Category: mind body connection

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A Mind of Ease Enlightened Flow Enlightened love and loving Integral Awareness Integral Meditation Meditating on the Self Meditation and Psychology mind body connection Mindful Confidence Mindfulness

The Way to Deal With Feelings is to Feel

Dear Integral Meditators,

Our relationship to our feelings is one of the dominant factors that determines our quality of life. The article below offers a few mindful pointers for how we can develop a good long term relationship to the way we feel, even in the face challenging and difficult emotions.

Yours in the spirit of deep feeling,

Toby

The Way to Deal With Feelings is to Feel

One of the great keys to mindful living, to dealing with stress and to being at home with yourself in life is to know how to deal with your feelings. To deal with your feelings effectively means understanding that feelings seek resolution primarily by being felt. Whenever we deny our feelings, whenever we refuse to accept them, whenever we resist experiencing them, then they cannot find resolution.
Conversely, whenever we acknowledge, accept and consciously experience a feeling or emotion, its energetic force can be naturally discharged and thus it can find resolution and we can move on from it.

It is the same with all feelings and emotions:

  • The solution to anger you feel begins by accepting the reality that you are angry (who me?), and proceeding from there
  • The resolution to the emotion you feel when you have fallen in love with someone begins by acknowledging and allowing yourself to feel that love
  • The solution to the anxiety that you feel about the uncertainty surrounding your business begins by accepting and experiencing that anxiety without denying or repressing it

Accepting a feeling is more than intellectual acknowledgment
Sometimes we can intellectually acknowledge that we have a feeling without actually accepting it experientially. Intellectual recognition alone is not enough to process a feeling, it has to be accepted experientially and truly felt.

Entering more deeply into the moment through feeling
Think of a situation in your life right now that is causing stress, anxiety or inner discomfort.  Notice how as soon as the uncomfortable feelings start to arise, your mind will start to get busy trying to find a way of ‘solving’ the situation; trying to think its way out of the problem.  Now what I want you to do is deliberately stop trying to solve the issue mentally and instead just focus on acknowledging, accepting and experiencing the feelings and emotions that you have. Simply sit with them, be aware of them, allow yourself to feel them and breathe with them, without trying to change them.
Sometimes (not always, but sometimes) when we are able to truly accept the way we feel, we discover that the problem we thought we had was not really a problem. The genuine and deep acceptance of the feelings makes the circumstances we find ourselves in actually perfectly ok.

Related Article: The Absence of Resolution

Find out about shadow self coaching with Toby

© 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 Energy Meditation Integral Meditation Meditation techniques mind body connection Primal Spirituality spiritual intelligence Zen Meditation

Locating Your Deep Centre

Dear Integral Meditators,

If you are in the centre of the energy of your life, then you are general going to be and feel in control. If you are on the edge of the energy in your life, being pushed around and buffeted by its currents, then things can really feel like a struggle. This weeks article explores a practical exercise in how to find your centre and stay there!

Yours in the spirit of deep centring,
Toby

Locating Your Deep Centre

The following is an exercise that you can do at the beginning of a meditation, or anytime you want to balance and centre your body-mind. It can also be done over a slightly longer period of time as a meditation in and of itself.
It can be done when you feel upset or out of balance, or as a method for finding deep stillness.
In general the energy that occupies your bodies centre or core is the energy that will be running your life. This exercise helps you to bring conscious awareness and balanced energy into the core of your being, thus giving you greater autonomy, choice and control over your body, mind and life.

Step 1: Aligning your body – Sit comfortably with your hips, abdomen, chest/shoulders, neck and head stacked one on top of the other like a pile of bricks. This allows the weight of your upper body to travel comfortably down your torso into the hips with minimal effort needed to sustain a vertical sitting posture.

Step 2: Finding your vertical core – Visualize a line of light and energy coming down from the sky through the dead centre of your crown, brain, neck, chest, abdomen and hips, exiting through the perineum (mid-point between the legs) and continuing down into the centre of the earth. This line of energy is your body’s vertical core.

Step 3: Balancing the front and back of your body – Now with small movements of only a centimetre or two, rock your body backwards and forwards. As you do so feel the front and back halves of your body coming into alignment with each other around the vertical line of light in the centre of your body.

Step 4: Balancing the left and right halves of the body- Now rock your body sideways with small movements. As you do so, feel the left and right halves of your torso and body coming into alignment with each other. With the completion of steps 3&4 you now feel that the front and back halves and the left and right halves of your body in a state of balance and harmony with each other around your bodies vertical core.

Step 5: Finding the deep centre of your body – Now look for the deep centre of your torso and body. This will be along the vertical core of your body, somewhere between the chest and solar plexus level. Note you are not trying to find a chakra or anything like that, you are trying to find the literal ‘dead-centre’ or bulls-eye of your body – its middle point.
Once you have found it, visualize it as a ball of light about the size of a golf ball. As you breathe in breathe your awareness into the deep centre of your body, as you breathe out feel light and energy from your deep centre expanding out into your body-mind, bringing stability, poise, balance and harmony to it.

Optional Step 6: Going cosmic – If you want to prod the enlightenment experience a little with this exercise (and why not?) as you breathe into your deep centre feel yourself connecting to the centre of your spiritual self, whose centre is everywhere and whose circumference is nowhere. As you breathe out feel your awareness expanding out from your deep centre into a space of eternity and infinity.

Rest in the awareness of your deep centre for a while, when you feel ready you can return to your daily life aligned and re-centred!

© Toby Ouvry 2014, 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

Audio Serenity

Special 1 week offer, get 25% off!

Go on 61minutes of pure and deep relaxation. Enjoy a drug free vacation from stress and anxiety”.

Click on the link, to listen to a free sample.  Just type in NEWSMAY25OFF into the coupon code section of the purchase section to get the discount.

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Energy Meditation Essential Spirituality I-Awake Meditation Technology Meditation techniques mind body connection One Minute Mindfulness Stress Transformation

Re-Awakening to Your Bliss: Digital Euphoria

Dear Toby,

This mid-week message has to main aspects to it:

  • The first is an article that I wrote a few years ago and have just re-edited on how to re-awaken to your bliss.
  • The second is an introduction to some meditation technology that you hope you will find interesting.

Were living in an age dominated by technology, and often it seems like this technology is adding to a lot of our stress. But what about the ways in which technology can not just help us de-stress, but also enhance our meditation practice and quality of life dramatically?
Over the last year or so I have been using a sound technology called Profound Meditationfrom I-Awake technologies, which for me has been by far and away the best range of meditation enhancement tracks that I have come across.
I am placing below a little bit of information on one of their products called Digital Euphoria, which is a complement to the article in the sense that it is designed to cultivate states of bliss and joy in your mind and body.

Yours in the spirit of bliss,

Toby

Digital Euphoria

“Flourish, Grow and Evolve in Today’s Turbulent Times with 70 Minutes of Pure, Euphoric Flow.
 Digital Euphoria contains three audio tracks powerful enough to boost your confidence, enthusiasm and joy in just the first 20 minutes, with effects that last for hours.”

If you click on the link you can find full information and reviews of Digital Euphoria, as well as a free 10minute sample track that you can listen to.
Up until Sunday 23rd March there is aspecial 25% discount offer in this track. If you do decide you would like to purchase it the coupon code to get the discount is: NEWSMAR25OFF

Personal not from Toby: “I actually use this track a lot to work as well. I find that it lifts my mood and increases my energy when I’m sitting at the computer, and helps me overcome my inertia, making me a lot more productive and enthusiastic.”

Re-Awakening to Your Bliss

When was the last time you enjoyed bliss? By bliss I mean not just an isolated experience of pleasure in either your physical, mental or spiritual bodies, but an experience of pleasure that touched all three levels of your being and brought them naturally back into alignment and harmony with each other?

 

Perhaps when you read the paragraph above the experience of bliss seems a little bit abstract, something difficult to attain, something that happens to us only occasionally and even then caused by something outside of ourselves, something that “happens” to us, rather than something we ourselves create?

In my opinion and experience the experience of bliss is a lot simpler and more accessible than that. As human beings and as living creatures, we are all NATURALLY full of blissful energy. Energy is what we are, and in its natural state, our sensory, mental and spiritual energy is deeply blissful and pleasant.

So, if this is the case, why does experiencing bliss seem like such a difficult experience for us? Well, put very simply, most of us live too much of our life “in our head” or in an abstract mental state divorced from the depth and pleasure of our own natural energy and body. Get out of your head and step back into your moment to moment direct experience of life and bliss starts to return.

Two ways to begin re-connecting to your bliss:

1) Remembering an experience of bliss.

You can try this one right now. Recall a past experience of genuine bliss. Spend a minute or so remembering it and re-creating it in your mind, until you can feel a bit of that blissful energy in your body and soul. Now let go of the memory, and simply focus of the sensation of bliss in your body-mind. There it is, still there even though you have let go of the memory. This exercise helps show you that bliss is a state of being that is present within you right now, it is not something that you have to go out and purchase, or fight hard to obtain.

2) Taking moments in your day to touch bliss

Try and do five short activities (of one minute maximum) every day that are specifically focused on generating bliss. For example I can look up from my keyboard now and just observe the sky and the cloud formations, as I really drink in the richness of that visual experience, I can feel a natural gentle bliss beginning to flow through my being, it is not just an intellectual appreciation, it is a feeling that I can feel relaxing me and expanding into my physical, mental and spiritual being. So there you go, one minute of bliss!

Later I might give my partner or child a hug, and really focus on the experience of bliss that rises from the physical, mental and spiritual touching of two human beings. Again, another minute of natural, easy bliss.

If you like you can make a list of things that make you feel blissful and then just make sure you touch one or other of these activities a few times each day.

Life should be blissful. The interesting thing about true bliss (not to be confused with craving and attachment) is that it makes us less selfish, more giving, more sane and more happy. As it turns out the most important thing to do if you want to re-awaken your bliss is to REMEMBER it, as it is always there!

A final warning: Most people these days do seem to have forgotten their bliss, and are tied up in complicated mental knots. Resolve firmly not to be like them;-)

Thanks for reading, and here is to a blissful week ahead!
© Toby Ouvry 2014, 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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Meditation Recordings Meditation techniques mind body connection Mindful Breathing Uncategorized

Energizing Your Body-Mind With Cellular Breathing (Article and guided recording)

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.

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Awareness and insight Integral Awareness Integral Meditation Meditation techniques mind body connection Mindfulness One Minute Mindfulness Presence and being present Uncategorized

Bringing Congruence to the Mind Through Meditation – Three Ways

Dear Toby,

Congruence – To bring harmony, agreement and compatibility. This mid-week article is about how to bring congruence to the different elements of your mind.

After an enjoyable Greenworld Meditation Workshop last Sunday, there is a chance for anyone who wanted to come but could not to come along this Sunday, 2nd March for the second date!
Also on Sunday is the Introduction to Walking Meditation Workshop, registration for this will close on Thursday evening.
Finally, date for your diary I will be doing the Meditation and Mindfulness For Developing a Mind of Ease, Relaxed Concentration and Positive Intention on Saturday April 5th at the Reiki Centre.

Yours in the spirit of inner congruence,

Toby

Bringing Congruence to the Mind Through Meditation – Three Ways

 Imbalanced, fragmented, confused. Does that ever feel like the state of your mind? Here are three meditative methods to bring your mind from fragmentation to a state of relative balance and unity through meditation:

  1. Still your mind
  2. Focus on one thought or image
  3. Allow it all to be there

1. Still your mind – When your mind is still, all of its disparate parts start to come back into balance and settle naturally. If you can still your mind, you may not solve anything externally, but you will bring the different parts of your mind back into congruence with each other, and so when you do go back to your life you will do so with a new experience and perspective. One simple technique to still your mind is simply to sit still and focus your sensory awareness on the physical stillness of your body. By being physically still and focusing on that, you find that after a time your mind starts to become still through its attention to the body. Once your mind becomes still in this way you can then switch your focus from the stillness of your body to the stillness you feel within your mind, which you can now see and feel clearly.

2. Focus on one thought or image – Use one thought, image or even a physical object as your point of focus. By anchoring your attention to it, the other elements of your mind can ‘swirl’ around it, and gradually come back into balance simply as a side product of you placing your attention on one thing and letting everything else ‘even out’.

3. Allow it all to be there – Simply sit with everything in your mind without trying to focus, control or judge it. This technique involves gaining control and congruence within your mind by abandoning all attempts to control it. Simply sit and watch it, be with it without feeding any of it. The by-product of this allowing is that once more the different elements of the mind gradually come back into congruence and balance with each other.

None of these practices ‘solves’ anything, but by bringing congruence to your mind  they enable your natural intelligence to function freely, and encourage you to have confidence in your own natural capacity to bring your personal best to the challenges you face each day.

© Toby Ouvry 2014, 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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Awareness and insight Energy Meditation Integral Awareness Integral Meditation Meditating on the Self Meditation techniques mind body connection One Minute Mindfulness Presence and being present Stress Transformation

Mindfully Expanding into Tension, Challenges and Growth

Dear Integral Meditors,

I’m keeping it very practical with this weeks article, it is a way of using your body awareness to enhance the way you approach emotions and situations you find challenging, enjoy!

Quite a lot of meditation and mindfulness courses to enjoy over the next few weeks, starting this Tuesday evening with the Meditation skills class. This is then followed by the 2nd opportunity to attend the Greenworld Meditation workshop on Sunday 2nd of March. On that same day there is a Walking Meditation workshop in the morning.

Finally, date for your diary, the Main March workshop will be Meditations for Integrating your Ego, Soul and Spirit which I should have the full write up for by the next newsletter.

Yours in the spirit of expansion,

Toby

Upcoming Meditation Classes and Workshops at Integral Meditation Asia 

Tuesday 25th February, 7.30-8.30pm: Monthly Meditation Skills Class and Coaching Session

Sunday 2nd March, 8-10.30am: An Introduction to Walking Meditation Workshop

Sunday 2nd March, 2.30-6pm: Meditations for Connecting to the Greenworld – An Introduction to the Path of Nature Mysticism

Sunday 16th March, 2.30-6pm: Meditations for Integrating your Ego, Soul and Spirit (Full details out shortly)

Mindfully Expanding into Tension, Challenges and Growth

This is a simple but profound somatic mindfulness exercise designed to change our perception and experience of threatening and difficult energies and situations.

Normally when we experience challenging emotions, difficult situations, anxiety and so forth our fundamental reaction is to energetically ‘contract’ away from it. This is experienced as a kind of energetic tightening or contraction within our chest.
The idea is to practice feeling the anxiety and rather than unconsciously contracting away from it, to consciously expand into it.

Step 1: Bring to mind a situation that is causing you anxiety, fear, discomfort etc in your life. Could be a relationship, a financial uncertainty, whatever.

Step 2: Observe the instinct that your body-mind has to contract away from the difficult energy. This is experienced most often as a tightening in the centre of the chest. It is almost like an effort to turn away from or deny the issue. Take a bit of time here to see and experience this as clearly as you can.

Step 3: Now, whilst holding the same situation in mind consciously relax/de-contract the energy in your heart. As you breathe out feel your energy opening and expanding into the circumstance and the feelings surrounding it. By doing this, invite your body-mind to be friendly with the challenge you are facing. Do this for a few breaths or even a few minutes. Observe how this simple expanding into, rather than contracting away from changes the dynamic of your experience. Get comfortable with the discomfort.

Step 4: Now ask yourself the question “What is it that this situation offering me? What opportunities for growth and creativity are there?”

I was a reading Harry Potter to my daughter last night, and Professor Dumbledore said to Harry whilst they were in a dark cave, crossing a still lake filled with dead bodies “It is the unknown we fear when we look upon death and darkness, nothing more”.
If we make a habit of expanding into our own challenges rather than contracting away from them, perhaps we might find the same kind of thing?

© Toby Ouvry 2014, 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

Sample feedback from meditation coaching client:

I was a relative mess when going to see Toby. Talking to someone always helps, but Toby’s easy “beginner’s” meditation sessions were a great way to control the anxiety I was suffering. I also found Toby relating his personal experiences to my own as a great way of telling me that I wasn’t alone. I would recommend this style of coaching to other people. Whilst Toby has had a different background to most of us, he is an “every day” guy which helps one relate to their own issues and makes the “strange new world” of meditation, easier to approach. Toby is a professional operator – BW

Click HERE to find out more about Toby’s 1:1 Coaching Services

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creative imagery Energy Meditation Inner vision Integral Awareness Meditation techniques mind body connection Primal Spirituality

On Healing and Meditation

Dear Toby,
I don’t know about you, but for me the run in toward Christmas has been a busy one, and I feel my body and mind a little fatigued as a result! With this in mind in this weeks article I thought I’d share one of the very simple healing meditation forms that I use to keep me pepped up and invigorated through challenging times

As you can also see below I’m also putting out a special coaching offer for December and January, so if you have been wanting some really intensive coaching focus on your life-journey and meditation practice, this is a really good opportunity to take advantage of! The coaching can be done face to face or via skype.

Yours in the spirit of healing and wellbeing,

Toby

On Healing and Meditation

Traditionally meditation was and is associated with the quest for enlightenment, and for contact with God. More recently it has drawn attention for its capacity to relieve stress and promote inner calm, but what about its capacity to heal the mind and body of sickness and ailments?
There are various traditions of healing meditation, from Qi gong meditation and the Tantric traditions in the east, to the Quaballistic (Tree of Life) and nature based spiritualities of the west, to the tribal Shamanic traditions that you find across the world.
The meditation that I outline below is a very simple healing meditation that I use quite extensively myself. The technique is simple, but the depth at which you are able to practice it depends upon your capacity as a meditator. It can be very effective if you are a beginner, but as you grow and become more advanced, you will find this technique will grow in power and effectiveness as you grow.

A Basic Healing Meditation Form

Sit on a chair with the soles of your feet comfortably on the floor. Take a few moments to focus on your breathing, calm your mind and bring your attention into the present moment.

Focus on the Earth beneath you. See and feel within the heart of the Earth there is a huge ocean of light and energy. See two streams of this energy rising up and connecting with you through the soles of your feet, filling your whole body with light and in particular forming an intense ball of light and energy within the centre of your chest.
Now focus your attention upon the sky above you, feel light and energy from the stars, sky and universe flowing down into your body and filling your whole body from top to bottom. In particular see it gathering in the centre of your chest so that you now have a very bright and intense ball of light and energy in the centre of your chest filling being fed by the energy of the Earth below and the sky above.
See and feel this ball of light and energy as being alive and pulsing with energy.

Optional: Bring your hands up to the level of your chest with the tips of the fingers a few inches apart, palms facing inward toward the ball of light. Use your palms to ‘hold’ and focus the ball of light, increasing its intensity.

See and feel the ball of light in the centre of your chest ‘pulsing’ energy out into your body, filling the organs, muscles etc from the centre of the body out to the skin with healing light and energy.

If you have any particular organ or area of the body that needs healing, or where you are aware of fatigue or blocked energy, see and feel the light going into that area.

Begin by doing this just for 5-10minutes at a time, build up to 20.

One requirement for this meditation is that you view the Earth beneath you and the sky/stars above as being living things, filled with energy and life force that you can tap into and bring into your own body mind for the purposes of healing.
© 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

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A Mind of Ease Concentration creative imagery Integral Awareness Integral Meditation Meditation techniques mind body connection

Shifting Down the Gears – On Meditation and Power Napping

Dear Integral Meditators,

I’m a great believer in power napping, in fact I am quite a believer in napping in general! This is not just because it is a good way of relaxing, from a meditation training point of view a nap offers a great opportunity to bring the experience of our ordinary everyday mind together with states of deeper, formless awareness. The article below offers a simple technique for making greater and more effective use of a power nap.

Just in case you missed it, here is the link to the Shadow Meditation free audio recordings that I sent our midweek, they are simple and effective ways to start developing an experience of working with your shadow.

If you enjoy the shadow meditations, then do consider joining us on the 27th October for the Shadow Meditation Level 1 Workshop.

Yours in the spirit of effective power napping,

Toby

Upcoming Courses at Integral Meditation Asia:
Sunday October 27th, 9.30am-12.30pm – Finding Freedom From What Holds You Back in Life: Practical Meditations And Techniques For Working With your Shadow-Self – A Three Hour Workshop

Tuesday 19th  November, 7.30-9.30pm – An Introduction to Meditation from the Perspective of Zen Level 1

24th November – An Introduction to Meditation From the Perspective of Zen Levels 2&3 (full details shortly)

Sunday December 1st – Shadow Meditation Level 2: Developing the Language of Your Shadow Self

Shifting Down the Gears – On Meditation and Power Napping

Let’s say you have ten minutes for a power nap during your day. The problem is that, by the time you get to the end of ten minutes your mind only has only just started slowing down fully enough for you to become truly relaxed, so the amount of actual fully rested time you get is not that substantial.
The following technique is one that you can use to slow down your mind in order to achieve a state of mental and physical deep calm and lucid resting relatively quickly. The key is not to try and go from active mind to totally still mind in one leap; rather it needs to be done progressively in stages.

Once you are lying down or sitting comfortably simply become aware of the current activity in your mind. Think of this natural activity and momentum as being like a car in fourth gear cruising along the road at say 50 kmh.
After watching the activity in your mind for a short time, deliberately try and reduce the amount of momentum/activity in your mind just slightly, as if you were shifting down from fourth to third gear in a car, and reducing your speed from 50kmh to 30-35kmh. You can use the exhalation if you like; as you breathe out feel the pace of your mind gently reducing…
Once you are in “third gear” then after a minute or so take the pace of your mind down another increment, like going from third gear to second gear, or from 30kmh to 15kmh. Again, use the exhalation of you like as a way of doing this.
After another minute or so of “second gear”, take your mind down another incremental level, down to first gear, or 5kmh or so. Again use the breathing to do this, or just mentally “reduce speed” just slightly.
Now you are down in “first gear”, your almost at a standstill, the mind is slow and relaxed. When you are ready try and let go of all activity in the mind and simply move into a state of deep, still resting. Stay there for the remainder of your power nap. Even if you can’t keep your mind totally still for the rest of the time, the state of relaxation that you will have achieved by this progressive “winding down” of your mind will still be deeper than it would otherwise be.

You can also use this technique as a method for going to sleep at night, or as a meditation technique for slowing down the mind in general. From a meditative point of view the interesting thing about power napping is that when you do it you can often find yourself in a state of “lucid napping”, where you are technically asleep, and yet you still have an element of conscious awareness. This state of mind resembles (note, not quite the same as) deep states of formless meditation that are achieved by proficient meditators who have meditated for long periods of time. Thus power napping, as well as making us more effective at work can also give us a glimpse of the deeper and higher reaches of consciousness that lie beyond our ordinary waking awareness.
© 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

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Biographical creative imagery Meditation and Psychology mind body connection

The Story of Your Breathing

Often times when we are taught to meditate on the breathing it is primarily as an exercise in concentration, and/or where we alter our breathing in some way in order to achieve a certain effect, such as relaxation.
The technique I explain below is a free form method of working with the breathing that invites self-discovery, greater awareness and the inner strength that comes from this.

I’ve been taking a holiday for the last week or so now, and the main way that I have been enjoying my own awareness of breathing is observing how my pattern of breathing is intimately connected to the story of my life

  • When I reflect on the current happiness and joy in my life, I can feel and sense that joy and happiness subtly altering and communicating itself in the way my body breathes
  • The sadness and stress that I feel is similarly reflected in my body’s breathing as my mind ponders

In both a literally real and a poetic sense it seems as if the pattern of my breathing is telling the story of my life whenever I tune into it; my experiences, my age, my history, everything I am as well as all that I might become in the future seems to be held in the energy and pattern of each each breath.

So, amidst the relative busyness that I find myself in at this time whilst on holiday I’ve taken to finding a bit of time just to sit down with my back resting against a tree, closing my eyes, focusing on my breathing and listening to the story that it is telling me.
Some of the things that it tells me I know, some things are new, all of it helps me to feel more fully alive to the process of my life as it is now, the struggles, the joys, the unknowns. As I focus on the story of my breathing and its vulnerability I feel a new and deeper strength growing in me.

© 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

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Awareness and insight Enlightened love and loving Integral Meditation Meditation and Psychology Meditation techniques mind body connection Motivation and scope One Minute Mindfulness spiritual intelligence

Love as the Journey Towards Wholeness; Three Awareness Perspectives

Dear Integral Meditators,

I hope you have had a good week, the last few weeks for me seem to have been a period of adjustment making on different levels, and challenges that reflect those adjustments. Of course adjustments, changes and the challenges that go with them are all a fundamental part of the fabric of our life. One thing that I find with a daily meditation practice is that it really helps me to negotiate these periods of change and adjustment in an energetically ergonomic way; one learns to expend enough energy to meet the demands of the situation, and enjoy the learning that comes from it, without chasing ones tail unnecessarily and getting exhausted…

This weeks article focuses on love as the journey toward wholeness, I hope you’ll find that it treads the line between looking at “big”ideas and staying grounded and practical!

Yours in the spirit of wholeness through love,
Toby
 


Love as the Journey Towards Wholeness; Three Awareness Perspectives

There is a close relationship (ideally) between the experience of love and the practice of meditation. If we say that love is essentially the journey toward the experience of wholeness within ourselves, and define meditation as a practice that takes our mind from the experience of distraction and diversity toward a state of unity and oneness, then I think it is not difficult to see how they support and enhance each other:

  • Whenever we experience love (for example toward another person), our heart and mind expand, connect and unify in a way that closely resembles a relaxed, open, meditative state
  • Whenever we focus the mind in an un-distracted, unified state in meditation, we can begin to feel the flow of love and life-force in our body

In this article I want to look at three ways in which we can use meditation and mindfulness as a part of our journey toward wholeness and love.

Meditation as an inward journey toward love and wholeness
The first way in which we can experience love through meditation is by journeying deeper into the true nature of our own consciousness. If we go beyond the awareness of ourself as a physical body, and then beyond our awareness of oursef as a psychological collection of habitual thoughts, feelings and images, we discover the formless, timeless, witnessing dimension of self that lies beyond.
This formless, timeless self is referred to in the great wisdom traditions as the True Self, so called because it is the self within us that remains constant and unchanging through-out our life. It is also called the Universal Self, because the formless, timeless, witnessing self within me is exactly the same as the formless, timeless, witnessing self in you, in all human beings, animals, plants and indeed anything that possesses consciousness. So, by connecting to the formless, timeless self we connect to a dimension of our being that is constantly and experientially in a state of oneness, wholeness and love with everything else in the Universe.

Meditation as an outward journey toward love and wholeness
The second way in which we can experience love and wholeness through meditation is by making the effort each day to expand our circle of concern so that it becomes progressively larger and larger. We start by extending love empathy toward ourself, then our family and friends, then people we don’t  know, then people we may not like, expanding ever outward to include all living beings (yep, animals and plants too).
To experience love in this way is to be mindful that everyone matters, and to make our decisions based around this recognition. Of course we can’t avoid making decisions that hurt others at times, or that will harm them one way or another, but to live in a state of love means to live in a state where everyone is included, and we make our decisions based around an awareness of this inclusivity.

Opening the heart; facilitating the ongoing giving and receiving of love in our life
The third way we can grow our love each day is to make sure that our heart is energetically open to the giving and receiving of love. You can feel whether your heart is energetically open right now by tuning into the centre of your chest-space. Is this area of your body open and dilated, allowing energy to flow? Or is it contracted and closed, unable to give or receive love or life energy? If you spend most of your time with your heart energetically closed, then you will end up like so many of us do feeling starved of loving energy and feeling isolated and  alone even when surrounded by others.
Yes, when you open your heart to the world you may feel more vulnerable, and yes it does take courage (and discernment), but if you take that risk then you will feel alive each day with the energy of love, and allow your life to be informed by that love. The alternative is to live in a mental “ivory tower” heart closed, risking nothing but gaining nothing. You can deaden the pain in your life by closing your heart, but by doing so you cut yourself off from the flow of love, which is a high price to pay indeed.

One Minute Mindfulness for Practically Integrating the Three Above Techniques:

  1. Spend a minute dropping your mental baggage and resting in the formless, timeless, witnessing dimension of your consciousness, recognize that on this level of your consciousness you are actually and literally always in a state of oneness and wholeness with all other living creatures, and the whole living universe. Rest in the love baby!
  2. Take a minute each day to care about someone (human, animal, plant) that would normally be outside of your circle of concern. Make the effort each day to include more and more living things in your circle of love and wholeness
  3. Through-out the day be mindful of your physical heart space. Is it energetically closed, defended and dead, or open, alive and flowing? Try and consciously increase the amount of time in your day that your heart is in a dilated, open state of giving and receiving love.

© 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