our mental and emotional discomfort. This is the very discomfort that most people are running away from in life and or seeking to drown out!

The cave or cell your heart
So, when we commit to going within, a useful first set of positions to work with are:

  • To really commit to going within with courage and decisiveness
  • Rather than fearing the voices and emotions that we may find there, we can listen to them with a degree of compassion and understanding
  • We can go in there in the spirit of curiosity and with an open mind. What we find might be different from what we think

Stilling the voices in the cave
Once we have committed to going within, to discover the wisdom of our inner voice we need to cultivate and become comfortable with the ‘non-voice’ of silence. To do this it can be useful to work on three simple angles (see my previous article on the cave and the market place):
Stilling time – Letting go of past and future
Stilling space – Withdrawing your awareness from your immediate physical environment
Stilling movement – Stilling your body except for your breathing

Letting the silence of your cave show you wisdom
If you can get comfortable with the silence, then you are standing at the threshold of ‘the voice in the cave/cell of your heart that will teach you wisdom’. Sometimes it speaks as a voice, sometimes as the silence itself, sometimes as ideas and intuitions.
It can be useful for some people to actually imagine a cave or cell that they have been to, to give a bit of atmosphere to their inner cave (after a while you won’t need it, but it’s a great entry point). When I was a teenager, my family lived in Portugal at the foot of a big hill that ended at a beautiful beach on the Atlantic coast. On the top of the hill there was an ancient sacred site called the Santuário da Peninha where there were cells that, centuries ago the monks meditated and worshipped. In the cliffs by the beach at the bottom of the hill there was a lovely cave you could access from the sea. Sometimes I see myself sitting in one of those places at the beginning of the meditation. Perhaps you have an equivalent place that you know and can use at the beginning of your meditations?

Related readingInner sensitivity – Listening to yourself
Inner listening – Three levels of meditating on silence

© Toby Ouvry 2022, 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

 


Starts Tues /Weds 23/24th November – The Wisdom of Awakening Series: Meditations for bringing integration, depth & vividness to your life

Overview: The Wisdom of Awakening series looks at different ways to ‘wake up’ and live your life fully and playfully through meditation. The premise of the sessions is that inner wholeness and wisdom are not something that are far away, rather they are something that we can awaken to ‘instantly’ through certain types of mindful attention…read full details


Saturday December 10th, 9.30-12noon –  Zen deep-dive mini-retreat

Session overview: These 2.5hour Zen ‘mini-retreats’ are a chance to go into much deeper meditation states than you would be able to in your own personal daily practice, or even if you came to a one-hour class. Using sitting meditation methods in combination with breathing techniques and gentle stretching/mobility exercises Toby will guide you into deep meditative flow states that create the experience of a calm, unified, harmonized, resilient body, mind & heart.. read full details

 



Life-fullness – The Integral Life-Coaching Program with Toby

 

Are you looking a coach who can help you to:

  • Meet the challenges, stress and changes that you face in a more effective and mindful way
  • Become happier within yourself, in your relationships and at work
  • Be actively accountable for finding a sense of balance/well-being in your life and fulfilling your personal potential?
  • Guide you to find and operate from a deeper sense of meaning, motivation and connectivity in your life?
Read full details

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 23/24th November – The Wisdom of Awakening Series: Meditations for bringing integration, depth & vividness to your life

Saturday December 10th, 9.30-12noon –  Zen deep-dive mini-retreat

Saturday December 17th, 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 Inner vision Integral Meditation Integrating Ego, Soul and Spirit Life-fullness meditation and creativity Meditation techniques Mindful Resilience Mindfulness Presence and being present Primal Spirituality Zen Meditation

The cave & the market place (Being in but not of the world)

The cave & marketplace are two images to play with to get the feeling of how to really be in the inner world and really in the outer world, and to be able to do both properly. This way we can be in the world but not of the world, participating but not entangled

Dear Integral Meditators,

This weeks article explores the movement into the ‘cave of our heart’ and then out again into the world. There are some distinctions in how to do this that are really important both for our peace of mind and for our high functioning in the world.
If you enjoy the article then  do consider joining us live or online for the first of  The Wisdom of Awakening Series: Meditations for bringing integration, depth & vividness to your life , on Tuesday or Wednesday.
A final reminder for next Saturday’s Monthly Qi Gong & Taoist Breathwork Clinic & Mini-retreat.

In the spirit of the cave & the marketplace,

Toby


The cave & the market place (Being in but not of the world)

During the day many people are caught in the middle ground between being either:

  • Fully deep within themselves and at peace
  • Fully in the world and committing to being present there

By the ‘middle ground between’ I basically mean being stuck in our heads, too anxious to be committing full bloodedly to the world of experience, but at the same time not fully detaching and relaxing into the silence within…we are neither in the world or out of the world, but rather stuck in the echo chamber of our own mind, talking to ourselves!

One of the things we are trying to do in integral meditation practice is to master the movement fully into the cave of our heart, and also the movement to fully out and into the world. We are trying to commit fully to a wholehearted interior experience of silence, and a full exterior experience of the world. We are not lost in between, in the fuzzy clouds of our mental miasma and abstract nervous thoughts.
This quote from Anthony De Mello captures it quite well:

DEPTH
Said the Master to the businessman; “As the fish perishes on dry land, so you perish
when you get entangled in the world. The fish must return to the water — you must
return to solitude.”
The businessman was aghast. “Must I give up my business and go into a monastery?”
“No. no. Hold on to your business and go into your heart.”

Two images for meditation:

1. The cave of your heart
Centre yourself within your physical heart-space. Imagine in there is a mountain, perhaps one you know. In the side of the mountain there is a cave, just right for sitting and meditating. See yourself sitting in this cave, going deep into your heart and sitting in silence. You can cultivate stillness and silence by:
Stilling time – Letting go of past and future
Stilling space – Withdrawing your awareness from your immediate physical environment
Stilling movement – Stilling your body except for your breathing
Commit to going deep inside and contacting the peace that lies there.

2. The marketplace of your life
Imagine in a valley beneath your cave is a town and a marketplace. See yourself emerging from your cave and waling down the mountain. Enjoy entering fully into the sights, sounds smells and activity of the marketplace; commit to being fully present in the world. When you are in the market place, really be there, be with the people, be with the ups and downs, be curious, courageous and caring. Imagine the market place transforms into your daily life circumstances now. Be fully there with whatever you are having to deal with. Don’t hide away in the abstraction of your mind, let it be vivid and real, don’t miss your life as it happens!
You can use these two images in meditation to play with the feeling of how to really be in the inner world and really in the outer world, and to be able to do both properly. This way we can be in the world but not of the world, participating but not entangled.

Just to finish, here is a quote from Dion Fortune that speaks to this in a different but complementary way. It will be of use once you get to the intermediate and advanced levels:
No one is capable of the deepest meditation who cannot meditate in a railway station whilst waiting for his train. This involves two things, the power to go so deeply into meditation so as to be completely withdrawn from the physical environment, and the power to keep count of time and return at will.” *

© Toby Ouvry 2022, 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

 


Starts Tues /Weds 23/24th November – The Wisdom of Awakening Series: Meditations for bringing integration, depth & vividness to your life

Overview: The Wisdom of Awakening series looks at different ways to ‘wake up’ and live your life fully and playfully through meditation. The premise of the sessions is that inner wholeness and wisdom are not something that are far away, rather they are something that we can awaken to ‘instantly’ through certain types of mindful attention…read full details


Saturday November 26th, 9.30-11.30am – Monthly Qi Gong & Taoist Breathwork Clinic & Mini-retreat
In a sentence: Experience unique Qi gong and Taoist breathing techniques to improve your immune system, energy level, psychological wellness and enhance your meditation…read full details

 

 



Life-fullness – The Integral Life-Coaching Program with Toby

 

Are you looking a coach who can help you to:

  • Meet the challenges, stress and changes that you face in a more effective and mindful way
  • Become happier within yourself, in your relationships and at work
  • Be actively accountable for finding a sense of balance/well-being in your life and fulfilling your personal potential?
  • Guide you to find and operate from a deeper sense of meaning, motivation and connectivity in your life?

Read full details


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)

Saturday November 12th, 9.30-12noon –  Zen deep-dive mini-retreat

Starts Tues /Weds 23/24th November – The Wisdom of Awakening Series: Meditations for bringing integration, depth & vividness to your life

Saturday November 26th, 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
creative imagery Energy Meditation Enlightened love and loving Inner vision Life-fullness Meditating on the Self Meditation and Psychology mind body connection Mindful Confidence Mindful Resilience Mindful Self-Leadership Motivation and scope

Cultivating your positive imperfectionist

Even when inactive our positive imperfectionist is a benevolent and supportive feeling/atmosphere in our psyche, encouraging us to get stuck in to the activities that we feel motivated around and not to live in fear of trying”

Dear Integral Meditators,

This weeks article explores some ways to begin freeing yourself from the ‘negative perfectionist, with the help of a new friend, the ‘Positive Imperfectionist’. Quite a lot of my coaching work with people relates to this area. With your PI in place it becomes surprisingly possible to do difficult and very worthwhile things. I hope you enjoy it! If you do, then then this weeks Tuesday & Wednesday class will be focused on this subject. You are welcome to join us, live or online!

Next week sees the beginning of the final class series of the year: Tues /Weds 23/24th November – The Wisdom of Awakening Series: Meditations for bringing integration, depth & vividness to your life , do check it out!

In the spirit of positive-imperfectionism,

Toby


Cultivating your positive imperfectionist

The prevalence of negative perfectionism
If you have been around any kind of inner-development circles; meditation groups, psychotherapy, coaching etc, one of the phenomena that you may have come across will be the ‘negative perfectionist’. This is a part of many people’s psyche that is obsessed with doing things ‘correctly’ or flawlessly. This part of us is also very inclined to judge us quickly and harshly for any perceived failures flaws of mistakes that we make in our life. There are different forms of uncomfortable and sometimes excruciating psychological pain that it subjects us to as it points out the stupidity of our actions, the inappropriate things that we said, the things we could and should have done better. Even when inactive, it lives within our awareness as an ever-present threat, causing us to live in fear and discouraging us from doing things that be ‘risky’, might go wrong or otherwise expose our imperfection and how generally inadequate we are (!)

Some of the narratives of the negative perfectionist:

  • If you can’t do it right first time you may as well give up
  • You are your actions, if you mess one or more up, you are an idiot
  • People around you are judging you just as harshly as I (the negative perfectionist) am judging you, look how stupid you are making us look!
  • You are guilty until proven innocent, I’m expecting you to mess this up somehow
  • Why do you always find something for me to dislike about you
  • Don’t expose yourself to risk, better to hide than to fail
  • No matter what you achieve, it will never be enough for me
  • You are neither likable nor competent
  • You are isolated and alone

Do any of these sound familiar?

Your positive imperfectionist
For most people then it is well worth cultivating your positive imperfectionist. This is the inner voice within you that is ok with messy and imperfect. It encourages incremental improvement. It urges us to keep going even if we are not very good at something to begin with. It is forgiving and light, and quick to point out progress or improvement we make. It sees the value in failure, and sees mistakes as learning opportunities. Even when inactive it is a benevolent and supportive feeling/atmosphere in our psyche, encouraging us to get stuck in to the activities that we feel motivated around

Working on the narratives of the positive imperfectionist

  • If at first you don’t succeed, try again, having learned from the last attempt
  • You are not your actions, your fundamental value is secure
  • You have friends and encouragers around you, listen to them, feel supported
  • You are innocent until proven guilty! You are accountable for your actions, but don’t think failing sometimes makes you weak!
  • I believe in you
  • Keep trying, no risk no reward
  • You are already enough, try and see how much more you become
  • You are likeable
  • You are not alone

Any one of this last set of sentences can be an object of meditation. Internalizing them one by one will help you recognize and consolidate the voice of your positive imperfectionist. What are you waiting for?

Related articlesMindful Optimism

© Toby Ouvry 2022, 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

 


Starts Tues /Weds 23/24th November – The Wisdom of Awakening Series: Meditations for bringing integration, depth & vividness to your life

Dates and titles:
Tues 23/Weds24th November, Class 1
 – Everyday depth: being in the world but not of the world
Tues 6/Weds 7th November, Class 2 – Going within: The cave of the heart
Tues 13/Weds 14th June, Class 3  The experiential self: Meditation, vividness, charisma, ego
Read full details


Saturday November 26th, 9.30-11.30am – Monthly Qi Gong & Taoist Breathwork Clinic & Mini-retreat
In a sentence: Experience unique Qi gong and Taoist breathing techniques to improve your immune system, energy level, psychological wellness and enhance your meditation…read full details



Life-fullness – The Integral Life-Coaching Program with Toby

 

Are you looking a coach who can help you to:

  • Meet the challenges, stress and changes that you face in a more effective and mindful way
  • Become happier within yourself, in your relationships and at work
  • Be actively accountable for finding a sense of balance/well-being in your life and fulfilling your personal potential?
  • Guide you to find and operate from a deeper sense of meaning, motivation and connectivity in your life?
Read full details

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 – An Adventure in Consciousness – The What, Why & How of integral & engaged meditation practice

Saturday November 12th, 9.30-12noon –  Zen deep-dive mini-retreat

Starts Tues /Weds 23/24th November – The Wisdom of Awakening Series: Meditations for bringing integration, depth & vividness to your life

Saturday November 26th, 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 Integral Awareness Life-fullness Meditation and Psychology Meditation techniques Mindful Resilience Mindfulness Presence and being present Zen Meditation

Cloud-watching: Primarily present, secondarily thinking

“One of the main functions of mindfulness and meditation is to make your way of engaging with life primarily experiential, and secondarily conceptual”

Dear Toby,

Why should we be interested in meditating? This weeks article gives some thought to this with the aim of helping us re-connect to our ‘experiencer’. If you enjoy it then this weeks Tuesday & Wednesday class will be focused on this subject. You are welcome to join us, live or online!

Also, final shout out for this Saturdays Zen deep-dive mini-retreat!

In the spirit of experiential cloud-watching,

Toby


Cloud-watching: Primarily present, secondarily thinking

One of the main functions of mindfulness and meditation is to make your way of engaging with life primarily experiential, and secondarily conceptual. What do I mean by this?
Starting out in childhood we were all primarily present moment oriented. We could spend hours being present as we played or interacted with others. Mostly we were present to what was there, and occasionally we began to think and conceive ideas.
As we were educated, the system that we were educated in was and is primarily verbal-linguistic in nature; It’s about developing the power of our thoughts and concepts. By the time we come out of our education, secondary or tertiary, we tend to see our world primarily through a conceptual lens. Its what we think about life, what we believe about it that starts to dominate and often determine our experience. We become primarily thinking and conceptual, and secondarily experiential beings. The problem with this is that we then lose touch with our direct experience, we spend most of our time literally ‘lost in thought’ and less and less time actually living and experiencing life. As a result, our life lacks vitality and vivid-ness, because we experience it conceptually, second hand, rather than experientially, first hand.

Two types of purpose in life
One way of finding purpose in life is to reflect upon your values and then set up goals that will help you to achieve things in the future that are congruent with those values and that will therefore make you happy.
A second approach to purpose is to understand that, regardless of your goals, the main meaning in life from an experiential point of view is to feel and experience being alive. If you lack this, then you lack the main experience that gives fulfilment, even if we have meaningful goals and projects.
These two purposes are really complementary, it is ‘both and’ rather than ‘either or’. However, without the second, the first will be empty. To practice mindfulness of the moment serves to ensure that we remain in touch with the experience of being alive, being fed by life-in-the-moment as we journey toward our goals.
The proposition would be this: Even if some of your life goals are not fulfilled, if you live fully and experientially in the moment then you will feel that your life has been a full, vivid and fulfilling place, that you have not wasted your time thinking of being somewhere else whilst it passed you by!

Cloud-watching: Experiencing your thoughts rather than being lost in them
One way to start coming back to the moment is to learn to watch your thoughts whilst grounded in the present, rather than being lost in them. To do this:

  • Sit and ground yourself in your body as you breathe. Feel as if it is like a mountain, solid, stable and immovable in the present moment. Anchor your attention to it, and your experience of the here and now
  •  Now start to watch your thoughts from the stability of the present moment. If your mind is like the sky, the thoughts are like clouds coming and going. If there are many cloud-thoughts, stay stable and just watch. If there are fewer with some spaces in between, then enjoy the combination of thoughts and spaces between the thoughts (like the sky between the clouds)
  • Notice the clouds to make you more present, not take you away from it!

When you watch your thoughts and the spaces between your thoughts, they simply remind you of what is in the present. You turn them from something that takes you away from your immediate experience to something that helps you connect to it. You become primarily an experiencer of the present, and secondarily a thinker!

Related articlesEnvisioning & presence – Climbing the mindful mountain
Body-mountain, thought-cloud, mind-sky

© Toby Ouvry 2022, 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

 


Saturday November 12th, 9.30-12noon –  Zen deep-dive mini-retreat

Session overview: These 2.5hour Zen ‘mini-retreats’ are a chance to go into much deeper meditation states than you would be able to in your own personal daily practice, or even if you came to a one-hour class. Using sitting meditation methods in combination with breathing techniques and gentle stretching/mobility exercises Toby will guide you into deep meditative flow states that create the experience of a calm, unified, harmonized, resilient body, mind & heart.. read full details



Life-fullness – The Integral Life-Coaching Program with Toby

 

Are you looking a coach who can help you to:

  • Meet the challenges, stress and changes that you face in a more effective and mindful way
  • Become happier within yourself, in your relationships and at work
  • Be actively accountable for finding a sense of balance/well-being in your life and fulfilling your personal potential?
  • Guide you to find and operate from a deeper sense of meaning, motivation and connectivity in your life?
Read full details

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 – An Adventure in Consciousness – The What, Why & How of integral & engaged meditation practice

Saturday November 12th, 9.30-12noon –  Zen deep-dive mini-retreat

Saturday November 26th, 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
Energy Meditation Life-fullness Meditation techniques mind body connection Qi gong

Working mindfully with your stomach energy

Dear Integral Meditators,

Meditating with your internal organs is a tradition of mindfulness that comes primarily from Qi gong, however there is good reason for everyone to be interested in it as the benefits are so extensive both physically, psychologically and spiritually.
The article below explores some of the focus points and benefits of the practice, and how to start. Enjoy!
Beneath the article are all the events for November, starting with this week’s Samhain Meditation (Live & Online) – Acknowledging the gifts and wounds of our ancestors, on Tuesday & Wednesday.

In the spirit of strength-in-your-centre,

Toby


Working mindfully with your stomach energy

Acknowledging & appreciating your stomach
Our body is working hard for us all the time, different organs doing different jobs. All of them depend upon the energy that our stomach and digestion make available to us by processing our food. Reflecting on this naturally brings us into a state of appreciation for our stomach, and the importance of it as a lynch pin that enables almost everything we do in our life. Like our other organs however, we often only notice our stomach when it stops working or becomes ill. If we start to acknowledge our stomach, extending some warmth and cherishing to it we discover that we can look after and build the strength of the stomach through mindfulness, thus avoiding it becoming imbalanced in the first place. Health is something that we can co- create with our organs, as they respond to our care and attention.

The importance of the location and psychological energy of your stomach
The anatomical location of our stomach is right in the literal centre of our torso. The way in which our stomach feels affects our overall sense of strength, out posture, our confidence. Quite often we store our stress and anxiety in our stomach, hence the expression “I have butterflies in my stomach” when nervous for example. If our stored stress and anxiety is sitting right in the centre of our being, this can be a substantial dis-advantage. Regularly checking in with the stomach can help us to take care of and release the anxiety, and replace it with balanced, confident energy. This in turn can affect all sorts of things:

  • Our physical posture
  • Our emotional range
  • Our comfort in our own skin
  • The way we think and relate to the world

Clearing out your stomach energetically
As well as extending appreciation to the stomach as described above, we can also work with it energetically. Here is an example:
Focusing on your stomach, imagine it surrounded by a bright yellow ball of light. As you breathe in imagine this ball becoming bright and powerful. As you breathe out, feel its energy cleansing your stomach, helping it to relax and release anxiety and other stored inbalanced energy. After you have done this for a while, then do the same breathing pattern, but imagining building the energy of confidence, self-trust and resilience in your stomach. This makes the centre of your torso feel strong and robust, so that your body and posture has a centre-point that it can rely on. Try this for a week for five minutes per day and notice for yourself the difference that starts to manifest within you.

Other area that benefit from working on your stomach
Work on your stomach also affects your pancreas, gall bladder and digestion as well, so any focus on the stomach also works implicitly on these particular organs.

Concluding thoughts
Mindfulness of the body is a foundational practice for many traditions of meditation. Working with particular organs specifically can make the practice both more varied and increase the range of benefits. Working with the stomach is one example of starting to access the potential of this type of work.

Related articlesMeditating with your internal organs
Lighting up your pathways – Helping your brain to help you

© Toby Ouvry 2022, 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

 


Tues 1st & Weds 2nd November, 7.30pm – Samhain Meditation (Live & Online) – Acknowledging the gifts and wounds of our ancestors

Samhain (Aka All hallows eve, or Halloween) is the time in the northern hemisphere when we enter the darker months of the year & winter. Traditionally it is said to be the time when the veil between the world of the living and the inner world of our ancestors is said to be thinnest. Consequently, it is an ideal time for us to commune with our ancestors in meditation. In this meditation, we shall focus upon… Read full details



Life-fullness – The Integral Life-Coaching Program with Toby

 

Are you looking a coach who can help you to:

  • Meet the challenges, stress and changes that you face in a more effective and mindful way
  • Become happier within yourself, in your relationships and at work
  • Be actively accountable for finding a sense of balance/well-being in your life and fulfilling your personal potential?
  • Guide you to find and operate from a deeper sense of meaning, motivation and connectivity in your life?
Read full details

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 – An Adventure in Consciousness – The What, Why & How of integral & engaged meditation practice

Tues 1st & Weds 2nd November, 7.30pm – Samhain Meditation (Live & Online) – Acknowledging the gifts and wounds of our ancestors

Saturday November 12th, 9.30-12noon –  Zen deep-dive mini-retreat

Tues & Weds 25th/26th October, 7.30pm – Deepavali Meditation – Connecting to your inner light

Saturday November 26th, 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