Category: Life-fullness

Mindful of – the quest for safety & excitement

Post author By Toby
Post date April 20, 2026

“How can you start co-creating a greater sense of both safety & excitement in your life today?”

Dear Integral Meditators,

This week’s article looks at how to transform conflicting desires into complementary desires. Its a topic that comes up quite often in my Life-fullness life coaching, and in my executive coaching, and getting a hang for it can open up lots of positive possibilties.

This week’s Wednesday & Saturday class continue our inner-smile meditation, with the focus being on ‘Meditating on the lungs & on transforming sadness/depression, cultivating courage.’ All welcome!

In the spirit of integration,

Toby

The quest for both safety and excitement

Our contradictory desires

One of the challenges that we face to our sense of even-mindedness in life is that we have desires. Not just desires, but conflicting desires that actively seem to be pulling against each other!

We want safety and excitement in life
We want money but also plenty of free time
We want our body to look good, but don’t want to suffer from exertion

The list could go on, but I want to just double click on the safety and excitement and look at that as a primary example. One of our most feared emotions is, well, fear itself! Many of us feel uncomfortable about fear, and act to avoid it, and its subsidiaries, insecurity and anxiety. We desire safety, physically, psychologically, spiritually, and take out the element of risk, uncertainty, and danger (real or perceived). In an attempt to experience safety:

We choose to trade the hours of our day for work that pays a salary
We settle into a predictable romantic relationship
We stay with known patterns and activities in our life

The issue with this then becomes that our life feels boring, predictable, unexciting. This then blocks another common desire, the desire for excitement in life, for variety, change, growth, adventure! To get excitement in our life we have to create a degree of risk, an encountering of the unknown, a place where the result is not guaranteed.

If we aren’t careful, we find ourself locked between the horns of these two desires. Our desire for safety stifles the excitement we crave. The excitement we crave threatens our sense of safety and stability. Either way we are unhappy, or feel unhappy because it looks like a loose-loose paradigm, we feel condemned by the contradiction.

From contradictory to complementary – Both and, not either or

In my Life-fullness life coaching, and in my executive coaching, quite a lot of what I do is help people spot contradictions or conflicts in their life, and work on balancing them out, turning them into mutually enhancing polarities that can propel them toward a better experience. In the case of safety and excitement, I can create a greater sense of safety by:

Recognizing that I am physically safe almost all the time, and that the illusion of danger on the biological level is often merely an imbalance in my nervous system
I can create psychological safety by choosing to be mindful of my inner narrative, supporting myself, not attacking myself
I can articulate my vision of a greater intelligence in the universe that is benevolent toward me, thus learning to recognize and rest in a sense of spiritual safety

By cultivating in this way, I can feel more secure in life, satisfying my desire for safety. Having done this, I can then use that sense of safety to take more positive risk, and court excitement in my life! With my broader sense of safety, I can:

Be a bit more socially daring/entertaining, without being afraid of judgments
I can assert my wishes and desires for a fulfilling work life, not just staying silent and keeping on keeping on for fear of change
I can take up activities I am not yet good at but want to be, and not be so afraid of looking foolish as I do so

With my healthy sense of safety, I can cultivate MORE excitement in my life, and my desire for both becomes a mutually supporting, virtuous cycle.
How can you start co-creating a greater sense of safety and excitement in your life today?

© Toby Ouvry 2026, 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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Ongoing on Tuesday’s & Wednesday’s (live & online), 7.30-8.30pm – Weekly integral meditation classes

Ongoing on Saturdays, 5.30-6.45pm SG time – Saturday Integral meditation deep-dive sessions with Toby

Ongoing on Wednesdays – The inner smile – Meditations for inner regeneration & connecting to the Earth – An 8-week course

Ongoing on Saturdays – The inner smile & Earth healing deep-dive – An 8 session practice series

Saturday 25th April, 2.30-4.30pm – Mindfulness for emotional intelligence masterclass

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Are you building self-esteem or self-alienation?

Post author By Toby
Post date April 13, 2026

“What are the areas of your life that you tend to get stuck in self-alienation? How can you start using self-acceptance in these situations, strengthening your self-esteem in the process?”

Dear Integral Meditators,

In this week’s article I look at self-alienation as an object of mindful enquiry. In my view self-alienation is a common, pervasive issue for many people. If we can start to see it, we can start to deal with it! It is a topic that comes up with regularity in both my shadow coaching work, and my therpeutic mindfulness coaching.

If the subject interests you, then you might enjoy the Mindfulness for emotional intelligence masterclass on Saturday 25th April, 2.30-4.30pm.

In the spirit of integration,

Toby

Are you building self-esteem or self-alienation?

Self-esteem is

One way of thinking about self esteem is as having two parts:

The part that considers ourself to be worthy of happiness and to have value
The part of us that feels capable and effective in the face of life and life’s challenges

If you have self-esteem as a foundational building block of your psychological experience of life, it will affect almost everything else in a positive way.

Self-alienation is

Self-Alienation happens whenever we turn away from, reject, or repress awareness of an aspect of ourself. We literally cut ourselves off from a part of who we are, and this part becomes a stranger to, or alienated from our conscious self. Nathaniel Branden wrote a book ‘The disowned self’ on the subject of all the different ways in which we alienate ourself from ourself. It mostly does not happen consciously, very few people wake up saying to themselves “Today I am going to practice self-alienation, and dis-own different parts of myself.” Nevertheless, without knowing it many of us do exactly this, without understanding that it is happening, or how we are doing it.

Why & how we create self-alienation when trying to create self-esteem

Let’s say I am deeply disappointed about not getting a job opportunity that I had interviewed for and had a good chance of getting. To protect myself from the difficult feelings and ‘lowness’ of feeling disappointed (and like a ‘loser’) I repress them, banishing them from my consciousness. By doing this I am trying to protect my self-esteem, but what I am really doing is alienating myself from the part of me that feels disappointed. This ‘disappointed self’ is the very part of me needing support and acknowledgement in that moment. Instead, I turn away from him and disown him.
In this example my instinctive efforts to protect my self-esteem actually sabotage it, and make me weaker by cutting myself off from a part of me. Secondarily, and just as importantly, sub-consciously a part of me will know that I have done this, and will know that we have ‘betrayed ourself’ on some fundamental level. This further lowers our REAL self-esteem, but tragically it has been done to protect the very self-esteem that we are damaging.

Self-acceptance as a route to genuine self-esteem

Let us say that, in the face of my disappointment over the job opportunity, instead of repressing and alienating my disappointment I turn towards it, acknowledging and accepting it. I allow myself to feel and experience my emotions, expressing a degree of understanding and care toward the part of me in pain. By bringing into consciousness the wounded part, and choosing to accept and look after it I:

Increase my self-esteem by displaying both courage and competency in the face of a challenge
I keep my personality from being divided against itself, it remains interconnected and in integrity
I actually pass through the disappointment much more quickly, feeling much more resilient and adaptable as a result

Self-acceptance becomes a route to higher self-confidence and self-esteem, preventing the disastrous (and often unconscious) results of self-alienation and dis-association.

What are the areas of your life that you tend to get stuck in self-alienation? How can you start using self-acceptance in these situations, strengthening your self-esteem in the process?

Related reading: Choosing to be on Your Own Side
Motivating Yourself to Meditate Part 2 – Meeting Your Deeper & Higher Needs Through Meditation

© Toby Ouvry 2026, 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

Ongoing on Wednesdays – The inner smile – Meditations for inner regeneration & connecting to the Earth – An 8-week course

Ongoing on Saturdays – The inner smile & Earth healing deep-dive – An 8 session practice series

Saturday 25th April, 2.30-4.30pm – Mindfulness for emotional intelligence masterclass

Tags inner growth, integral meditation, integral meditation asia, integral mindfulness, meditation, meditation in singapore, mindfulness, mindfulness in Singapore, mindfulness meditation, power of mind, self-alienation, self-esteem

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Mindfulness, emotions & your MRVA’s (Mass rapid value assessments)

Post author By Toby
Post date April 6, 2026

“If we can allow ourselves to skilfully acknowledge & experience difficult emotions, there is a corresponding release of a range of positive, enjoyable emotions.”

Dear Integral Meditators,

This week’s article focuses on emotions & how you work with them as a major lynch-pin of your energetic resilience. Its something that we will be exploring in depth in the new Wednesday and Saturday meditation series on building confidence & resilience with the inner-smile practice.

In the spirit of integration,

Toby

Mindfulness, emotions & your MRVA’s (Mass rapid value assessments)

In my upcoming meditation series on building confidence and energetic resilience in life, we will be focusing on developing a range of mindful skills, including:

Healing and regenerating the energy of your physical body and internal organs
Revitalise and transform your emotional vitality
Build a warm, empowered & confident relationship to your life

To really get these skills to work effectively, we need to understand the energy of emotions, their power, and how to get them to flow healthily within us. Emotions are psych-somatic, partaking of both our bodily and mental energy. A good relationship to emotions opens our life-force and joie de vivre tremendously. A blocked or combattative relationship to our emotions tends to constrict our life-force, limiting our energy in life no matter how hard we try. Here is a working definition of emotion from Nathaniel Branden, for the purposes of this article

“An emotion is a value-response. It is an automatic psychological result (involving mental and somatic features) of a super-rapid subconscious appraisal. Emotions are psychosomatic embodiments of value judgments…Since emotions are the product of complex integrations of ideas beliefs and experiences, they cannot be commanded out of existence, neither by and act of will or by repression. It is a disastrous error to imagine that an emotion – merely because it is judged undesirable – can be repressed or dismissed with impunity.” *

Emotions happen very quickly then, as our body-mind engages in many ‘Mass rapid value assessments’ (MRVA’s). Once an emotion has been stimulated, it IS, whether we like it or not. So how should we approach it. To quote Branden again:

“If we acknowledge and permit ourselves to experience our painful or undesired feelings, without self-pity, and without self-condemnation, we facilitate the process of healing integration.” *

If we can allow ourselves to skilfully acknowledge and experience difficult emotions, a corollary benefit will be the release of a whole range of positive, enjoyable emotions.

How to acknowledge and experience emotions

A simple way to begin is to sit down, sense into yourself and simply describe the emotions you are feeling. You can either do this organically with whatever is there in the moment, or with regard to a particular emotion you are struggling with. As you do this you will notice there are both bodily and mental aspects to it. My go-to practice for years now has been something called sentence completion. You create a sentence stem, and then complete it, either writing or verbally around ten times, in whatever way occurs to you, as quickly and non-judgmentally as you can.

Here is an example around depression:
If I allow myself to experience and acknowledge the feeling I am calling depression within me –

I feel like there is a huge weight on my shoulders
My eyes stare from hollow sockets
My mouth hangs open like a zombie
I want to sleep for a thousand years
I feel overwhelmed by all the things I have to do
I resent others for leaving me with all the responsibility
I feel confused about what to do next
The world feels like an insurmountable mountain
I can feel myself more present in my body now, landing and feeling stronger
I feel a release and renewed enthusiasm and I move through it

Here you can see that, by the end of the sentence completion I’m already kind of pulling out of the difficult emotion, and moving toward something better. Better still, I have processed the emotion and an now move on from it into the next part of the day in freedom.
All this can sound a bit too good to be true until you actually try it, but once you get the hang of it all sorts of possibilities start to open up!

* Quote: Nat Branden, from ‘the Disowned Self’, chapter on the undiscovered self (Page 27 & 33)

Related reading: Mindfulness around emotions
Accepting & recycling your difficult emotions
Connecting to higher, deeper emotions (Enjoying emotional resilience)

© Toby Ouvry 2026, 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 Wednesday 8^th April, 7.30-8.30pm, & then ongoing – The inner smile – Meditations for inner regeneration & connecting to the Earth – An 8-week course

Saturday 11^th April, 5.30-6.15pm SG time, & then ongoing – The inner smile & Earth healing deep-dive – An 8 session practice series

Tags emotional mindfulness, inner growth, integral meditation, integral meditation asia, integral mindfulness, meditation, meditation in singapore, mindfulness, mindfulness in Singapore, mindfulness meditation, power of mind

Energy Meditation Inner smile & Earth healing Inner vision Life-fullness meditation and creativity Meditation and Psychology Meditation techniques Mindful Resilience Mindfulness Presence and being present Stress Transformation

Mindful of – colour therapy & facial expression

Post author By Toby
Post date March 23, 2026

“Awareness of colour & facial expression are two ways of using mindful attention to improve your mood and energy with very little effort. You just need to remember them & return to them often”

Dear Integral Meditators,

This week’s article focuses on working with colour & facial expression, both powerful, enjoyable methods for enhancing mood & energy.

If you enjoy it, then do have a look at this Saturdays workshop, that looks at this subject in depth:
Saturday, March 28^th 9:00am – 12:30pm – Inner smile & Earth Healing meditation workshop – Build health, confidence & energetic resilience in life, as well as the class & deep-dive series following on from it.

In the spirit of living-in-colour,

Toby

Mindful of – colour therapy & facial expression

The two ‘mindful positions’ that we explore in this article are:

The energetics of colour, and tuning into the colour you need right now
The expression on your face, and working with what it is communicating

What colour does my body need?

If you have ever drawn or painted with colours, you might have noticed that concentrating on colour can feel great. After an hour of working with a green, blue and yellow landscape picture, you can really feel how these colours make you feel relaxed, calm and energised, even if you aren’t a great artist.
Similarly, if you go outside and just notice the colours in the landscape around you, you will notice that certain colours feel great to just stare at, absorb the energy of and relax.
On a slightly deeper level, if you ask yourself the question what coulor does my body energy need right now to move toward balance? Quite quickly you will notice your body intelligence will suggest a colour to surround yourself with.

If it needs energy it may move toward oranges or reds
If it needs lifting, it might move towards yellows
If it needs balancing and harmonizing, it might move toward greens
For calmness blues, and so on…

You can then just imagine yourself surrounded by that colour and let your body-mind absorb it, with often rapid effect. You might feel also that the colour has a ‘sound’ or vibration, which you can enjoy too.

Variation: You can imagine a point of energy in your belly, heart, and head. Ask each of these areas of your body what colour it needs. Breathe each of these colours into the particular area of the body, building that colour vibration there. You will get to know what colours work for you powerfully very quickly if you do this.

Your facial expression

The expression on your face communicates how you are feeling, but often we are unaware of it. If you are on a commute, and look at people’s faces, you will see this quite clearly!
If you become aware of your face, and notice tension, stress or a bad mood there, here are three stages you can try:

Notice the expression and the mood it embodies. Accept it, even exaggerate the expression a little to really get a feeling for what is there
Next, relax your face, release the expression, move your face toward a calm, neutral position, enjoy it
Third, raise the corners of your mouth a little, so that your face is in the position of a half-smile. Feel the gentle joy and radiance of this expression, let it spread from your face into your body, and any parts of your body-mind that might need a bit of warmth and support.

There you go, two ways of playing with your attention to improve your mood and energy with very little effort. It’s just something that you need to come back to often and put to use!

Related reading: Mindfulness, beauty & slowing the effects of ageing
Your Emotional Colour Palette
Practical dimensions of chakra meditation
Inner smile meditation
What your body posture communicates to you

© Toby Ouvry 2026, 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

Ongoing weekly on Wednesday – Beginners mind, resilient body – a 10-week integral meditation course

Starts Saturday 17^th January, 5.30-6.15pm, & then weekly – Beginners mind, resilient body deep-dive: An 11 -session practice series

Saturday, March 28^th 9:00am – 12:30pm – Inner smile & Earth Healing meditation workshop – Build health, confidence & energetic resilience in life

Wednesday April 1^st, 7.30-8.30pm & Saturday, 4^th April, 5-6pm – Which meditator are you? – Free meditation seminars: The five types of meditators & how to build your path to inner freedom

Starts Wednesday 8^th April, 7.30-8.30pm, & then ongoing – The inner smile – Meditations for inner regeneration & connecting to the Earth – An 8-week course

Saturday 11^th April, 5.30-6.15pm SG time, & then ongoing – The inner smile & Earth healing deep-dive – An 8 session practice series

Tags inner smile

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Healing hatred, opening to Love with the help of the Earth

Post author By Toby
Post date March 16, 2026

“If we are able to acknowledge our self-hatred & work on forgiving ourself, then overcoming our resentment & hatred of others becomes 100% easier, as does opening to love”

Dear Integral Meditators,

I’m currently working on the next workshop, class & deep-dive sessions. They focus on:

Heal and regenerate the energy of your physical body and internal organs
Revitalize and transform your emotional vitality & balance
Work with colour & vibration in meditation
Promote your Mind-body connection – By directing awareness and a gentle smile to internal organs, we deepen somatic awareness, fostering relaxation and vitality
Connect to the living energy of Mother Earth for personal healing & planetary harmonization

The article below is an example of this type of inner-work.

Heads up for the Spring Equinox balancing & renewing meditation on the 18th & 21st March!

In the spirit of transforming,

Toby

Healing hatred, opening to Love with the help of the Earth

In this piece, I’ll be pointing out some mindful positions to help to heal our wounds of hatred and resentment. The positions draw from:

A traditional Qi Gong method of smiling to our internal organs to heal emotional imbalances
Connecting to Mother Earth as a support for our practice
Looking at the psychology of working with and transforming difficult emotions

Want to let go of hatred toward others? Forgive yourself

One distinction that I would like to open with regarding hatred is this; if we are able to acknowledge our self-hatred, and work on forgiving ourself, then overcoming our resentment and hatred of others becomes 100% easier.
Recently I was in a coaching session with a client. The principal subject of the session was feeling resentment and hatred to members of her previous company who had conspired to get her sacked. A key moment in the journey came when she recognized the hatred she had toward herself for being so ‘naïve’ and foolish as to be taken advantage of. By acknowledging the grudge she bore toward herself, and practising forgiveness and support to that part of her that was ‘foolish, naïve & stupid’, relatively rapid healing was able to be made regarding letting go of hatred towards others in the outer situation.

Mindful positions for transforming hatred into love

Position 1: Connecting to Mother Earth as support

As you sit or stand, be aware of the Earth beneath you. Feel her energy rising into your body through your point of contact with the floor, embracing you like a Mother holding a child. If you like feel your feet/body sinking a few cm’s into the Earth, her body merging with yours.

Position 2: Smiling to and with your heart

The organ that often holds hatred in Taoist belief is the heart. Inwardly direct your attention to your physical heart, smiling to it gently. As you do so feel yourself getting in touch with any hatred or resentment you may feel toward others, and particularly toward yourself. Feel and experience that hatred as a cloudy, darker red energy within the heart. When you are ready, breathing in, feel the hatred, breathing out, release it down your body into the earth, like ice melting into water. Let Mother Earth receive the imbalanced energy so it can be recycled in her body. Let go of the hatred, connect of you can with forgiveness, particularly toward yourself. Be held by the Earth as you do this.

Position 3: Receiving love into the heart

Feel energy rising up into your body from Mother Earth. Filling your body with light. In particular feel it flowing into your heart, which begins to glow with a bright, clear red energy, and the energy of love. Enjoy breathing with this energy, feeling it build strength in the heart. Extend this love towards yourself, the Earth and others.

Hatred transformed

So, the hatred transforms mainly into the love here. But you may also like to feel that the hatred has been transformed into a particular type of courage, strength and clarity within the love that is able to see and protect from the malevolent intentions of others, enabling you to move safely and confidently through the world.

End with a period of relaxation, non-doing and integration.

Related articles: Healing thru the Earth, & Earth-as-Self
Smiling meditation & your psychosomatic health
Accepting & recycling your difficult emotions
Recognizing Three Types of Fear, Meditating on three Types of Courage

© Toby Ouvry 2026, 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

Ongoing weekly on Wednesday – Beginners mind, resilient body – a 10-week integral meditation course

Starts Saturday 17^th January, 5.30-6.15pm, & then weekly – Beginners mind, resilient body deep-dive: An 11 -session practice series

Wednesday 18th (7.30pm) & Saturday 21st (5.30pm) March – Spring Equinox balancing and renewing meditation

Saturday, March 28^th 9:00am – 12:30pm – Inner smile & Earth Healing meditation workshop – Build health, confidence & energetic resilience in life

Wednesday April 1^st, 7.30-8.30pm & Saturday, 4^th April, 5-6pm – Which meditator are you? – Free meditation seminars: The five types of meditators & how to build your path to inner freedom

Starts Wednesday 8^th April, 7.30-8.30pm, & then ongoing – The inner smile – Meditations for inner regeneration & connecting to the Earth – An 8-week course

Saturday 11^th April, 5.30-6.15pm SG time, & then ongoing – The inner smile & Earth healing deep-dive – An 8 session practice series

Tags Earrth healing, emotional mindfulness, healing emotiona, inner growth, integral meditation, integral meditation asia, integral mindfulness, love, meditation, meditation in singapore, mindfulness, mindfulness in Singapore, mindfulness meditation, power of mind

Beginners mind, resilient body creative imagery Energy Meditation Enlightened Flow Enlightened service Greenworld Meditation Inner vision Life-fullness meditation and creativity Meditation techniques mind body connection Mindful Resilience Primal Spirituality Qi gong Tree of Life Tree of Yoga Zen Meditation

Healing thru the Earth, & Earth-as-Self

Post author By Toby
Post date March 9, 2026

“Release the weight & burdens of your life downwards into the Earth. She in turn receives it, taking it into her body, where it can be recycled & renewed”

Dear Integral Meditators,

This week’s article looks at ways of relating to the Earth that are healing & regenerative, as well as them relating to ourselves AS the Earth, which can lead us to developing unusual inner strength & independence.

If you enjoy the article, we will be doing a related meditation in this week’s Wednesday & Saturday meditations, you would be welcome to join!

Finally, heads up for the Spring Equinox balancing & renewing meditation on the 18th & 21st March!

In the spirit of resilient identity,

Toby

Healing thru the Earth, & Earth-as-Self

Experience yourself sitting or standing on the Earth. Feel her body beneath you. Feel your body as a part of here body, which of course it is. Imagine your body sinking a few centimeters into the floor, so that you feel like your body and the Earth are connecting energetically. Feel her energy supporting you from below.

Releasing the wounds of adulthood

In the state described above, spend some time getting in touch with the emotional wounds, burdens, and trials of your life. Sense how they turn up in your body and your body energy. As you breathe in, feel yourself getting in touch with the weight of these wounds. As you breathe out, feel yourself releasing them downwards into the Earth. She in turn receives this wounded energy, taking it into her body, where it can be recycled and renewed.

Receiving regenerative energy

Now sense downward into the Earth, and feel her energy rising into your body, flowing in particular into the areas of your body that carried the emotional wounds, the fatigue, the world-weariness that you released downwards previously. Feel these areas of your body becoming renewed and strengthened. Spend some time relaxing with this experience.

The Earth-as-Self

Experiencing your connection to the Earth, reflect upon how your body and energy came from her, and is a part of her.

Your body came from your parents bodes, the bodies of all humans come from the Earth
Every time you eat, you take the body of the earth into yourself, her body becomes your body

You are like a leaf, the Earth is the tree. The bigger identity of the leaf is the Tree. You are the Earth!

Imagine your sense of your body expanding outwards, becoming the size of the room that you are in, or the landscape around you. Experience your body as the whole room, and or as the whole landscape around you.
Feel roots growing down from your body into the Earth, filling it. Feel your energy moving down and expanding into the Earth. Feel your massiveness, stability, and solidity. You are the Earth, the Earth is you.

From this position of Earth-as-self, having renewed yourself through the Earth, turn and inwardly face your life, and your life challenges. Feel your strength, equanimity, and compassion. Connect to the new beginning in each moment from this position of calm, resourced Earth-strength-that-you-are. Go and meet your life.

Standing on your own feet

ADULTHOOD, by Anthony De Mello

To a disciple who was always at his prayers the Master said, “When will you stop
leaning on God and stand on your own two feet?”
The disciple was astonished. “But you are the one who taught us to look on God as
Father!”
“When will you learn that a father isn’t someone you can lean on but someone who
rids you of your tendency to lean?”

Related article: Yin stability – Mother Earth meditation
Born from life, not into it
Connecting to your Big Mind

© Toby Ouvry 2026, 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

Date for your diaries:

Wednesday April 1^st, 7.30-8.30pm & Saturday, 4^th April, 5-6pm – Which meditator are you? – Free meditation seminars: The five types of meditators & how to build your path to inner freedom

Ongoing weekly on Wednesday – Beginners mind, resilient body – a 10-week integral meditation course

Starts Saturday 17^th January, 5.30-6.15pm, & then weekly – Beginners mind, resilient body deep-dive: An 11 -session practice series

Wednesday 18th (7.30pm) & Saturday 21st (5.30pm) March – Spring Equinox balancing and renewing meditation

Saturday, March 28^th 9:00am – 12:30pm – Inner smile & energy balls meditation workshop – Build health, confidence & energetic resilience in life

Wednesday April 1^st, 7.30-8.30pm & Saturday, 4^th April, 5-6pm – Which meditator are you? – Free meditation seminars: The five types of meditators & how to build your path to inner freedom

Tags Earth meditation, inner growth, integral meditation, integral meditation asia, integral mindfulness, meditation, meditation in singapore, mindfulness, mindfulness in Singapore, mindfulness meditation, power of mind

Beginners mind, resilient body creative imagery Energy Meditation Life-fullness Meditation and Psychology Meditation techniques mind body connection Mindful Resilience Mindfulness Presence and being present

Accepting & recycling your difficult emotions

Post author By Toby
Post date February 23, 2026

“The quickest way to get to where you want to go is often to accept where you are.”

Dear Integral Meditators,

This week’s article looks at mindfulness around emotions, and working with emotional energy. If you enjoy it, we will be exploring these methods in both the weekday (Weds eve) and Saturday sessions this week. You are invited!

You might also consider the Inner smile & energy balls meditation workshop – Build health, confidence & energetic resilience in life.

Final call for this weekends Qi Gong for Improving your Health and Energy Levels & for Self-Healing!

In the spirit of inner recycling,

Toby

Accepting & recycling your difficult emotions

In last week’s article on ‘Your emotions as horses’ I led with this quote:

“The emotions you currently think of as being the most useless in your life might just be the ones that you need to learn to ride better”

In this piece, I want to explore the theme of accepting and recycling difficult emotions, as well as the mental narrative and the bodily/somatic states that goes with them.

To recycle the energy of difficult emotions, they first need to be acknowledged and accepted. There is a Zen saying that goes “Pulling the weeds we give nourishment to the plant,” meaning that we can learn to be grateful to our inner difficulties, if we know how to use their energy, like pulling and then burying weeds next to a plant so that they can nourish it.

Our ‘normal’ approach to a difficult emotional state is to try and push it away, so that we can replaced it with a more ‘positive’ state. Another quote I often use in my trainings is:

“The quickest way to get to where you want to go is to accept where you are.”

What this points to is that, counter-intuitively, if you can accept and be at peace with a difficult emotional state, the state itself can change more rapidly to something more constructive. It is the accepting and not resisting that enables the transformation.

For example, if I am hurt or disappointed by someone’s behaviour, acknowledging that feeling of hurt or disappointment is a first step towards transforming it.

Smiling at it to accept and soften the energy

From acknowledgment I can then move onto acceptance. Even though we may understand intellectually the principle and benefit of accepting, it is not easy to do! The gateway to accepting a difficult emotion is often guarded by resistance. One technique I find helpful when in a state of resistance is to gently smile at my resistance, inviting it to soften its hard, rigid stance. Smiling and inviting our resistance to let go (and not being in a hurry about this) enables us to access the feeling of the emotion itself. Once we have this access, we can then use the smiling technique to work with the emotion. In my example of hurt and disappointment, I can smile inwardly to the part of me that feels this way, encouraging a softening of the emotion, making its energy more malleable. This opens up the emotional energy to the ‘recycling’ or transformational stage of the practice that I explain below.

Recycling emotional energy using the microcosmic orbit

I have talked about the microcosmic orbit in a previous articles this year. With emotional energy we raise its vibration by looping it up the back of the body, and re-directing it down the front, which is the basic pattern in all M-O meditations.

Imagine two points of light within your body, one at the bottom of your perineum, the second at the crown of your head. Now imagine a golden thread running up the back of your body, from perineum to the base of the spine, up the back of the body to the crown. It continues thru the crown to your third eye, and down the front of your body, through the belly and back down to the perineum (see diagram).

As you breathe in, feel the energy in your body flowing up the back of the golden thread to your crown, raising and purifying the vibration of the energy as it does so. As you breathe out, feel energy flowing down the front of the body, bringing the higher vibrational energy back down into the torso. As you do this, imagine that the energy of your difficult emotion is being ‘sucked’ into this loop, recycled up the back of the spine and returning down the front of the torso, as neutral/positive emotional energy, ready to be deployed by you in other directions.

Recycling rather than avoiding emotions is a great way to increase your energy levels and resilience in life. Initially the techniques can sound a bit eccentric, but once you try them a few times, the principles are not that complicated.

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Tags inner growth, integral meditation, integral meditation asia, integral mindfulness, meditation, meditation & emotions, meditation in singapore, mindfulness, mindfulness in Singapore, mindfulness meditation, power of mind

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Your emotions as horses (& Lunar NY fire horse meditation)

Post author By Toby
Post date February 16, 2026

“The emotions you currently think of as being the most useless in your life might just be the ones that you need to learn to ride better”

Dear Integral Meditators,

This week’s article is one I wrote in 2015, it seemed like a good time to post it, coming into the Lunar new year of the fire-horse!
If you look up a summary of the fire-horse year, you might get something like this: “The 2026 Year of the Fire Horse (beginning Feb 17, 2026) is a rare, high-energy 60-year cycle event symbolizing rapid change, intense passion, and bold action”

If you would like to tune into this energy for yourself, then I will be doing a Lunar New Year Meditation 2026: Connecting to the energy of the Fire Horse session at 5.30pm SG time this coming Saturday, both in person & online.

In the spirit of Lunar fire,

Toby

Your Emotions as Horses

Your emotions are like horses; powerful, fleet, full of energy and vitality. They are also willful and sometimes volatile. The flip side of this is they also contain their own instinctive and natural wisdom. You are the rider of the horses of your emotions.

If you try and control them by whipping and abusing them then they, like real horses will either become resentful, rebellious and devious or they will become broken, sad and scared.

If you simply indulge the horses of your emotions without directing them then they will simply run wherever they want without control, with the according results in your life.

Your emotions are tremendously strong. If you are scared of the strength of your emotions then they will sense that, and like horses with a nervous rider they will react to it.

If you learn how to ride your emotions with love and care, but at the same time with discipline and direction, then you have a tremendous energy source that you can put to positive use in your life, taking you faster in the direction that you want to go – So there is a lot ‘riding’ on the way you as the rider relate to the horses of your emotions!

Imagine you are on the back of a powerful horse now. It is the horse of your emotions. Feel the raw power, energy and life-force of the horse between your legs. When the horse wants to run, let him do so, feel the elation and the freedom as you gather speed, the wind in your hair, the trees and landscape flying by. Where do you want to go? You are the rider and director of this horse, and s/he wants your benevolent guidance.

Working mindfully with the image of yourself as rider and your emotions as horses can help us find out a lot about our current relationship to our emotions, and how we can learn to ride them better, with both more freedom and more control.

One of the keys to understand about emotions is that ‘positive’ and ‘negative’ emotions are like black and white horses (or brown etc…); it doesn’t matter what colour they are, what mainly matters is how you ride them. The emotions you currently think of as being the most useless in your life might just be the ones that you need to learn to ride better.

© Toby Ouvry 2026, 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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A bag of rats & a big meadow (tactics or strategy?)

Post author By Toby
Post date February 3, 2026

“When you practice the ‘sheep in the meadow’ form of awareness, you can keep your attention on your ‘bigger Why’s,’ accepting the small obstacles that you encounter on the way toward your larger goals”

Dear Integral Meditators,

This week I outline two images to help you refine and develop your awareness in a way that can significantly transform your daily experience. If you enjoy it, we will be exploring these methods in both the weekday (Tues&Weds) and Saturday sessions this week. You are invited!

If you are interested in Qi gong, do check out the Qi Gong for Improving your Health and Energy Levels & for Self-Healing that I will be facilitating on the 28th Feb.

In the spirit of the meadow mind,

Toby

A bag of rats & a big meadow (tactics or strategy?)

This article explains what is essentially a perspective shift that changes your relationship to your thoughts, and how you experience them. It looks at how we can create an inner space for ourselves that contains a lot more acceptance and allowing. We will then look at some other applications of this principle in daily life.

The bag of rats – Your everyday ‘small’ mind

Imagine you are a rat in a dark sack. There are several other rats inside. It is dark, hot, and claustrophobic. You feel agitated by the rats around you, they in turn feel agitated by you. You have a very limited sense of where you are and what is happening to you, it is all close-up, friction-loaded and conducive to irritation, even paranoia.
In everyday life our mind can feel a bit like this bag of rats. It feels trapped inside our body. Often, we feel trapped in an even smaller space, the one between our ears, inside our skull! There are many thoughts about many things in this small space, bumping into each other, creating friction as they rub-up against the thoughts next to them. A lot of feelings and emotions are created from this rubbing. It is difficult to know which feelings come from which thoughts, and what emotional state came from where. It’s difficult not to get confused, to difficult to see our life clearly.
When your mind is like a bag of rats, life naturally feels a bit tough and contentious. States like acceptance, flow, curiosity come at a premium and are difficult to maintain.

The open meadow – Making your mind bigger

“To give your sheep or cow a large, spacious meadow is the way to control him” – Shunryu Suzuki

The quote from Suzuki above refers both to the method to control one’s mind, but also an approach to working with other people, and with experiences in our life. In terms of mind-training and meditation, this instruction stands in contrast to the ‘rats in the bag’ image from the first section. When sitting with the thoughts in your mind, rather than trying to control them, stop them or ‘fix’ them, you simply make your mind and awareness bigger, like a large open meadow. Rather than having your thoughts ‘in your head’ like rats in a bag, you make your mind big, with the thoughts like sheep in a big, spacious meadow. In such an environment an animal will tend to simply wonder off, find its place in the field and be content. So, when you make your awareness big, you can sit there watching the thoughts without being so bothered by them, and they in turn tend to gradually return to equilibrium, without you having to work that hard to control or fix them.

The movement from tactics, and making room for your ‘Big Why’

When your experience of your mind is of the ‘rats in the bag’ type, it is difficult to keep perspective. Everything that you are doing tends to be tactical, small picture, just dealing with what is right in front of you. When you practice the ‘sheep in the meadow’ form of awareness, you can keep things more in perspective. You can ‘choose your battles’. You can keep your attention on your ‘bigger Why’s’, accepting the small obstacles that you encounter on the way toward your broader goals.

Enjoy the meadow!

© Toby Ouvry 2026, 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

Tags inner growth, integral meditation, integral meditation asia, integral mindfulness, meditation, meditation in singapore, mindful resilience, mindfulness, mindfulness in Singapore, mindfulness meditation, power of mind, Zen

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The swinging door – when the breathing does itself

Post author By Toby
Post date January 27, 2026

“Rather than trying to focus on your breathing, simply try & experience the breathing doing itself, just BE the breathing. This often results in better focus, without having to try so hard.”

Dear Integral Meditators,

How much will power do you need to exert in meditation, and in life? This week’s article explores what happens when you take your ‘I’ out of your efforts to meditate, and instead let it ‘do itself’.

If you enjoy the article, we will be exploring these subjects in both the weekday (Tues&Weds) and Saturday sessions this week.

In the spirit of the singing door,

Toby

The swinging door – when the breathing does itself

“What we call ‘I’ is just a swinging door that moves when we inhale and when we exhale” – Shunryu Suzuki, from Zen Mind, Beginners Mind

Making your meditation focus more ergonomic

When we try and focus in meditation, or in a daily task, often we try in a particular way, where the feeling is ‘I’ am trying to focus on ‘it’. So as the ‘I’ in meditation we exert effort to focus on the breathing and cut out distractions as an act of will.
You can try an interesting experiment; rather than trying to focus on your breathing, simply try and experience the breathing doing itself, just BE the breathing. You can be the breathing doing itself, or, alternatively ‘do’ the breathing doing itself. The proposition here is that our ‘I’ or the idea of our I is actually surplus to requirements, unnecessary. A side effect of this is that you may find that your attention to the breathing starts to become free-er, more relaxed, effortless. You find your focus becomes better quality, but you don’t have to try so hard.

The breathing as a swinging door

In Zen meditation the image of a swinging door is used; you focus on your breathing in the throat as if it were a swinging door; swinging in as you inhale, out as you exhale. With the technique of the breathing doing itself, you simply watch that swing in and swing out, attuning to the rhythm and as far as feels possible leaving your I out of the equation. Put another way you could relate to your ‘I’ as being nothing more than the swing-door of the breath.

Bringing your inner and outer worlds together

Continuing with the Zen image, you can then imagine the breath flowing from your outer world to your inner world as you breathe in, and from your inner world to your outer world as you breathe out. You can then develop this in the way described by Shunryu Suzuki in the same passage as the first quote at the top of the article:

“The inner world is limitless, and the outer world is also limitless. We say “inner world” and outer world,” but in reality there is just one whole world, our throat is like a swinging door. The air comes in and goes out like someone passing through a swinging door. If you think “I breathe,” the I is extra.”

Using the breathing in this way we can go from the breath moving from our “inner” to out “outer” world and back again, to simply the movement of the breath to and from a single world, a unified world. It is just the movement of the breath in a unified world, in a state of one-ness with the world, with no “I” necessary.

A heart union

I also like to do this practice down at the heart level. At the heart level we connect with our feeling nature, so the meditation takes on a more emotive dimension when I go down there. As I breathe in, I feel a soft light and energy expanding out into the world, as I breathe in I feel the light and life from the outer world flowing back into my heart. This then simply becomes the one-world, the one being expanding and contacting as I breathe. You can try it and see if you like it, or work with the traditional Zen techniques outlined above.

© Toby Ouvry 2026, 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

Tags beginners mind, inner growth, integral meditation, integral meditation asia, integral mindfulness, meditation, meditation in singapore, mindfulness, mindfulness in Singapore, mindfulness meditation, power of mind