Category: Mindfulness

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Enlightened love and loving Integral Awareness Life-fullness Meditating on the Self Meditation and Psychology Meditation techniques Mindful Confidence Mindfulness Motivation and scope

Mindful of: Your Relationship to Giving and Receiving

Dear Integral Meditators,

The article below offers some simple methods for exploring and developing a healthy relationship to giving and receiving through mindfulness.

In the spirit of giving and receiving,

Toby

 

Mindful of: Your Relationship to Giving and Receiving

What is your relationship to the process of giving and receiving? Every day we exchange words, energy and activity with others and our environment  in both healthy and not so healthy ways. How can we use mindfulness to explore how this process is playing out in our life?

Basic awareness practice around giving and receiving
Here is a simple practices you can do to attune yourself to the basic experience of giving and receiving.

  • As you breathe in, feel yourself moving into a state of receptivity and receiving. As you breather out focus on a state of giving. In a literal sense we are taking in and giving out air from and to the atmosphere, but breathing like this also helps us to become aware of the psychological state of giving and receiving that we are alternating between during the day. Do a few rounds of 3-5 breaths like this, with short breaks in between just to explore the experience
  • As a second stage to this exercise, as you breathe in really try and feel yourself receiving energy from the world, and as you breathe out feel yourself giving back to  it. Set up a benevolent cycle of giving and receiving with each breath.

Becoming more mindful of your experience of giving and receiving, and its power
Think of a time when you have received the energy of kindness, care or confidence from someone else. What did it feel like to receive such energy? Was it a powerful experience? Correspondingly think of a time when you gave the energy of confidence, care and kindness to others. What did it feel like to give this? How did the other person/people respond to it? Did you find it easy or difficult?
Now think of a time when you were on the receiving end of difficult energy such as aggression, hatred of confusion from someone. What did it feel like to receive this energy, how did it affect you?
Correspondingly think of a time when you gave the energy of anger or aggression, or anxiety to another person. How did they respond? What did it feel like to give such energy? If you were more aware of what it is like to receive such energy, would you give it out so much?

Giving and receiving in real time with others
As you are going about your daily life, try and be aware of the dynamic of giving and receiving between yourself and the others that you meet.  Become aware of when to open and receive energy from others in a healthy way, and when to close to it. Similarly be aware of how and when you are giving; when it is healthy and appropriate and when it is not really serving either yourself or others. The idea is to try and use your natural intelligence and awareness to set up positive cycles of giving and receiving in your life, so that you are receiving healthy energy from others and also giving healthy and sustaining energy to them in a mutually reinforcing feedback loop.

A couple of fundamental mindful questions to ask yourself during the day:
What is it that I am giving or receiving from myself and/or others right now? Now that I am conscious of it, are there any adjustments I need to make?

© Toby Ouvry 2015, 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

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Concentration creative imagery Inner vision Integral Meditation meditation and creativity Meditation techniques Mindful Breathing Mindfulness

Establishing Your Basic Mindful Flow State

Dear Integral Meditators,

Meditation and mindfulness are about developing flow-states. The article below shows you how you can build your basic flow state from the ground up into a stable, diverse and enjoyable mindfulness practice.

In the spirit of flow,

Toby

 

The Warrior and the Lover – Establishing Your Basic Mindful Flow State

Effective meditation and mindfulness depends upon developing your capacity to connect to and sustain flow states. Flow states consist of two basic factors; focus and relaxation, or concentration and relaxation. Whatever you are trying to meditate upon or be mindful of, you are trying to do so with a quality of attention that flows in a state of consistent focused relaxation for the duration of your mindful activity.

How to create a basic flow state
Sit down and repeat this basic pattern a few times; firstly for 3-5 breaths try and focus as single pointedly as possible on your breathing without distraction. Then spend a short while simply relaxing your body, mind and heart as deeply as you can.
Once you have followed this cycle a few times, continue the same basic pattern but now :

  • As you are focusing intensely on the breathing, try and make the quality of you focus relaxed as well as intense
  • When  you are in the relaxation phase, try and make the quality of your relaxation focused and present as well as leisurely

In this way you start to bring together the qualities of focus and relaxation into a single experience or flow state.
Once you are comfortable with this second stage, you can simply practice focusing on the breathing in a state of relaxed concentration, practising this basic flow state. It should feel comfortable and relaxing whilst at the same time sharpening your mind and senses.

Doing this three stage exercise for a few minutes each day will give you the basic skills, as well as being a fundamentally pleasant, stress releasing experience.

Applying your flow state to other areas of your life
Once you have a feeling for your basic mindful flow state, you can then start applying it to different areas of your life; when you are engaged in your work, listening to/talking with a friend, thinking about something that is important to you, playing a sport, making love, engaging a challenging emotion and so on…If you practice like this then you can start to make more and more of your life an experience of playful mindful exploration.

The Warrior and the Lover – Bringing your flow state alive
To give a bit of colour to your flow state, you might like to imagine the focus aspect of your flow state is like your inner warrior; disciplined, intense, strong, and always ready. Therelaxation aspect of your flow state is like your inner lover; bringing the qualities of sensuality, curiosity, and engagement to the experience. Together these two make your basic flow state an experience of engaged detachment, or playful seriousness.

© Toby Ouvry 2015, 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

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Four Levels or Dimensions of Conscious Self Love

Dear Integral Meditators,

Our relationship to ourself is the basis of our relationship to the rest of the world, this weeks article looks at how we can consistently improve that relationship by working with four levels of self-love.

In the spirit of celebrating self,

Toby

Four Levels or Dimensions of Conscious Self Love

Self love and the challenges associated with it remains one of the most consistent themes that I hear coming up in my 1:1 coaching practice, so I thought it might be interesting to outline four basic levels of  mindful self love practice that you can start working with on a practical level. Generally each of us has each of these four levels within us, and we oscillate between them (and the ‘pre-level) during the day.

Pre-level 1 –Unconscious self hatred or dislike:All of us have parts of ourself that we dislike, hate or fear. Many people remain unaware of their self-dislike because either they have buried it within their mind to the point where they really are unconscious of it, or they know about it peripherally, but they choose not to look at it because it makes them feel uncomfortable . At this level our self-dislike influences a lot of our behavior, thoughts and feelings, but we are not really aware of it.

Level 1 – Conscious self hatred or dislike: At this first level then we commit to becoming mindfully aware of all the ways  in which we negatively judge, reject and dislike ourself. We commit to caring about ourself, to acknowledge the wounds in our relationship to ourself, and bring them into the light of our conscious awareness. This then starts to offer us a choice as to how we are going to act upon or respond to these wounds.

Level 2- Self acceptance: So from level one we then go to level two, where we consciously work upon accepting ourself in general, and in particular working with accepting the parts of ourself that we habitually reject, dislike or alienate. Self acceptance implies a tolerance of ourself, not yet a liking, but nevertheless an ability to look ourself in the mirror and accept what we see open heartedly without looking away.

Level 3 – Liking & embracing self: Self acceptance then builds the basis for level three, where we move toward enhancing the healthy self love and like that we have from ourself to ourself, and actively embracing and loving the parts of ourself that we previously rejected.

Level 4 – Celebrating self: Liking and embracing self provides the basis for level four, where our loving and liking of ourself invites us to start expressing that self in creative ways that celebrate, grow and enhance our experience of who we are and what we do in the world. On this level we are enjoying playfully engaging ourself in the world. This fourth level is not the same as negative egotism. Negative egotism sees itself as more important than anyone else in the world; to celebrate self means to embrace and enjoy expressing who we are, which does not mean we are degrading or diminishing others. Indeed it might be said that it is only when we are celebrating ourself that we can truly say we are nurturing and cherishing others, and encouraging them to celebrate themselves.

Closing points
So there you go, four levels to be aware of and practice, levels 1&2 provide the ‘bottom of the self love pyramid’ so to speak, which then enables us to enjoy the higher levels and peaks of levels 3&4 consistently and safely. If you can apply these four stages to yourself, you will also find that you can start mindfully applying them to your relationship to other people…

Four Mindful Self-Love Questions
Which parts of myself to I hate, fear or reject?
If I were to practice 10% more self acceptance today, what might change?
How difficult or easy do I find it to connect to myself with warmth and affection? Can I find that connection now?
What way can I celebrate and enjoy who I am today?

© Toby Ouvry 2015, 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

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Meditating on the Self Mindful Resilience Mindful Self-Leadership Mindfulness

Mindfulness – Facilitating Your Own Experiential Learning

Dear Integral Meditators,

This week I have led a couple of mindfulness workshops and discussions where I have defined mindfulness as an activity that facilitates and enhances your own experiential learning. In the artile below I explain a bit about how this works.

In the spirit of the journey,

Toby

Mindfulness – Facilitating Your Own Experiential Learning

Mindfulness means placing your awareness and attention on a particular aspect of your life in order to get to know it better. By paying greater attention to what you are actually experiencing in that area, you start to observe the process of cause and effect that is going on, and learn from it.

An example: engaged mindfulness with regard to resilience
So, let’s say I want to develop my experiential learning around the subject of resilience. Here is a short engaged mindfulness process I (and you) can work with to do so:

Step 1: Write a short paragraph in response to the following three questions in turn. Write reasonably quickly and without editing your response too much:

  1. Resilience to me means –
  2. I feel most resilient when –
  3. Times when I notice I lose my sense of resilience include –

Having written your response to each question then sit quietly and, based around your answers to questions 1&2, build a feeling of resilience in your mind, body and heart based around the definition that you have created and the past experiences of it that you have had. Breathe the energy of this resilience into your body, so that you can feel it as a tangible energy as you are sitting.
Before you conclude, you may then like to consider your answer to question 3; recalling a time where you tend to lose your sense of resilience. Recall this situation strongly enough that you can feel the stress of it threatening to break down the feeling of resilience that you have been building in the exercise up to this point. Practice consciously retaining your sense of resilience even when it is under pressure in this way.
Finally, before you finish the exercise think about the next 24 hours and select a particular situation you know you will be experiencing where you are going to deliberately practice the mindful resilience that you have been building in the exercise.

So there you go, a simple engaged mindfulness practice that you can use to facilitate and accelerate your experiential learning around the theme or resilience. Actually you can use the exercise above to mindfully develop any quality you like, simply replace the word ‘resilience’ with the word you want to explore and off you go!

© Toby Ouvry 2015, 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 Every Wednesday, 7.30-8.30pm – Wednesday Meditation Classes at Basic Essence with Toby

Saturday November 21st, 2.30-5.30pm – Connecting to Your mindful Inspiration (Full details out shortly)

Saturday November 21st, 2.30-5.30pm – Living Life From Your Inner Center – Meditations for Going With the Flow of the Present Moment

Integral Meditation Asia

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Working With Your Body’s Cellular Memory Through Meditation

Dear Integral Meditators,

What is the relationship between your body’s cellular structure and how you expereince your life? And how can meditation help influence this relationship in a positive and practical way? The article below explores this topic…

In the spirit of the living body,

Toby

Working With Your Body’s Cellular Memory Through Meditation

Let’s say I meet someone at a party, that person looks somewhat  like someone who hurt me and made me angry in the past. Based on meeting this person that looks like a past acquaintance, my body’s cellular memory is stimulated and I feel myself experiencing not just a mental aversion and hurt, but a tangible energy of hurt that I feel in my body.
Let’s say alternatively I meet an old friend whom I share many good and fond memories of. My body’s cellular memory remembers this old friend, and I feel impelled to embrace them warmly to express my appreciation.
Our body remembers things on a cellular level, and this cellular memory is a powerful force in our life.

Working with positive cellular memories
Take any quality that you wish to develop in your life. Let’s say courage. To activate your body’s cellular memory of courage you can contemplate times in the past when you have felt and acted upon the quality of courage. Focusing on memories of times in the past when you have experienced courage will activate your cellular memory, and your body will re-create the experience of what it feels like to be courageous in the present moment, now.
Once you have re-created that feeling of courage you can then simply sit with it, breathe with it and ‘soak’ yourself in it through meditation, making that quality stronger and stronger within yourself so that over time it starts to become more and more a part of your instinctive way of going and being in the world.

Working with negative or difficult cellular memories
Think of an emotion that you experience periodically that you want to let go of, let’s say resentment or inferiority. Contemplate times in the past when you have felt inferior or resentful, allow your bodies cellular memory to be stimulated so that you have a tangible experience of that resentment present in your body. Now relax and breathe with that feeling; by acknowledging and accepting it you can then learn to actually release and let go of those instinctive feelings in your body, and open up your cellular structure to the influence of new positive emotional programmings.

Closing comments
When working with positive cellular memories, the purpose of meditating on them is to strengthen and consolidate them. When working with difficult cellular memories, the purpose is to release the energetic charge of those memories through awareness, acknowledgement and acceptance. The essential technique is actually quite similar for both, the difference being in our intention and what we do once we have stimulated the cellular memory in meditation.

Which cellular memories would you like to work with this week in your own meditation and mindfulness practice?

Related article: Combining Your Meditation and Mindfulness Practice Together

© Toby Ouvry 2015, 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 events at Integral Meditation Asia in October

Saturday 17th October, 2.30-5.30pm – Meditation & Mindfulness for Creating a Mind of Ease, Relaxed Concentration and Positive Intention 3 Hour workshop

Saturday October  31st, 9.30am-12.30pm – Engaged Mindfulness: Take Control of Your Life Direction and Wellbeing Through Awareness, Curiosity, Courage and Care – A Three Hour Workshop

Integral Meditation Asia

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A Mind of Ease Integral Meditation Meditation and Psychology Meditation techniques Mindfulness

Combining Your Meditation and Mindfulness Practice Together (Meditating on relaxation)

Dear Integral Meditators,
What is the difference between meditation and mindfulness? Are they the same or different? This weeks article looks at working definitions of both and how they can be combined into an effective daily practice, enjoy!

In the spirit of the mindful journey,

Toby

Combining Your Meditation and Mindfulness Practice Together

To be mindful of something means to bring a certain focused,  non-judgmental awareness and attention to something in order to understand it and get to know it better.
To meditate means to focus your attention very specifically upon a particular state of mind in order to really ground it experientially for you and to integrate it into the foundational, habitual structure of your consciousness. Combining meditation and mindfulness together into a single practice optimizes the effects of both. Let’s take a simple example of how to do this using the basic but profound quality of relaxation.

Mindfully investigating relaxation.
What does relaxation meant to me? When in my life have I felt truly relaxed on all levels? By asking yourself questions like these you can begin a process of mindful enquiry where you bring to mind different experiences of relaxation that you have had in the past. As I’m sitting here writing, I am thinking of a beach in Langkawi that I have been to where I had a particularly relaxing time. As I remember and picture the beach and my experiences there I notice my body, mind and heart starting to respond to those memories; the cellular structure of my body relaxes and rests at ease.

Meditating on relaxation
Now that my process of mindful enquiry has helped me find a mental, physical and emotional state of relaxation, I can now meditate on it. To meditate on relaxation, I simply practice focusing upon and holding that state of relaxation with meditative concentration; breathing it in and breathing it out. By meditating on relaxation in this way I really allow my body mind and heart to ‘soak’ in the feeling of relaxation, so that I really become very familiar with the feeling. By meditating on relaxation I can integrate it much more deeply into my daily, habitual consciousness, and thus I can start to use it more and more effectively; when I find myself under pressure at work, when I feel emotional stress in my relationships and so on…

If you understand how to combine meditation and mindfulness in this way, then you can basically accelerate the development of any inner quality or experience that you want. For example if I want to develop my creative energy I can first mindfully investigate what creativity means to me, and recall times in the past when I have felt in ‘the creative flow’. Having investigated mindfully in this way I can then use meditation to ‘soak’ my body-mind in that state of creative flow so that it becomes a stronger and stronger part of my basic habitual psychological makeup.

Perhaps this week you might like to start working with combining your own meditation and mindfulness practice together taking the example of relaxation above. Alternatively pick any quality that you want to develop right now and use that!

© Toby Ouvry 2015, 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 events at Integral Meditation Asia in October

Every Wednesday, 7.30-8.30pm – Wednesday Meditation Classes at Basic Essence with Toby

Saturday 3rd October, 2.30-5.30pm – Going From Over-whelmed to Over-well: Meditation for Quietening the Mind – a three hour workshop

Sunday 11th October, 8.00-10.30am – An Introduction to Walking Meditation Workshop

Wednesday  14th October 2015, 7.30-9pm – Evening Event: Integral Mindfulness –Co-creating Your Professional Success and Personal Wellbeing

Saturday 17th October, 2.30-5.30pm – Meditation & Mindfulness for Creating a Mind of Ease, Relaxed Concentration and Positive Intention 3 Hour workshop

Saturday October  31st, 9.30am-12.30pm – Engaged Mindfulness: Take Control of Your Life Direction and Wellbeing Through Awareness, Curiosity, Courage and Care – A Three Hour Workshop

Integral Meditation Asia

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Enlightened Flow I-Awake Meditation Technology Integral Meditation Meditating on the Self Meditation and Psychology Mindful Resilience Mindful Self-Leadership Mindfulness Motivation and scope

The Pendulum Swing of Happiness and Sadness

Dear Integral Meditators,

How much happiness does your aversion for or resistance to sadness cost you? This is the topic the article below explores.

Beneath the article you will see some information on i-Awake technologies latest track Profound Releasing. You can read my own thoughts on this type of meditation technology HERE.

In the spirit of the pendulum swing,

Toby

The Pendulum Swing of Happiness and Sadness

Two days ago a couple of my daughters most cherished dolls were chewed up by the dog. She phoned me in a haze of tears and sadness about this, seemingly wallowing in the upset. Two hours later when I saw her, her mood had changed, she was still a little sad, but already talking jokingly about it, and explaining to me how she was going to fix the dolls, and lightheartedly telling me it was my fault for leaving the door of her bedroom open (which it may well have been!) Over the course of a couple of hours her mod had swung from open hearted sadness to acceptance, humour and smiles.

In the recent Pixar movie Inside-Out there is a moment when the character Joy realizes that many of the happy memories that the child she is in charge of possesses are dependent upon a preceding sad experience that sets up the happy experience. Up to this point in the movie she has been trying to remove sadness from the life of the child, but once she realizes its value, she knows when to get out of the way and let sadness play its part in the life of the child; indeed it is eventually sadness that saves the day!

My basic observation here is that our happiness and sadness are like a pendulum swing; if you allow yourself to experience your sadness, to ‘swing toward it’, then naturally once it has been experienced you will start to swing back again towards happiness. If however you block your sadness and prevent yourself experiencing it, then in some ways you lose the ability to feel genuinely happy. You just find yourself stuck in a state where you don’t feel happy or sad, just neutral, ‘comfortably numb’ as the saying goes.

Learning to swing with the pendulum
So the basic practice here is simply to mindfully learn to swing with our moods from happiness to sadness and back again, without blocking or interfering with the swing too much. Learn to swing naturally into a sad mood and gain confidence from the experience that after a while it starts to swing naturally back towards happiness after it has reached the extremity of its movement.

A practice
First of all get used to asking yourself; ‘How am I feeling right now?’ and really cultivating awareness and connection to your feelings and moods.
Secondly, use the image of the pendulum, when you feel yourself feeling a little sad, relax into the swing of it, don’t try and block it too much; allow yourself to experience it without getting swamped.
If you do this then after a while you will find yourself swinging back towards happiness. Relax into that too, enjoy it while it lasts, but don’t try and cling onto it beyond its time. Learn to participate in the swinging to and fro  between moods of happiness and sadness, to enjoy it with mindful awareness.

PS: One thing that I’ve become aware of with myself and with other people is that as soon as we start to feel emotionally uncomfortable or sad we distract and block ourself from that feeling by taking out our phone and fiddling with it. Becoming aware of this tendency and choosing to just sit with the discomfort or sadness instead of taking out the phone can be a simple mindfulness practice that we can set ourselves that will help us to manage our happy-sad pendulum swing a little better.

© Toby Ouvry 2015, 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

New I-Awake Track: Profound Releasing

Profound Releasing is a deeply transformative, guided meditation, encoded brainwave
entrainment technology designed to help you experience:
●    Letting go of old, limiting emotional patterns
●    Developing more inner strength and groundedness
●    A deepening compassion for yourself and others
●    And a gradual awakening into pure awareness

Our friends at iAwake Technologies are offering up to 20% Off Discount when you
purchase Profound Releasing during its introductory 7-day offer (September 17-24,
2015)
To learn more and listen to the free demo track click here: http://goo.gl/4km9pF

Integral Meditation Asia

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creative imagery Inner vision Integral Awareness Meditating on the Self Meditation and Psychology Mindful Resilience Mindful Self-Leadership Mindfulness Motivation and scope Shadow meditation

The Quickest Way Through the Rain

Dear Integral Meditators,

When you have a ‘dark cloud’ in your life, do you habitually walk toward it or run away from it? Its an important question, the article below explores why, with the help of a few large furry friends!

In the spirit of walking towards,

Toby

The Quickest Way Through the Rain

The amateur naturalists amongst you may have heard the story of buffalo herds who, when they see a thunder cloud coming toward them walk directly into it rather than away from it. Of course this is a very intelligent thing to do because by walking in and through the rain cloud they actually minimise the amount of time they have to spend getting wet, as the rain cloud passes by much quicker.

Whenever we have a ‘rain cloud’ in our life the instinct can be to run away in the opposite direction from it, hoping that it will go away if we run fast enough. Of course then what happens is that we find ourself being pursued by the rain cloud for a long time, and then when it catches us we have to spend a long time getting wet.

Whatever inner rain clouds you have in your life, the quickest and most effective way to deal with them is almost always by going towards and through them, rather than turning away and running.

Sometimes getting wet is not what you expect
One of the nice things about getting in the habit of walking into your rainclouds is that you discover as often as not that ‘getting wet’ is not as unpleasant as you thought. The experience of accepting a difficult emotion, having a challenging conversation, making a difficult choice, or facing a fear is that, as often as not more pleasant than we thought. If you walk into the rain, sometimes (not always) you may find yourself dancing in it!

If you aren’t ready to turn towards the cloud, then know that
There are some rain clouds in your life that you may not be ready to walk into for whatever reason. If this is the case, then you need to know that you aren’t ready and make a conscious choice to hold it at arm’s length until you are ready. If you do this consciously, rather than running blindly and impulsively away, then you can avoid a lot of the negative effects of repression and impulsive fear.

A mature meditation and mindfulness practice
One of the marks of a mature meditation and mindfulness practitioner is this; they know the value of walking into the raincloud and do it regularly.

An image
Imagine you are sitting in a grassland under a big sky. Next to you is a herd of buffalo. You see a dark raincloud on the horizon. You see the buffalo naturally start walking toward the cloud, as if it were the easiest thing to do in the world, why not follow them in? After all, the quickest way out of the rain is through it.

Related articles: The inner weather of the mind
Breaking like a wave

© Toby Ouvry 2015, 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

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What is Mindfulness? (Hint – you are doing it already!)

Dear Integral Meditators,

If someone asked you ‘what is mindfulness’, how would you reply? The article below offers one working definition of mindfulness and how we can start practically applying it to our daily life.

In the spirit of the art of mindfulness,

Toby

What is Mindfulness? (Hint – you are doing it already!)

A definition of mindfulness
I had a conversation the other day with a lady who felt she did not know what mindfulness is. I responded to her that she was already doing it. She asked my why? I told her “When I was a monk the first definition of mindfulness that I learned was that it is an ‘all accompanying mental factor, who’s function is to remember its object’.”
That sounds like a bit a mouthful right? Actually it is quite simple; when we are doing something, mindfulness is that part of our mind that remembers and recalls what we are doing without forgetting it. For example:

  • If I am cooking an omelette, without mindfulness to help me remember what I am doing, after I have cracked and whisked the eggs I will forget my task, and wonder off to do something else, leaving no omelette!
  • If I am in the middle of a conversation, mindfulness helps me hold and remember what we are talking about. Without mindfulness I would forget mid conversation, which would be both embarrassing and impractical.

So from this we can see that we all have some basic mindfulness, indeed without it we would not be able to function at all.

The Art of Mindfulness
Someone who is a mindfulness practitioner then is someone who is interested in increasing both their quality of life and their personal effectiveness by developing and refining their mindfulness in different areas for example:

  • By being mindful of the good things that happen to me in my life I can enjoy and appreciate them more
  • By being mindful of difficult emotions I can learn to manage them better
  • By communicating mindfully I can help people understand what I want of them more clearly
  • By being mindful of my sport I can learn better how to improve

Mindfulness and meditation
Meditation is ‘a mind that focuses on a positive object – an object that when we focus upon it causes us to become happy, balanced, peaceful or otherwise positively oriented’.
In meditation we use mindfulness to focus; if we keep forgetting what we are doing then our meditation won’t be very effective because we will keep dropping or losing our object!
Mindfulness enables us to place our attention on our meditation and hold it there without forgetting.

The function of mindfulness – Practical learning from life
What is it you want to learn about in your life right now? Once you have selected a subject, formulate a ‘mindful question’ that summarizes your intention. For example:

  • How can I bring more meaning to my work life?
  • What really makes me happy?
  • What would it mean to bring my authentic self into social situations and conversations?

You can see here the list of possible subjects is endless, you just select a topic that is important and meaningful to you.
You then practice holding that question in your daily life, thinking about it, and acting in ways that express the answers that you come up with. If you like you can even sit down for a period of time and practice holding that question in your mind, breathing with it and using it as an object of meditation.
If you do this for a week, you will find that your mindfulness practice using this topic enables you to learn a tremendous amount about yourself and the area you are investigating. And there you have a mindfulness practice all of your own.

Integral Meditation Asia

Online Courses * 1:1 Coaching * Live Workshops * Corporate Mindfulness Training *
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The Tension Between What Is and what you Want

Dear Integral Meditators,

How do you deal with the gap between what you want in your life and the reality of what you actually find? The article below considers how to work with this ongoing tension in a positive way…

In the spirit of the journey,

Toby

 

The Tension Between What Is and what you Want

‘I wanted the meet with my date to go this way, but it didn’t’
‘I thought I’d get this work project done quickly and easily, but I’m still stuck working the details out.’
‘I want to know that I’ll have enough money to afford the things I need by the end of the month, but I have no way of knowing for sure’

In our life there is almost always a tension between the way we want our life to be, and the way it actually IS. How you experience this tension on any given day or in any given moment is a big part of whether you feel happy or sad, negatively or positively stressed, calm or frazzled.

The extreme of passivity
It’s all very well for me as a meditation and mindfulness coach to say to you ‘you have to accept what is, and be more in the moment’, but sometimes accepting what is can make us too passive; sometimes we need to try and assert ourselves in the situation and act to move things toward where we want to be. Being overly accepting can lead to the extreme of passivity.

The extreme of control
On the other hand we are all familiar with the ‘control freak’ in us; the one who wants it all to be worked out, certain, guaranteed, no risk. The problem is we are never 100% in control, life never turn out exactly the way we think it will or should. Sometimes is all seems to be fine and then disaster strikes, sometimes it seems like a disaster and then turns out unexpectedly well. Trying to make everything certain, and bend the world to our will is the extreme of control.

The middle way of acceptance and responsibility
So the middle way between passivity and control is to:

  • Accept fully what is, and where we find ourself AND
  • Take responsibility for trying to move things in the direction that we want, recognizing that this will never give us 100% control, but nevertheless we have to call ourselves to action based upon what we understand.

It is about holding the tension, not solving it or getting rid of it
I think about the tension between what is and what I want not as being something that I am trying to solve, or get rid of, but rather I am trying to learn how to hold well, to hold  mindfully and intelligently; I am not in total control of my life (or the world), but I am responsible for it. I have to accept the reality of where I am without fighting the facts, but I need to avoid over-passivity, fatalism or despondency.

Working mindfully with this tension in our daily life
Where is the tension between what is and what you want in your body, mind and heart right now? Are you holding it well? How can you hold it better?

© Toby Ouvry 2015, 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