Dear Integral Meditators,
You can Listen to my 5 minute talk and 10 minute meditation on Dynamic Calm HERE!
Toby
Category: Meditation Recordings
Dear Integral Meditators,
This week’s post has two components. The second is a series of five free videos for you to follow along to that I did with the Movement for modern life yoga website in the summer. The first is an article on how to do walking meditation.
In the spirit of mindfulness in the moment,
Toby
The Basic Fundamentals of Walking Meditation
Many people who think of meditation often think of a formal exercise involving sitting still on a chair or cushion with our eyes closed. It can come as a bit of a surprise to such people to find out that walking can be considered a form of meditation practice, and that walking meditation can become a major part of our daily routine, contributing substantially to or overall consciousness development and sense of inner peace and centred-ness. It is well worth investing the time and effort in learning to do walking meditation, as we spend a substantial portion of our day walking from one destination to another, and if we know how to walk in a meditative manner, then time spent walking can become time spent relaxing and meditating!
Walking meditation can be simply defined as any walk that we undertake where we are using the process of walking to develop our mindfulness, awareness of the present moment and other states conducive to inner peace and happiness. Below I describe some very simple walking meditation techniques that can be used by anyone. Be sure to begin your walking meditation with a conscious decision to stop worrying about your personal life, work projects etc., and to focus on enjoying the process of walking in the here and now!
Initial concentration builders:
Method 1
Walking at a pace that is comfortable for you note how many steps it takes you to breathe in and breathe out, then combine your observation of your breathing with your steps. Let’s say it takes you three steps to breathe one in breath and three to breathe out. As you take each step on the inhalation inwardly say to yourself “In”, and as you breathe out with each step say “out”. So the basic pattern in this example would be in, in, in, out, out, out, in, in, in, out, out, out and so on. Try and get yourself into a rhythm use it to keep your attention in the here and now.
Method 2
A simple variation on method one. Let’s stay with the rhythm of three steps in and three steps out. As you breathe in you recite “step, step, focus”, as you breathe out “step, step, relax”. Continue in this way using the last step of the inhalation to prompt yourself to focus, and the last step of the exhalation to prompt you to relax. If you like you can substitute other words for the focus/relax combination, for example here/now, present/awareness, calm/ease. Choose a combination that is effective and pertinent to you!
Method 3
Pick an object a distance in front of you, such as a tree. Then, as you walk toward it, try and be mindful of the tree and of the present moment with each step and each breath that you take. Once you reach the object, relax for a few steps/breaths, then pick out another object in the distance to focus on in the same way. Build your mindfulness based upon your awareness of the physical object, your breathing and your steps.
Once you have a little bit of focus:
Method 1
As you walk and breathe, pick one sense power, such as your hearing or sight. Try and focus on that sense power mindfully, being aware of all the information that is coming into your awareness through that sense door. So, if you choose your hearing for example, try and pick out all the sounds that are available to you, the wind in the trees, the bird calls, the distant waterfall, the traffic, and so on… Pay full attention to this one sense power with each step, try and experience this as if it is the first time that you have heard, seen or felt it.
Method 2
Once you have some experience of method 1, expand your sensory awareness to take in the whole experience of walking in the present moment. With each step and breath try and experience walking in and experiencing the physical and sensory world as if for the first time. Allow time to disappear, so that the full power of the present is able to impact itself upon your being.
© Toby Ouvry 2016, you are welcome to use or share this article, but please cite Toby as the source and include reference to his website www.tobyouvry.com
Mindfulness in moments free video course:
Simply click on the links to follow along to a five minute meditation on the following topics. You can experience the entire course in its fullnessfor free simply by clicking on the individual links below:
- Mindfulness of the body
- Finding focus through mindfulness of the breathing
- Mindfully releasing stress
- Mindfulness of your thoughts
- Cultivating stillness
A little more on the mindfulness in moments course:
Perhaps you’re completely new to mindfulness, or perhaps you’ve always been meaning to give it a go. Perhaps you’re just curious to know what it means and what’s the difference between mindfulness and meditation anyway? Either way, meditation and mindfulness teacher, Toby Ouvry, is here to help.
The Mindful in Moments Challenge is designed to help anyone get started and begin reaping the benefits of a daily mindfulness practice. Mindfulness can help you to find inner peace, deal with stress and empower yourself to gain control over how you experience your reality.
Our minds are always focused on something, it’s just a case of whether that is causing us to feel happy and balanced or disconnected and unhappy. Learn to use mindfulness to become aware of where your mind is going in just 5 minutes a day!
Integral Meditation Asia
Online Courses * 1:1 Coaching * Books * Live Workshops * Corporate Mindfulness Training *Life-Coaching * Meditation Technology
Dear Integral meditators,
This weeks article focuses on two different ways of being mindful of your choice-making process.
In the spirit of choice-less awareness,
Toby
Two types of choice-less awareness
What is your current relationship to making choices in your life?
In traditional Buddhist mindfulness practice practicing ‘choice-less awareness’ means to witness whatever comes up in your field of awareness as a detached observer, without commenting, judging or getting involved in what arises. You are aware of what is arising without making any choices or trying to affect it; whatever is there is there; simply watch, observe and relax.
The fundamental benefit of this practice is that it gives you the peace of mind arising from being able to separate your ‘I’ from the contents of your consciousness. You are the owner of your thoughts, feelings and impulses, but you are not the thoughts, feelings and impulses.
Type two: Deliberate non-choosing
A second type of choice-less awareness involves simply deciding to abstain temporarily from making decisions and choices. The goal here is to deliberately set aside time where we make no choice or decision at all, simply resting in the circumstances that we find ourself in, and relaxing*.
The anxiety of being ‘caught between’ choices.
The reason for cultivating this second type of choice-less awareness is that much of our mental anxiety is created around our relationship to the decision-making process:
- What is the right or best thing to do in this situation?
- What if I make the wrong decision?
- I don’t know what to do here
- What if I am blamed for this?
If we are not careful we can spend a lot of our time in a state of low-grade anxiety, worrying about the dilemmas and choices in our life. For many of us this has become a habit to the extent that, even when we do make a choice that solves a problem, rather than deriving satisfaction from that, our attention simply seeks out another dilemma to worry about!
Stop your inner debate!
The idea with the mindful ‘non-choosing’ is to stop worrying by deliberately suspending our choice making capacity. This enables our mind to relax, regenerate its energy and return to sanity. To practice this as a sitting meditation, for the designated time you have set aside create a boundary; ‘For the next X minutes I will make no choices about my life, nor will I debate or weigh up issues. I will enjoy the simple pleasure of unburdening myself of my choice making responsibilities and being more present’.
Conscious choosing
The idea with conscious non-choosing is not that we don’t make choices at all, ever. Rather it is that that we develop the skill of temporarily putting down our choices in order to enjoy a more relaxed mind, better quality of life and reduce our anxiety.
The flip side of dropping our choices is to then spend the time when we are making choices in a more focused, mindful manner. We deliberately identify the important choices that we need to make today, this morning or in the next hour, and bring our full intelligence to that choice-making processes.
A good question to ask yourself to facilitate conscious choice-making is ‘what are the two most important choices that I need to make today?’ Identify the two choices that must get made today, and focus your intelligence on making them as well informed as possible!
Note from para 3* If we are doing this while engaged in some form of activity, for example walking, then we will obviously have to make small choices (to go left or right for example). The point here is to avoid our mind debating between two or more options in an abstract way. The immanent, small choices that we have to make in the moment (go left, go right) we can just make as required.
© Toby Ouvry 2016, you are welcome to use or share this article, but please cite Toby as the source and include reference to his website www.tobyouvry.com
Upcoming Courses at Integral Meditation Asia
Ongoing on Wednesday’s, 7.30-8.30pm – Wednesday Meditation Classes at Basic Essence with Toby
Saturday 22nd October, 9.30am-12.30pm – Going From Over-whelmed to Over-well: Meditation for Quietening the Mind – a three hour workshop
Saturday 22nd October 2-5pm – Mindfulness & Movement session at the LifeChiro Center
Saturday November 12th, 10am-5pm – Meditations for connecting to the Tree of Life, and growing your own personal Life Tree
19th November – One Heart Celebration Day (Joint event)
Saturday 26th November 10am-5pm – Engaged Mindfulness day workshop/retreat
Integral Meditation Asia
Online Courses * 1:1 Coaching * Books * Live Workshops * Corporate Mindfulness Training *Life-Coaching * Meditation Technology
What does the experience of leading yourself mindfully look and feel like? This is a 20 minute guided meditation that I did in May 2014 in Singapore at a CLIA event that will give you a chance to really investigate this topic within yourself :
Mindful Self-Leadership Meditation at CLIA (Click to listen online, right click to download)
If you enjoy it and are in Singapore this weekend, on the 7th June I will be doing the Mindful Self-Leadershp 3 Hour Workshop
Integral Meditation Asia also has an Online course on Mindful Self-Leadership that you can participate in anytime.
You can watch me talking on the topic of “Leaping Like a Tiger – Mindful Self Leadership” on youtube.
Finally, do check out the Mindful Self-Leadership section of this Blog!
Yours in the spirit of mindful self-leadership,
Toby
Dear Integral Meditators,
Goethe said “If you trust yourself you will know how to live”. More than that, our trust and confidence in ourself directly affects the way in which we experience our relationship to the world at large, as Emerson said “If I have lost confidence in myself, I have the universe against me.”
This is a short five minute guided meditation on how to develop and sustain deep trust in yourself. Enjoy!
Meditation on Self-Trust
(click to play, right click download)
A quick reminder that the Mindful Self-Leadership Online Course will be beginning tomorrow, beneath this message I have placed some of the feedback from those who attended the live workshop last Sunday, just to give you a feel of what sort of benefits you are likely to experience if you participate in the more in-depth online course!
Yours in the spirit of self leadership and self-trust,
Toby
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Mindful Self-Leadership 3 hour WS 18.05.14 Participant Feedback
I found this workshop excellent. It gives me a nice set of simple tools. Your talk did open my eyes to various issues and concepts, going beyond just the workshop.
Keep up the good work including your weekly blogs!
Good pacing with the right amount of content. Very useful practical mindfulness exercises to complement the content shared. Great handout and online links (to the workshop recordings). Nice venue and small group. Sentence completion exercises very useful, Thankyou!
I felt a connection with Toby straight away.
I feel more hopeful in how my life will proceed.
His (Toby’s) experience, way of speaking, knowledge and methods resonate with me.
Thankyou Toby.
The workshop was excellent! I really enjoyed not only the content, but also the process. I found the explanation and insights to be truly insightful and informative. Thanks so much!
Really enjoyed the whole workshop – The focus that the sentence completion allowed me to have about my views & thoughts and feelings , plus the really helpful practical experience of the meditation exercises.
It has been really useful for me to understand the stages of thought and mindfulness that lead to actual action. Thankyou!
Dear Integral Meditators,
Last weekend I gave a public meditation and talk entitled: “Mindful Self-Leadership, a contemporary paradigm for conscious, integrated personal growth and wellbeing”. Many thanks to those of you who came along to participate live. If you would like to have a listen to the talk online, just click here:
Mindful Self Leadership Talk and Meditation
The first 20minutes or so is a meditation, the rest is a talk. If you enjoy the it, then you can just scroll down to find out more about the two courses that I will be offering on Mindful Self -Leadership:
- One live in Singapore on the 18th May
- One online starting on May 22nd. This is the first time I’ve rolled this course out, and I’m pretty excited about it and what it can give to people. With the online course, you can participate in it literally wherever you are in the world!
Please note that that until the end 9th of May (this Friday) there are some early bird opportunities to get reduced prices on the courses!
Yours in the spirit of the mindful self,
Toby
Mindful Self-Leadership: Take Control of Your Life Direction and Wellbeing Through Awareness, Curiosity, Courage and Care.
Sunday May 18th – Mindful Self-Leadership Three Hour Workshop
Thursday 22nd May – Five Module Online Mindful Self-Leadership Course Begins
In a sentence: Learn how you can develop deep confidence in yourself, take benevolent control of your life, overcome inner inhibitions such as fear and invite fulfillment and wellbeing into your life through the practice of mindful self leadership.
Overview: The best place to learn how lead is within yourself. Do you agree?
Developing your Mindful Self-leadership is about how you can:
- Feel increasing levels of comfort and confidence in your relationship to yourself, your life and in your ability to take your life in the direction that you truly want it to go
- Develop your self-knowledge and self-understanding so as to find out what will really make you most happy
- Find ways of being making use of the challenges that you face, by taking responsibility for them and leading yourself to the best solutions to those challenges
- Learn to communicate with yourself and others in a way that encourages you to express your deeper values in the way you think feel and act
- Develop a capacity for self-leadership that will be an inspiration to others and encourage them to develop their own self-leadership skills
- Do all of the above using a set of mindfulness practices that enables you to drop into states of mind that are relaxing, peaceful and regenerative, and that will help you dramatically reduce the amount of negative stress and anxiety in your life.
If you have been answering ‘yes’ to the above points then the course in mindful self leadership is for you!
These courses are suitable for:
- Those who may be new to mindfulness and who want to learn it in a way that cultivates the self-leadership skills outlined above.
- People who are already familiar with mindfulness and meditation practice and wish to learn how to use it in a leadership context.
There are two opportunities to participate in the Mindful-Self Leadership training:
- A three hour Mindful Self-Leadership workshop in Singapore in Sunday May 18th at Basic Essence. For full information see details below.
- A Five week Mindful Self-Leadership online course that will begin on Thursday 22nd May see below for full details.
What does it cost?:
THE COST FOR THE MINDFUL SELF-LEADERSHIP 3 HOUR WORKSHOP ON THE 18TH MAY IS SING$130. TO MAKE PAYMENT FOR BY CREDIT CARD, CLICK HERE
THE COST FOR THE MINDFUL SELF-LEADERSHIP 5 WEEK ONLINE COURSE BEGINNING 22ND MAY IS SING$190. TO MAKE PAYMENT BY CREDIT CARD, CLICK HERE
BUY BOTH THE THE MINDFUL SELF-LEADERSHIP 3 HOUR WORKSHOP AND 5 WEEK ONLINE COURSE AS A BUNDLE FOR SING$295 (SAVE $25) .TO MAKE PAYMENT FOR BY CREDIT CARD, CLICK HERE
Details of the Mindful Self-Leadership Three Hour Workshop:
Date: Sunday May 18th
Time: 9.30am-12.30
Location: Basic Essence, (For location Map click HERE)
This three our workshop introduces four fundamental mindfulness practices that you can take into your daily life in order to develop your capacity for confident self-leadership. These four practices are as follows:
- Encountering – Developing your foundation for mindful self–leadership by increasing your capacity to encounter ALL of your reality without being intimidated by it
- Accepting – Mindfully accepting all of whom you are in order to lead yourself beyond who you are
- Envisioning – Connecting to the values of your personal self-leadership style
- Empowering – Taking responsibility for respecting who you are and expressing it appropriately in your life
Each of these practices invites the ongoing development of your own personal self-leadership style and understanding of how it can be integrated into your daily life.
As well as guiding these exercises Toby will here will be giving talks on each of them, and there will be time for exploration of the practices through Q&A.
In addition to the workshop you will receive:
- MP3 recordings of the practices and talks that are done during the workshop
- Full workshop notes with all of the mindful self leadership exercises included as well as other relevant articles and materials.
- All in all you will have a very clear idea of how you can continue your mindful self leadership practice in your daily life after leaving the workshop
Taking Control of Your Life Through Mindful Self-Leadership – A Five Week Online Course
Start date: Thursday May 22nd
Course Outline: This five week online course is an in depth exploration of how you can develop your mindful self-leadership style in order to:
- Develop increasing confidence and self-direction in life
- Align yourself with what will really make you inwardly fulfilled
- Take advantages of your challenges in life to further self-knowledge and discovery
- Assert values and actions in your life that are congruent with who you are
- Become the leader you want to be when he going gets tough in your life
- Combine self-leadership with the daily cultivation of inner peace and wellbeing
Module titles:
Module 1: Getting started; a outline and overview of the elements of mindful self-leadership and how to start cultivating your experience of it on a daily basis
Module 2: Accepting who you are in order to go beyond who you are – Exploring the paradox of mindful self-leadership
Module 3: You can’t practice self leadership if you don’t know where you want to go – Getting to grips with what you really want in life
Module 4: You know more than you think you know – Accessing your inner guidance for the purposes of mindful self-leadership
Module 5: The long leadership journey to where you are – Exploring the spiritual dimension of self-leadership
How it works: Upon registering for the course you will be sent the link to the course webpage together with the password to access it. This will be the place you can go in order to access, listen to and download the course materials. Each week during the five weeks of the course you will be notified when the latest module has been uploaded.
For further details: Please contact info@integralmeditationasia.com
TO MAKE PAYMENT FOR THE MINDFUL SELF-LEADERSHIP 5 WEEK ONLINE COURSE BY CREDIT CARD, CLICK HERE
TO MAKE PAYMENT FOR THE MINDFUL SELF-LEADERSHIP 3 HOUR WORKSHOP AND 5 WEEK ONLINE COURSE BUNDLE FOR SING$295 BY CREDIT CARD, CLICK HERE
Dear Integral Meditators,
What sort of ideas spring into your mind when you think of the words self-leadership? I have created a five minute video Leaping Like a Tiger – Mindful Self Leadership which you can view here:
Yours in the spirit of leading and leaping,
Toby
Dear Integral Meditators,
This weekend’s article explains a technique that I call ‘core cellular breathing’ which is a technique I teach for energizing and healing your body-mind. You can also listen to a five minute guided meditation on core cellular breathing by clicking on this link:
Core cellular breathing guided meditation (5mins)
In case you missed it here is the link to the free meditation on ‘listening to your breathing’ that I posted mid-week.
Toby
Energizing Your Body-Mind With Cellular Breathing
This meditation is designed to directly stimulate the subtle energy within your physical body; increasing your energy, facilitating physical healing and also encouraging blocked emotional energies in your body to be released. Thus it works on both the physical and psychological level of-our body mind.
Implicitly it also invites practical awareness of a universal or spiritual level of energy that we can draw upon and use in practical ways in our daily life.
It is a form of mindful energy-breathing that I developed myself through daily qi-gong practice. I have found that breathing in this way is a very simple and effective method for healing and balancing the energy of your body-mind.
The method: Sit comfortably and take a few centring breaths, focusing on your body. You can either breathe in through the nose and out through the nose, or in through the nose and out through the mouth, whichever you feel more comfortable with.
Now as you breathe in, feel yourself breathing in not just with your nose and lungs, but with all the cells of your body. As you breathe in, feel all the cells of your body breathing in with you. As you breathe out feel all the cells of your body breathing out. Practice this form of full body breathing for a few breaths.
Now see in the centre of all the cells of your body there is a point of life-force and energy. As you breathe in focus on these points of energy within the centre of each cell, and see them glowing intensely with light.
Now as you exhale, see these points of light and energy expanding out into your cells, lighting up your body and cellular structure like a light bulb.
Continue to breathe in this way for a period of up to five minutes. You can extend this if you like once you are used to the technique, but in the beginning short periods are best.
It is a good idea to finnish with a brief period of silence and stillness.
Dear Integral Meditators,
In each moment your breathing is providing you with a wealth of insight about the way in which you are thinking, feeling and experiencing your life. I’ve just created a short, 5 minute meditation on a practice I call “listening to the breathing” that will help you access that insight and use it to increase the amount of understanding, relaxation and ease that you experience in your life. You can have a listen to it right now by clicking here:
Listening to the Breathing Mindfulness Exercise (5mins)
Listening to the breathing is one example of the practices that I will be teaching in a short 2 hour workshop on Mindful Breathing on the 25th March. The full details are below.
Yours in the spirit of listening and awareness,
Toby
Dear Integral Meditators,
I hope you’ve had a good week, our article this week is a follow on from last weeks “Four Types of Deep, Calm, Four Types of Dynamic Power“, and is a continued invitation investigate how you can integrate a deeper sense of calm in your life!
I have posted a 10 minute MP3 recording of the meditation on the three types of calm on the Integral Meditation Asia website. To have a listen and download it go here: Three Types of Calm Free Meditation MP3
Yours in the spirit of inner calm,
Toby
What is the Quality of Your Calm?
This article is mostly a guided meditation to connect you to three types of calm:
- Mountain like calm, or the type of calmness that is solid and immovable
- River like calm, or the type of calm that is flowing and flexible
- Sky like calm, or the type of calm that is open and spacious
Each of these types of calm has its own particular qualities, and each has its own practical strengths, for example:
- When you are going through emotional turmoil it can be very useful to emphasize flowing, river-like calm as a way of working with the experience
- When you feel under attack from your outer environment for example socially it can be useful to emphasize the solid and immovable qualities of mountain-like calm.
Images to connect you to the three types of calm:
Mountain–like calm: See yourself as a mountain, solid strong and immovable. You are able to withstand any amount of wind, rain or weather as a consequence of your strength of presence. Imagine wind and rain around you; these are like the challenges of your daily life, you are like the mountain
River-like calm: See yourself as a river, flowing, flexible, and accommodating. Imagine the river rising and flowing faster as if flooding; you as the river can cope with the increase because you are able to ‘go with the flow’. Imagine the water is like the ups and downs of your emotional life and you are like the river; calmly flowing fast or slow as required.
Sky-like calm: See yourself as a vast open sky, spacious and calm. The clouds in the sky are like the different challenges in your life; they are in the sky but they do not affect its fundamental spaciousness or openness. Be that spacious, open calm in the midst of the clouds of your life!
As you work with these images you will find that you probably relate to one more than the others. Work practically with the one you relate to primarily first, and then try integrating the other two when you feel you would like a change.
To have a listen to this meditation now go here: Three Types of Calm Free Meditation MP3
© Toby Ouvry 2013, 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