Category: Integral Awareness

Categories
creative imagery Inner vision Integral Awareness Integral Meditation meditation and creativity Meditation techniques mind body connection Mindful Resilience Mindfulness Presence and being present Primal Spirituality

The calm of solidity – Four mindful techniques

Dear Integral Meditators,

The ‘calmness of solidity’ means the calmness that can be discovered through the solidity and physicality of your body. In the article below I outline four ways that you can cultivate it both formally and informally to increase the level of your own dynamic calm, which is to say your own ability to remain calm and centered under real-time pressure from your life!

In the spirit of the calmness of solidity,

Toby

​The calm of solidity – Four mindful techniques

The ‘calmness of solidity’ means the calmness that can be discovered through the solidity and physicality of your body. It also means the calmness that can be derived from the elements of your physical surroundings and nature. It is one of the four types of dynamic calm that I outline in my previous article Four types of deep calm, four types of dynamic power. In this article I’m simply going to explain four methods that you can use in combination with each other or individually to develop your own dynamic calm, or your ability to remain calm and centered under real-time pressure from your life!

Practices 1&2: Investigating the absence & the presence of calm.
Investigate with curiosity what your body and your breathing feel like when you are not calm. Notice what it feels like to feel ‘not calm’ or unsettled. If you can then practice simply accepting the absence of calm without making ‘a problem out of the problem’ then paradoxically, this gives you access to a certain type of basic calm!
Secondly, remember what it is like to have the presence of calm within your body. Recall times in the past when you have felt the presence of calm in your body, for example when on holiday in a beautiful location, or in the presence of someone you trust. Practice activating the memory of calm, then breathing and living your life from that feeling. Get familiar with it such that, when you are under pressure in daily life, you can deliberately activate your body’s memory of calm. If you do this you can still feel the presence of calm even when your environment may be unsettling.

Practice 3: Using your physical body and senses to calm your mind and emotions.
With this method, you use your sensory attention as your object of focus, giving your mind a simple calm anchor to relax into in the present moment. For example:

  • The weight of your body on the chair,
  • The quality of the light through the window
  • The sound and feeling of the wind, and the call of the birds, as well as the distant traffic sounds
  • The physical movement of your breathing
  • The colours of the objects around you in the room

You can do this in formal meditation, but also out of meditation during the day as you go about your activities. Stabilize your calm by getting out of your mind and into your senses!

Practice 4: Practicing mountain like calm
This final type of calm uses an imaginative key to use in meditation; Experience your body as being like a mountain, your thoughts and associated feelings as being like clouds and your mind or consciousness itself as being like the sky. A mountain is so solid and centred that it really doesn’t mind if the weather around it is stormy, rainy, windy or chaotic. Imagine your own physical body to be like this; calm, solid and massive. This way, even when your emotions and thoughts go crazy sometimes, there is no need even to stop the craziness. Just focus on being the calmness of the mountain, which is proportionally way stronger and more massive!
So, there you go, four techniques to play around with this week if you choose. You can work with them systematically, or just pick the one that works best for you.

​© Toby Ouvry 2018, 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 AsiaOngoing on Wednesday’s, 7.30-8.30pm – Wednesday Meditation Classes at Basic Essence with Toby

Ongoing on Tuesday evenings, 7.30-8.30pm – Tuesday Meditation Classes at One Heart with Toby (East coast)

Saturday 7th July, 9.30am-12.30pm – Integral meditation & mindful walking deep dive half day retreat

Sunday 8th July, 9.30am,-1pm – Qi Gong for Improving your Health and Energy Levels and for Self-Healing

Integral Meditation Asia

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

Categories
Inner vision Integral Awareness meditation and creativity Meditation techniques Mindful Self-Leadership Mindfulness One Minute Mindfulness Presence and being present

Making mindful use of your to-do list

Dear Integral Meditators,

How can you transform your busy-making ‘to-do’ list into an object of mindfulness? The article below explores one possible way!
Heads up for the Get Your Meditation Practice Started Now – The Shortest and Most Time Effective Meditation Workshop Ever next Saturday 16th June, 10-11.30am.
And last few days for the mindful stress-transformation coaching offer, see below 😉

In the spirit of mindful to-doing!

Toby

Stress Transformation Coaching special offer:
Up until Friday 15th June there is a special offer on Toby’s Stress transformation coaching service. Three x 1hour packages are on a 15% special offer (a saving of $95). Contact info@tobyouvry.com for full details.
Stress transformation coaching with Toby is exactly that; it teaches you how you can transform your stress, anxiety and other difficult emotions into forces for the good in your life. The coaching focuses upon:

  • Getting to know and understand the negative or conflicting energy and emotion in your life more deeply and intimately, seeing its potential value
  • Developing the capacity to recycle,  transform and redirect this difficult energy into a positive force that works for you rather than against you
  • Find yourself thriving in situations and circumstances that would previously make you unhappy, fearful, inhibited and so on…Read on…

 

 

Making mindful use of your to-do list

Most of us have a ‘to do list’ most days. Quite often when you hear about practicing mindfulness, we are told to try and put down the to do list in our mind, in order to notice the present moment more.
There is one way that I have of using my own to do-list as a way of increasing my mindful appreciation, and it goes something like this. Every day I have my list of to-dos’. Often, they are written in my diary, alongside my appointments. At various points during the day I will open my diary and, with a little red pen cross off the actions and appointments that I have done so far. I will then pause for a few moments, and give myself a little appreciation for the things that I have done. I will also use what I have done to ensure that I am seeing that today has been a constructive day, where things have been achieved, and I take the time to note and feel good about that. I then proceed with the next few things in the list.
Of course, the list rarely ends, but my approach to my to do list ensures that I am using it to feel good about myself and my day, rather than taking what I have done for granted, and feeling oppressed (and maybe depressed) about the things that I have not yet done!

Structuring unstructured time with your list. 
Sometimes if there is a gap in my routine and I sense a certain amount of anxiety around ‘what I am going to do with this time?’, then I’ll simply write a list of things to do, work, leisure or otherwise that will last me that morning, afternoon, or however long the open space is. I’ll then just get on with the tasks, and cross them off as I go. Then at the end of the time I’ll just look at the crossed-off list of what I’ve done for a short while, just to register and appreciate what I’ve done, and enjoy the fact that my time was well spent.
If you choose to use this way of working with your to-do list, then rather than getting in the way of your mindfulness practice, it becomes an active part of it. Your to-do list becomes a way of honing your attention, developing appreciation, becoming more effective in life, and deriving active pleasure from your achievements, great and small!

© Toby Ouvry 2018, 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 AsiaOngoing on Wednesday’s, 7.30-8.30pm – Wednesday Meditation Classes at Basic Essence with Toby

Ongoing on Tuesday evenings, 7.30-8.30pm – Tuesday Meditation Classes at One Heart with Toby (East coast)

Saturday 16th June, 10-11.30am – Get Your Meditation Practice Started Now – The Shortest and Most Time Effective Meditation Workshop Ever

Saturday 23rd June, 10am-4.30pm – An Introduction to Meditation from the Perspective of Shamanism

Integral Meditation Asia

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

Categories
Integral Awareness Integral Meditation Life-fullness meditation and creativity Meditation and Psychology Meditation techniques Mindfulness Presence and being present

Mental framing – Sculpting your view of life

Dear Integral Meditators,

We are never in 100% charge of what we experience in life, but we can determine the way in which we experience what happens. This week’s article explores how to mindfully take advantage of this truth!

In the spirit of sculpting & framing,

Toby

Mental framing – Sculpting your view of life

We are never in 100% charge of what we experience in life, but we can always influence the way in which we experience what happens. How we influence the way in which we experience something is via the manner in which we pay attention to it, and in particular the way in which we mentally frame it. The essential question with mental framing is “What is the optimal way for me to view what I am experiencing, so that I derive maximum value and minimum unnecessary pain from it?”
This question and the answers we get from it are like mental sculpting. The raw materials are our life experiences, and our ways of mental framing are like the tools used to craft and mould the raw materials into the shape that I desire.
Last weekend I was giving the example to a class of my own workshop creation process. I’ve created over 50 meditation and mindfulness workshops in the last decade. Of these only around 50% have gone on to be successful in the sense of attracting a lot of people numbers. So, if I focus purely on the ‘success rate’, then I’m not going to be a very happy boy in some ways. However, there are many ways in which I can use my mind to frame what I am experiencing after a ‘failed’ workshop in ways that are helpful to me. For example:

  1. ‘It is realistic to expect many of the events that I put on to not attract large numbers. It’s simply part of my evolving work progress, and in fact a 50% success rate is very good in the circumstances!’ – This view helps me accept the experience, feel happy about it and sets me up to continue working with it in the long term without feeling discouraged.
  2. ‘A small number of people in a workshop creates an intimate space for me to have a more meaningful, small scale relationship to the participants’ – Again, this view helps me feel enthusiasm for the experience and helps me to keep my appetite for the work in the long term.
  3. ‘I learned a lot from creating the workshop, so it is feeding my own process of self-discovery and growth’ – This is absolutely and objectively true, I do learn a lot, and so the time was not wasted, indeed it was very well spent!
  4. ‘If it didn’t work in this context, maybe I can try it in another context’ – I’ve seen from my own experience how courses that I have created in one arena later became a part of my mainstream ‘successful’ courses later down the line. No creative process is ever entirely wasted! Indeed, some of my most successful material only finds the right audience two or three years down the line.
  5. ‘This is helping my ongoing learning process about value creation’ – Every time I try something out, or put it out to an audience, I learn more about value creation, in business, in relationships and in life. This learning in turn helps me to make the best of what I meet in each day, and to become more successful in life. What could be better than that?

So, there you go; five ways of mentally framing my situation in ways that help me to view and experience it in a positive AND REALISTIC way. Realistic is in caps because for mental framing to be effective it has to be reality focused. You can’t just fantasize any old BS that just isn’t true!
Mindfulness is all about releasing our potential for learning and growth in the moment. Mental framing is a technique that really we can be using all the time during our day to ‘sculpt’ our reality in a way that is useful and desirable. But to get going you might like to take one or two specific situations in life and practice framing them. Happy sculpting!

Related articles: 
How to mindfully develop your self-confidence
Four positions for wrestling with your dark angels
Mastering your mind through mindfulness

© Toby Ouvry 2018, 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

Ongoing on Tuesday evenings, 7.30-8.30pm – Tuesday Meditation Classes at One Heart with Toby (East coast)

Tuesday 29, Wednesday 30th May – Wesak Meditation

Saturday 2nd June, 9.30-11.30am – The Power of Presence – Mindfulness for managing conflict in your relationships and accessing your inner power

Saturday, 9th June, 9.30am-1pm – Meditations for Transforming Negativity and Stress into Energy, Positivity and Enlightenment

Integral Meditation Asia

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

Categories
Integral Awareness Meditation and Psychology Mindful Self-Leadership Presence and being present

Mastering your mind through mindfulness – Seven skills

Dear Integral Meditators,

What does it mean to be a ‘Master of your mind’? In the article below I outline seven mindful skills that I have found to be particularly useful with regard to my mind, thoughts and thinking. They have continued to be effective for me and deliver value over long periods of time.

In the spirit of finding joy in your mind,

Toby

 

 

 

Mastering your mind through mindfulness – Seven skills

What does it mean to be a ‘Master of your mind’? In this article my idea is to outline seven mindful skills that I have found to be particularly useful with regard to my mind, thoughts and thinking. They are designed to help you

  1. Find enjoyment and pleasure in the use of your mind, rather than feeling overwhelmed by it
  2. Develop confidence in the effectiveness of your own mind and thinking process, so that you can use it to navigate your life challenges more successfully

Here they are:
Not losing your senses – Whether your mind is busy or calm, happy or sad, its useful to have your body and your senses as a stable reference point for your mind. Learn to orientate your mental awareness around the stable anchor of your physical experience of this moment, right now.

Committing to be aware of what’s going on in your mind –  You can’t master what you don’t know. Get used to watching the comings and goings of your mind like a curious scientist. Learn to watch without editing what arises. What does a thought look like? How do thoughts and emotions relate to each other? Get to know experientially by observing regularly.

Being aware of the value of attention and the way you are framing what you experience – You can’t control everything you experience, but you can control the way you frame what you experience! If you are on a bad holiday where everything is going wrong, thinking ‘This is going to give me the material for some really funny stories when I get back!’ will give you a very different experience than if you just wallow in the thought ‘This is a crap holiday’! Pay close attention to the way in which you are paying attention.

Centralizing what’s good in the field of your awareness – There are always good things in your life. Make sure you know what they are, and make them front and center, not peripheral in your awareness.

Taking care of wounded, upset, dysfunctional and disowned thoughts – Often the parts of ourself and our mind that need the most attention are the ones that we reject, disown, repress or try and pretend aren’t there. Reverse this attitude. Learn to look after the thoughts in your mind that need your care and attention to heal and return to health!

Balancing mental activity with mental non-activity – Spend time getting familiar with what it feels like not to think. Get comfortable with empty spaces in your mind. Relax into them and enjoy the regenerative calm that comes from developing this skill, and resting in non-activity.

Bringing mental clarity through asking questions – Often our mind is an unexamined miasma of half processed thoughts, memories and feelings. Learn to consciously formulate questions that will help you bring clarity to the mess. Ones like ‘What’s good in my life?’ ‘What do I need to accomplish today?’ ‘What is my intention for doing this piece of work?’ or ‘What can I do to solve this problem’ are simple examples. Questions like this give your mind a target to focus on and ‘hit’. You can’t hit a target that you haven’t set up!

So, seven basic practices, if you like you could focus on one a day over the next three weeks, which would give you times to cycle though each one three times. See how it improves the way you experience and work with your mind, and how much you enjoy it 😉

© Toby Ouvry 2018, 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

Integral Meditation Asia

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

Categories
creative imagery Enlightened love and loving Integral Awareness Integrating Ego, Soul and Spirit Life-fullness Meditating on the Self meditation and creativity Meditation and Psychology Mindful Resilience Mindful Self-Leadership Uncategorized

Giving your heart whole (Creating a ‘high functioning’ heart)

Dear Integral Meditators,

In order to get the most out of life, you have to give yourself whole heartedly to it without holding back. But what happens when you give yourself whole heartedly to a person, a project or a cause, and you get hurt, abused, rejected or taken advantage of? This weeks article offers a few perspectives on how to keep giving your heart to life without worrying too much about getting it broken!

In the spirit of the high performance heart,

Toby

Giving your heart whole (Creating a ‘high functioning’ heart)

In order to get the most out of life, you have to give yourself whole heartedly to it without holding back. But what happens when you give yourself whole heartedly to a person, a project or a cause, and you get hurt, abused, rejected or taken advantage of?
Inevitably in life we get our heart wounded. People we trust turn out to be unreliable. Organizations that seem benevolent turn out to have a dark side. The reality we thought was there and that we gave our heart to turns out to be false. Sometimes it’s even malevolent, seemingly taking pleasure in the pain that we experience as a result of having our heart-felt feelings thrown back in our face. With experiences like this it is understandable that many of us become cautious, build up walls around ourselves, and wary of opening ourselves up. We’ve been hurt by opening our heart before, why take the chance of more pain by opening it again? In this article I want to offer a perspective on how to give your heart to someone or something in a way that makes continuing to give it both sustainable and enjoyable.

In romance and friendship – Giving your heart whole


One of the reasons that we get our hearts broken and wounded in love and friendship is because the heart that we are offering to the relationship is wounded and dysfunctional in the first place. If you come into a romance lonely, anxious and dysfunctional, then you are going to form a co-dependent relationship with the person. Consequently, if anything goes wrong, or they turn away from you, its going to place a wound in the already wounded or broken heart that you offered in the first place. This is going to feel really bad and take you a long time to recover from (if you even do recover properly).
The alternative to this is to do some work on yourself and your heart to make it a ‘high functioning, heart’. This means that you go into a relationship already feeling relatively whole, complete and happy within yourself. The relationship offers a further environment for you to express that already whole, complete and functional heart with another person. When you ‘give your heart’ to them, it is a whole, strong, robust heart, not a ‘heart of glass’. If the relationship then goes wrong in some way, or they behave badly, then you can simply take your heart back! Since you gave it whole, you can take it back whole. You didn’t give your heart to the person so they could ‘fix’ it, you gave it to them in celebration, in the spirit of fun, playfulness and possibility. If they were not able to reciprocate, then too bad for them, you just take your strong, whole, healthy heart back. You may feel a little disappointed or sad, but sadness can exist in a strong heart without breaking it.
In fact, if you have cultivated a high functioning heart, then giving it to someone is a kind of win-win scenario. If they reciprocate in kind, then you have a romance or friendship that can last you for a long time, even for life. But if it goes wrong, then you’ve had a good learning experience, no big harm done!
If you have a high-performance mountain bike, then you may like to take it out into the countryside and give it a thorough work-out, taking it through bumpy, muddy, wet and difficult terrain. Because it’s a good bike, its going to perform well, and you’re going to end up thinking ‘that was a great ride, I enjoyed that!’ Similarly, if you’ve invested and done the work in creating a ‘high performance heart’ then you are going to want to ‘put it through its paces’ and find things to test it against. You can ‘take it for a ride’, hit a few bumps and be pleased at how well it responds to genuine challenges.
In order to have a fulfilled life, giving your heart is really essential. But when you give it, give it whole, not broken. That way if you have to take it back, it’ll come back whole too!

© Toby Ouvry 2018, 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

Ongoing on Tuesday evenings, 7.30-8.30pm – Tuesday Meditation Classes at One Heart with Toby (East coast)

Saturday 28th April, 9.30am-1pm – Finding Freedom From What Holds You Back in Life: Practical meditations & techniques for working with your shadow-self

Sunday 20th May, 10am-5pm – How to do Soul Portraits Workshop

Saturday 26th May 10am-4.30pm – Mastering your Mind Through Mindfulness Meditation Day Retreat with Toby

Integral Meditation Asia

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

Categories
Concentration Insight Meditation Integral Awareness Integral Meditation Life-fullness meditation and creativity Meditation and Psychology Meditation techniques Mindful Self-Leadership Mindfulness Presence and being present

Combining your beginners mind with your experienced mind

Dear Integral Meditators,

The ‘beginners mind’ is a fundamental concept in mindfulness and meditation, particularly in Zen practice. The article below explores how you can go about combining your beginners mind with what I call ‘your experienced mind’, in order to create something that is better than both!

In the spirit of new beginnings and wise experience,

Toby

PS: Live in Singapore this week: The Tuesday & Wednesday evening meditation classes this week is focused on how you can play Positive Mindfulness Games, all are most welcome! … and final call for Mindful Resilience – Sustaining effectiveness, happiness and clarity under pressure through meditation and mindfulness on this Saturday the 17th!

Combining your beginners mind with your experienced mind

Your beginners mind (BM) is your ability to come to a task or experience with curiosity, as if for the first time.  It may be an experience that you have had many times before, or you may literally be doing it for the first time. Either way your beginners mind is a learning mindset. It watches closely, absorbing as much information as it can. Think of a child intensely interested and involved in trying to ride a bike for the first time, and you get the idea. Your BM is happy to try and fail, try and fail, try and fail, until it succeeds.
Your beginners mind helps you to keep on learning as you get older, keep your enthusiasm for life, keep you positively humble. Your BM helps you learn new things faster, and prevents you taking familiar good things in your life for granted. Mentally it keeps you young, flexible and joyful.
The beginners mind should not be confused with simply being naïve, childish, or getting bored easily and so giving up on tasks before they are done or mastered!

Your experienced mind (EM) is the sum total of all your life experience up to this point. It knows a lot of things that are very useful in helping you navigate all the situations and choices that you have to go through each day. You might think of it as the wise old man or woman within you that compares what is happening in the moment to the past in order to see if there are any patterns, experiences or learning’s that you already have that can help you with what you are facing right now.
Your EM helps you to leverage on what you know already in order to prevent you making mistakes. It saves you time, helps avoid pain, and enjoy greater success with regard to  what you are experiencing in the moment. It recognizes that in many situations we are not complete beginners, and that that is a very good thing!
Your experienced mind should not be confused with that part of you that becomes cynical, jaded, or that thinks it ‘knows it all’. It is intelligent, helpful and alert.

Integrating your beginners and your experienced mindsets
From an integral mindfulness point of view, we try to combine the best of our beginner’s mind and experienced mind together, so they are helping each other, and us to meet our life challenges more successfully. One simple way to start doing this is to ask two questions regarding any challenge you have, and want to extract practical learning from:

  1. If I view this situation as if for the first time, what do I see and observe?
  2. What is my past experience and learning telling me about this situation?

Sit with each question for a short while, and see what perspectives and insights come from both. You can then combine them into a wise approach to your experience that combines your ability to learn in the moment (beginners mind) with your ability to use past experience effectively (experienced mind).

A simple example
Forty minutes ago I sat down to write this article. I felt a bit nervous and unsure about the content, but my experienced mind (EM) told me that if I just started mapping it out and writing, I would find the idea translated into an article.  I then set aside my EM and brought my BM to the task, seeing the content ‘as if for the first time, paying attention to the present, being curious and enthusiastic. Now here I am, at the end of my article, my work complete. It’s a simple example. How could you combine your beginners and experienced mind today in order to be successful in your chosen endeavor?

Related article: Appreciating the past to liberate the present

© Toby Ouvry 2018, 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

Ongoing on Tuesday evenings, 7.30-8.30pm – Tuesday Meditation Classes at One Heart with Toby (East coast)

Starts Tuesday & Wednesday March 6-7 th – Inner Peace, Inner Power – An Introduction to Integral & Engaged Meditation Practice

Saturday March 17th – Mindful Resilience – Sustaining effectiveness, happiness and clarity under pressure through meditation and mindfulness – A half day workshop

March 20&21st – Spring Equinox Balancing & renewing Meditation

Integral Meditation Asia

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

Categories
creative imagery Essential Spirituality Inner vision Insight Meditation Integral Awareness Integral Meditation Integrating Ego, Soul and Spirit Life-fullness Meditating on the Self Meditation techniques mind body connection Mindful Breathing Mindful Resilience Mindful Self-Leadership Presence and being present Primal Spirituality

What is spiritual practice? And why bother engaging in it?

Dear Integral Meditators,

Back in 2010 I did a course on ‘Essential Spirituality’. Below are some edited notes on what spirituality is, and what having your own spiritual practice offers you in terms of  value. It also has a practical meditation at the end that you can start working with!

Live in Singapore this week: The Tuesday & Wednesday evening meditation classes sees the beginning of the new course: Inner Peace, Inner Power – An Introduction to Integral & Engaged Meditation Practice all welcome!

In the spirit of spiritual practice,

Toby

What is spiritual practice? And why bother engaging in it?

Many conversations regarding spirituality lack any meaningful substance simply because we have not thought about or defined what it is meant by spirituality and its purpose. Understanding of what the purpose of the spiritual practice is gives us an insight into the benefits to be gained from doing it, empowering us to start doing it consistently in our day to day life!

What do we mean by spiritual practice? 
Spiritual practice means awakening each day to that which is most important and fundamental to our lives. It creates the time each day to reflect upon this and let it inform how we choose to act in our life.
This reflection encourages us to effect meaningful change in our lives, so that we no longer feel like a victim of circumstance. Instead we experience our self as an active participant in our experiences and our destiny.

What is its purpose of spiritual practice? 
Basic spiritual reflection reveals that life consists of the potential for joy, rapture, beauty and ecstasy, within the context of many seemingly unavoidable experiences of pain, suffering and injustice.
Spiritual practice prepares us to meet the challenges, uncertainties and sufferings of life as effectively  as possible, whilst at the same time maximizing our potential for the experience of joy, happiness, ecstasy and rapture.

How does spiritual practice affect practical change in our life?
Spiritual practice aims to affect positive, practical change in our life by improving the integrity and strength of your being. It encourages our body, mind and spirit to work together in harmony to meet life’s challenges and to grow.
Often in daily life our mind, body and spirit are either not communicating, or actively fighting against each other. An example of this might be a busy person whose body gets sick due to work fatigue. Instead of treating her body with compassion, she may get angry with it for malfunctioning, and resist giving it the rest it needs. As a result, the body takes longer to recover, and may even become more sick.
Integrated spiritual practice aims to flag up all the conflicts between the different aspects of our being, so as to resolve them. We can then face the challenges of our life as a whole, integrated and strong individual, who does not break apart under pressure.

Listening to three voices: A basic practice for bringing us back to that which is fundamental to our life.
This is a very simple, practical three stage self-awareness meditation. If you spend two minutes each day on each stage, that will give you a basic six minute spiritual practice!

Stage 1: Listening to the voice of your body: Sitting quietly, tune into your body’s intuitive/instinctive consciousness. Let your body guide you to a pace and rhythm of breathing that will best promote relaxation, healing and regeneration at this moment in time.
Stage 2: Listening to the voices in the mind: Now turn your attention to the thoughts in your mind. Observe the inner chatter in your mind, avoiding getting involved in the discussion. Practice inwardly smiling and extending warmth to the thoughts in your mind, whether they seem to be positive or negative, happy or sad.

Stage 3: Listening to the voice of silence: Now turn your attention from the discursive thoughts in the mind to the space and silence that lies between your thoughts. The space that surrounds them and interpenetrates them. Think of this inner silence in the mind as being like sky, with the discursive voices being like clouds. Relax into the sky-like silence and clarity of your inner being.

© Toby Ouvry 2018, 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

Ongoing on Tuesday evenings, 7.30-8.30pm – Tuesday Meditation Classes at One Heart with Toby (East coast)

Starts Tuesday & Wednesday March 6-7 th – Inner Peace, Inner Power – An Introduction to Integral & Engaged Meditation Practice

Saturday March 17th – Mindful Resilience – Sustaining effectiveness, happiness and clarity under pressure through meditation and mindfulness – A half day workshop

March 20&21st – Spring Equinox Balancing & renewing Meditation

Integral Meditation Asia

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

Categories
A Mind of Ease Inner vision Integral Awareness Life-fullness Meditation and Psychology Mindful Self-Leadership Mindfulness One Minute Mindfulness Stress Transformation

Plan More, Worry Less!

Dear Integral Meditators,

Is it possible to make worry work for you, rather than against you, and if so how? The article below explores this theme, and offers some practical ideas regarding how you can start!

In the spirit of planning, not worrying,

Toby

 

Managing your survival instincts; Plan more, worry less

Planning is what you do when you have a challenge and you deliberately contemplate it in order to come up with an effective plan of action. Planning helps resolve the issues that the problem is causing. Effective planning is a necessary part of a successful life, problem management and dealing with stress.
Worrying (as defined in this article) is what you do when there is something that concerns you, and you are not sure how to resolve it. Worrying can be useful if it leads to effective planning. However, as often as not we worry without doing anything effective about the issue.

  • Worrying that lasts a short time and leads to us sitting down and making an effective battle plan regarding how to deal with a problem is useful
  • Worrying that leads to anxiety, inability to see a problem clearly and fear of acting to resolve the issue is undesirable and serves only to give rise to negative stress
  • Quite often we find ourself worrying about things that WE HAVE ALREADY MADE A BATTLE PLAN TO RESOLVE! This is just plain silly. If you have identified a challenge and made an effective battle plan to resolve it, then one of the whole points of making that battle plan is that you now know what you are going to do to try and resolve the situation. So by definition you should stop worrying about it!

If you are worried about something, then sit down and make a battle plan about how to deal with the situation. Having made your battle plan, then simply follow the plan of action that you have made and stop worrying!
If you have made an effective plan to deal with a problem, then there is no need to worry, as there is already a plan in place!
The key practice here is to be more mindful. When you are thinking of a challenge in your life ask yourself the question “Am I worrying about this, or am I planning a way to deal with it?”

  • If you discover you are worrying, then stop worrying and start planning.
  • If you have already made a plan, then you can stop worrying anyway, because you have a plan.

Know the difference between planning and worrying; Plan more worry less!

© Toby Ouvry 2018, 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

Ongoing on Tuesday evenings, 7.30-8.30pm – Tuesday Meditation Classes at One Heart with Toby (East coast)

Starts Tuesday & Wednesday March 6-7 th – Inner Peace, Inner Power – An Introduction to Integral & Engaged Meditation Practice

Integral Meditation Asia

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

Categories
Integral Awareness Integral Meditation Life-fullness Meditation and Psychology Meditation techniques Mindful Confidence Mindful Self-Leadership Motivation and scope

Content but never Satisfied

Dear Integral Meditators,

Superficially, it seems like contentment and dis-satisfaction are either/or states of mind, you are either in one or other of them. But what if it were possible to combine the positive expression of  both into a single mindset? The article below explores a mindful method for doing just that!

In the spirit of ambitious contentment,

Toby

Content but never satisfied  (Or how to combine being happy with where you are, whilst remaining motivated and keeping your edge).

We often feel content when we experience appreciation for something:

  • If you appreciate a beautiful sunset, you are content to simply sit and be with it.
  • If you appreciate the qualities that your romantic partner brings to your relationship, you will be content to be with them, and enjoy your time together.
  • If you appreciate living in a country with a high basic standard of living, you will be content with the good things you experience, even if you are not the wealthiest person there.
  • If you appreciate how much small acts of kindness affect people for the better, you will be content to continue doing them even though it is not going to solve problems on a global scale.

There is ALWAYS something in your life to appreciate and feel grateful for. So, there is never a time when you cannot, at least in part feel in touch with your own sense of contentment.

Dis-satisfied is what you feel when:

  • You look at the quality of your work and realize that you could have done it better.
  • It is when you think about the way in which you deal with negative emotions and know that you need to do improve your emotional intelligence.
  • It is when you analyze what you say each day and see that you are hardly ever really expressing yourself authentically and genuinely.
  • It is when you look at inequality in society and realize that you have to do something more to create more equality.

POSITIVE dissatisfaction is what you get in touch with at the beginning of each year when you write your list of “things that I want and need to achieve over the next twelve months”. There is NEVER a time when you cannot find something to feel dissatisfied about. The question is have you learned yet to use your dis-satisfaction in a positive and creative way to get stuff done in your life? To become an achiever of the good, the difficult and the unusual?
Superficially contentment and dis-satisfaction seem to be opposites, but if you can learn to work mindfully with the positive side of them both at the same time!

A simple method to start practicing being content but never satisfied in your life:

1) Daily focus on contentment: Toward the end of your day, for example when coming back from work, take a little time to focus on things you can appreciate about the events of the day. This could be something specific that has happened in that particular day, or it could be something more general. For example, as I am sitting at my computer now, I am remembering a program I saw on the TV last night comparing the life of those who live in Batam Island Indonesia with those who live in Singapore. There is a HUGE wealth and standard of living gap which makes me immediately feel grateful and appreciative that I live in Singapore. This helps me immediately connect to the contentment side of things.

2) Daily focus on dis-satisfaction: Each day at the beginning of the day, select your top 2, maximum 3 goals for the day. These are the things that you really want to get done in your day. As you write them down or think of them, allow yourself to get focused and motivated to GET THESE THINGS DONE without getting distracted or forgetful of what your mission for the day is. You are not going to be satisfied until you get these things done.

3) Holding the tension between your dis-satisfaction and contentment: As you go about your day, practice holding onto your motivation and dis-satisfaction without losing your sense of contentment and appreciation. When you focus on contentment, taking a bit of time to “smell the flowers and feel the Earth under your feet”, do so without losing sight of your achievement goals, so that when the time comes you are ready and willing to get back into active, achievement-oriented mode.

© Toby Ouvry 2018, 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

Ongoing on Tuesday evenings, 7.30-8.30pm – Tuesday Meditation Classes at One Heart with Toby (East coast)

Saturday 24th February, 1.30-5.30pm – Meditations for Activating, Healing and Awakening our Ancestral Karma

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 Integral Awareness Life-fullness meditation and creativity Meditation and Psychology Meditation techniques Mindful Self-Leadership Motivation and scope Using the Energy of Negative Emotions

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 types 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 2018, 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

Integral Meditation Asia

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