Category: Stress Transformation

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Developmental acceptance – Allowing it to be messy & imperfect

“Skillful acceptance means noticing that you can center yourself in the middle of feelings of chaos, messiness, or dis-orientation, be present to them without panicking”

Dear Integral Meditators, 

This week’s article looks at how to use mindfulness to work with your reality in a creative way, even and particularly when it seems messy!

If you enjoy the article, it will be the subject of our meditation at this weeks Tuesday & Wednesday Meditation class: 
 The Wisdom of Awakening Series:  Meditations for cultivating your inner guidance & guru.
All welcome to attend. This series is the course for this week and July.

In the spirit of acceptance,

Toby


Developmental acceptance – Allowing things to be messy & imperfect
 
Harmony from chaos – The way of the artist and creative
At a certain stage in my path, I spent time working with the idea of my art (at the time painting & sculpture) as a path of ‘harmony through conflict’. This basically meant that, to create beauty or harmony, you need to reach into chaos, disorder and sometimes ugliness. Then, by working skilfully with it you can draw out the beauty and order. So, the first part of any creative process then, is to learn to ‘be’ with the disorder/chaos, and start working with it from a centred point of view.
 
Chaos, inner and outer is messy
The tricky part about sitting with chaos is that the feeling of it is very ‘messy’ and confusing. It doesn’t feel comfortable to sit with. One reason why many people are not more creative is because they would prefer to sit with a reality that feels ‘tidy’, ordered and ‘safe’, even if that version of reality is someone else’s, even if it is dysfunctional, and even if the ‘order’ isn’t that appealing to us.
 
Accepting & working with chaos
So, to work with the messiness of reality, and start building our capacity to work with it creatively, we first must practice ‘sitting with the messiness’, which is to say sitting and getting comfortable with it, which actually means ‘getting comfortable with the uncomfortable’(!)
To get comfortable with messiness means accepting that it makes us anxious and dis-oriented. Skillful acceptance means noticing that you can center yourself in the middle of those feelings of chaos and messiness, be present to them without panicking. From the centred comfort that acceptance gives you, you can then look for ways to:

  • Notice what’s useful and good about the current messy-ness
  • Make small initial steps towards ordering the situation
  • Let your intuitive, rational and instinctual intelligence work together to see patterns in the chaos that help you start to see what the situation is offering you, and what it can become

 
Practicing developmental acceptance
On a practical level, I find this type of developmental acceptance enables me to work with what is happening in my day much more creatively. For example, today:

  • Sitting down at my desk to write this article, I found that the initial idea I had did not ‘fit’ like I imagined it would
  • This immediately put me in a place of dis-orientation, discomfort. Centering in that dis-orientation and getting comfortable with it, I became curious about how I could start to mold a new order from the messiness. Staying centered also needed a bit of the qualities of care and courage to stay with it; some gentle positive inner self-talk and re-assurance
  • Acceptance itself started to emerge as a theme, relaxing into it, and without trying too hard I let my intuition, rationality, and instinct start to put some structure to the basic theme, to sculpt and form a harmony from the mess
  • Forty minutes or so later I had written the article that you are now reading

 
You will notice from the above description that the first ‘move’ was noticing and accepting the initial ‘messiness’ of my reality. Accepting and centering like this then enabled me to harmonize my reality much more quickly and effectively than if I had been fighting with it.
You will notice also that I use the three C’s, curiosity, courage and care as a central part of the ‘developmental acceptance’ methodology.
 
Related reading: Cultivating your positive imperfectionist
Applying the Three C’s of Engaged Mindfulness

​© Toby Ouvry 2022, 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

Follow Toby on: LinkedIn, YouTube, Instagram

Integral Meditation Asia

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How did I get through tough times as a Monk?

“Resilient endurance in the face of the ongoing difficulties is more a matter of imaginative compassion than simply ‘getting tougher’”

Dear Toby, 

This week’s article explores how I used a particular meditation technique to work with difficulties when I was a monk. If you enjoy it, we will be focusing upon it as a part of this weeks Tuesday & Wednesday meditation class. 


In the spirit of compassionate imagination,

Toby


How did I get through tough times as a Monk?
 
During my time as a Buddhist monk, there were plenty of times when I felt I had my back against the wall.

  • Lack of financial & material resources was always a threat
  • Being an unknown element in a mainstream society mean that not all attention was good attention by any means
  • The organization that I worked for was often understaffed in terms of manpower, and so there was often a sense of having to do several different (unpaid) jobs at the same time
  • The path of meditation itself threw up many things to be processed as I moved from one level to the next.

There was a particular set of meditation instructions called ‘Lojong’, or ‘instructions for training the mind’ which was particularly useful at such times. I would even go as far as to say it was my main practice, in the sense of the one that I derived the most value from. I’ll describe below a simple process that I would follow in meditation that really captures the essence of it. For the sake of an example, let’s imagine that the suffering I am contemplating is the heat and discomfort of being a monk in Singapore, where it is very hot and humid, and I was often living in placed without air-conditioning.
 
A visual tool
These meditations were often done with a jewel of enlightenment visualized at my heart. The jewel would be made of light and have the essence of my enlightened nature.
 
“May all my future sufferings ripen upon me now”
This first position involved contemplating the suffering or confusion that I was going through, and then, in the spirit of compassion say something like:
 
“May all my future suffering of this kind ripen upon me right now”
 
I would then imagine all the future suffering, to use the example all the discomfort and dizziness of living with too much heat, gathering around me as dark light and smoke. It them ‘ripened upon me now’ by dissolving into the ‘jewel of enlightenment’ at my heart, eventually disappearing. I would then strongly think that all my future suffering regarding heat had already been endured, and that I was free from it, relaxing into the joy of that recognition.
So, of course I was still sitting in the heat of Singapore, and would continue to do so. But the effect of the meditation, at least for a while is that my mental and emotional pain around the heat would reduce dramatically, and I could continue on in a state of relative peace and calm.
 
“May the sufferings of others ripen upon me now”
A further development of this was reflecting upon the fact that my suffering was only one persons’, and that there were many other living beings experiencing the same and worse regarding discomfort and pain around heat/temperature. So then reflecting upon this compassionately I would contemplate “May the sufferings of heat of all living beings ripen upon me now!”
I would then imagine this pain & suffering gathering around me like a cloud of dark, hot(!) smoke, and see it then dissolving into the jewel of enlightenment at my heart, eventually disappearing.  I would then meditate strongly on the thought that all those suffering from heat in different ways had been liberated, and were now free and happy. I took this joyful recognition as an object of meditation for a few minutes.
 
The purpose of doing this meditation was not to be masochistic, rather it was, and is to:

  • Develop resilient endurance in the face of the ongoing difficulties
  • Strengthen compassion and reduce unhealthy self-obsession
  • Find joy in the process of releasing ourself and others from pain and sufferings

Reading the sequence through initially may leave you thinking “Eeeuw, no way!” but doing the practice a few times, we start to see how effective it is at reducing our pain and suffering in the moment, and finding ways to get through challenging times relatively unscathed. It certainly was and is a method I’ve found most useful in my own path.
 
Article & content © Toby Ouvry 2024, 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


Follow Toby on: LinkedIn, YouTube, Instagram

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Your primal self as your object of mindfulness

“As we develop from one stage of growth to another as a person, we leave behind the old self in favour of a more evolved one. This new self-sense them becomes ‘I’ or me, with the previous self-identity becoming part of us that we manage or parent”

Dear Integral Meditators, 

This weeks article explores looks at oour early-stage development as an object of mindfulness, & what the benefits of doing so might be. If you like it, do consider joining us on the new adventure starting on 9/10th April: Exploring your hidden maps of consciousness –mindfulness meditation for growing up, either live or online!

This week there will be only one meditation class on Wednesday, & it will be on the subject of single-headness (how to manage your stress more effectively thru mindfulness) & ‘head-lessness‘ which is a kind of non-dual meditation.

In the spirit of primal integration,

Toby


Your primal self as your object of mindfulness
 
As we develop from one stage of growth to another (psychologically) as a person, we leave behind, or objectify the old sense of self, in favour of a more evolved one. This new sense of self them becomes ‘I’ or me, with the previous self-identity becoming a part of us that we manage.
 
Our first sense of self – Basic appetites, fusion confusion
 
The first 18 months of our life is characterized by the absence of a separate self-sense. Initially we are ‘fused’ our environment. Later we start to separate our self-sense physically, but remain for a while longer in a state of emotional fusion with our environment and particularly our mother.  This is a  symbiotic or fusion stage, a bit of a fusion-confusion!
This self-sense is accordingly completely dominated by our physiological needs, food, thirst, warmth, coolness, comfort, discomfort, rest.
 
Addictions & allergies – Yes, we left it behind but…
 
We start to grow out of this fusion-confusion stage from 18 months. As a 51 year old I say “I am hungry” rather than “I am hunger!”. I can distinguish myself physically and emotionally from my environment. However, if I have left parts of me behind at that level, either as a secret identity or as a dissociation, then that can result in an ‘addiction’ or an ‘allergy’. For example, regarding hunger:

  • Addiction: If I still have a part of me still fully identified as being (not having) hunger, then this may result in me having trouble regulating my diet and weight, resulting in extreme cases as obesity
  • Allergy: If I have dissociated myself from hunger, then I may be out of touch with my basic hunger needs, not eating properly and being underweight or undernourished. In extreme cases this might manifest in anorexia or bulimia

Sometimes also you may notice a fusion-confusion type experience with your environment or in your relationships. Public spaces become confusing as your senses ‘merge’ with them, or the emotional space between yourself and others becomes very blurred and difficult to regulate. Some of this may be due to a part of self that has been left behind at the primal stage.
 
Clearing up to grow up more fully using mindfulness
 
From a mindfulness-as-therapy point of view, the essential method is quite simple; you bring to mind basic needs like hunger, thirst, as well as experiences of ‘fusion-confusion’ mentioned above (separately, not all at once!), and practice mindfully observing them, and your relationship to them. The making subjects into objects nature of mindfulness will naturally help start to clear up any allergies or addictions that may remain at this stage…
 
My personal experience of being mindful with this stage
 
Regarding basic appetites I discovered that I tend toward the “allergy” relationship to food, I usually have trouble keeping up my weight, and eating is a discipline rather than a joy. So, it helped me re-balance that which was useful.
Secondly the revisiting the fusion-confusion stage resulted in me feeling a surprising increase in clarity regarding my environmental and relational awareness.
 
Integrating, transcending & including
 
A healthy integration of your primal-self* enables you to create healthy self-regulation of your basic needs & appetites. It also helps create a clear distinction of self from others & environment. We have a healthier ‘separate’ self-sense, but can engage (and withdraw from) conscious ‘fusion’ when appropriate.
 
I’d encourage you to spend some time with this as a practice, it seems initially that we should all have grown fully out or this stage. But if you look at problems humans have around basic appetites and self-regulation like food, we can see that there are huge imbalances there. You may be surprised at how powerful and transformative it is for you. It certainly was for me!
 
*In integral psychology this is level 1 of human psychological development, and termed ‘Infrared archaic’
 
Related content: Subjects to objects – How meditation helps you grow to greater degrees of freedom

Article & content © Toby Ouvry 2024, 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
 


All upcoming classes and workshops at IMA:

Ongoing – Weekly Tuesday, Wednesday Online class schedule

Ongoing on Wednesday’s, 7.30-8.30pm – Wednesday Meditation for stress transformation and positive energy with Toby (Bukit Timah)

Ongoing on Tuesday evenings, 7.30-8.30pm – Tuesday Meditation for stress transformation and positive energy with Toby  (East Coast)

Starts Tuesday/Wednesday evening 9/10th April – Exploring your hidden maps of consciousness –mindfulness meditation for growing up

Saturday & Sunday April 20th & 21st – Integral Meditation 1.5 Day Retreat

Follow Toby on: LinkedIn, YouTube, Instagram

Integral Meditation Asia

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

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Transcending & including – Integrating the big & the small selves

Dear Integral Meditators, 

This week’s article looks at the practice of transcending & including. It is an important practice for everyone, but particularly if you are on a path of inner growth, as you are actively transcending and including as your path evolves.

This week’s Tuesday & Wednesday meditation continues our journey into Therapeutic mindfulness, and will look at the theme of transcending & including. If you enjoy the article, feel free to join us!

In the spirit of inclusion, 
 
Toby

Transcending & including – Integrating the big & the small selves
 
As you grow you get inwardly, as well as outwardly bigger
Babies identify only with their physical body up until around 18months. Up until the age of 4 years, we can only take a first-person perspective: ‘me’, ‘I’ & ‘mine’. Growing older as children and teenagers, we see ourself as a part of a ‘we’ space, our family, our friends, my team. If we become fully fledged rational humans, we learn to take a healthy third person perspective, an ‘it’ space, where we consider everyone to have value, and our circle of concern becomes world-centric, universal and much bigger.
As we continue this growth further onto higher levels, our self-sense gets bigger and bigger, more and more inclusive. Our ‘I’ becomes more & more universal in nature.
 
The principle of transcending & including
When we grow it’s not that our older, smaller selves cease to exist, it’s just that they get transcended. My child-like egoic self is still there when I grow to the next stage, it’s just that it becomes only a part of what I am, held and contextualized by the bigger, more inclusive self of the next stage. The bigger self transcends, but includes the smaller self.

  • The ‘transcending’ part of this means that we grow beyond our previous limited sense of who we are
  • The ‘include’ part of this ensures that the smaller self feels secure and honoured within the new self structure.

A simple example: Yesterday I spent quite a lot of time playing with my three year-old. This meant my ‘inner child’ coming online and me being ‘childish’! However, my child-self was held by my mature or adult self. For my daughter, she ‘is’ the child. For me as an adult I act in a child like way, but he is held by a bigger self-sense that is the adult. My adult self transcends and includes my child self.
 
Avoiding allergies & addictions
Transcending and including needs to be done in a healthy manner otherwise:

  • If I transcend the previous stage too much, instead of detaching from it healthily, I disassociate with it, it becomes an ‘allergy’, something foreign. For example if I dissociate with my inner child, outer children become incomprehensible, silly and foreign. Inwardly I lose the ability to be playful, joyful and spontaneous. I become a stiff, repressed adult, ‘allergic’ to child-like behaviour
  • If I include the previous stage too much, a part of my identity gets ‘stuck’ at that level. I find myself compulsively becoming child-like in some situations, the behaviours feel like ‘addictions’. I keep regressing to this level uncontrollably. To return to the child analogy, I might usually keep a good diet, but then keep sabotaging that by eating one biscuit, and then the whole packet. My self-regulation becomes periodically child-like and chaotic!

 
Mindful therapeutic integration
To work therapeutically with the transcend and include principle, take any part of your smaller selves as the object. For example, you could take:

  • Your child self
  • Your eating urges
  • A part of you very identified with a past trauma
  • A part of you identified with a particular belief

The list here is very large. Sitting in a mindful state you simply bring it to mind, and watch it. As Ken Wilber says, you imagine you are video -taping it as an observer. The part of you that observes simply witnesses it with a ‘transcend and include’ approach:

  • The ‘transcendent’ part of it means that your witness has a sense of itself as something bigger than and separate from the part of self you are observing
  • The ‘include’ part of it means that your witness self acknowledges, accepts, and gently embraces the smaller self.

If you do this, the idea would be that any ‘addictions’ or ‘allergies’ that you have developed to smaller parts of yourself as you have grown beyond them will gradually be released. You will find yourself in an increasingly balanced and integrated relationship to your smaller selves, free from addictions and allergies.
 
Related reading:  Creating an inner therapeutic mindfulness space
Suppression & repression – the difference, & it’s importance
Bodies within bodies – Witnessing with your energy bodies
The body is in you – How to go into deep meditation quickly

Article content © Toby Ouvry & Integral Meditation Asia 2023. you are welcome to share, but please cite the source, thanks! Contact info@tobyouvry.com 

Integral Meditation Asia

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Re-working your ego by expanding your self-concept (AKA: Van Halen therapy)

“In a situation where your self-concept doesn’t believe you can meet & solve a challenge, you can do one of two things. You can give up, or you can change your idea of yourself, making it one that can work with what is presenting”

Dear Integral Meditators, 

This weeks article explores how to work mindfully with your ego & self concept in a creative, empowered way. If you enjoy it, then you are invited to come along to the Tuesday or Wednesday meditation class, where we will be focusing on this subject. 

A couple of dates for your diary, in addition to the Two day meditation retreat on Oct 28-29th:

In the spirit of turning subjects into objects,

Toby 

Re-working your ego by expanding your self-concept (AKA: Van Halen therapy)
 
The Ego is
One of the definitions that I like for the ego is simply ‘the unifying centre of awareness’ of a person. It is the self-sense that sits in the middle of you as you navigate your daily experiences. Ego is not a positive or negative term, but a neutral one. However, we can say that a person has a strong or functional ego, which is a good thing, or a weak, dysfunctional ego which is not a good thing. Our ego also operates according to ethical values, or a lack of ethical values, and this distinction also makes an ego a relatively ‘positive’ or ‘negative’ thing. These values can be held consciously or unconsciously by the ego in question.
 
Your self-concept is
Your idea of who you are. It is the mental template that you have built up over your life about:

  • The ‘type’ of person you are
  • What is possible & not possible for you
  • The story of how you became who you are

…and so on. Your self-concept generally creates a sense of what you can and can’t do in life, what you like and don’t like. When you are faced with a challenge, your ability to deal with that problem is intimately related to your self-concept. Your self-concept projects onto the situation what it thinks and believes. In a situation where your self-concept doesn’t believe you can meet and solve a challenge, you can do one of two things:

  • You can give up, or
  • You can change your idea of yourself, making it one that can work with what is presenting

 
Relating imaginatively to a new idea of yourself
I remember one time when I was feeling particularly overwhelmed by always having to ‘put myself out there’ as a creative and as a small business owner. I really felt out of my comfort zone. It felt alien to my idea of myself, it felt uncomfortable and exhausting. I had a dream one night of being with Daid Lee Roth (ex-lead singer of Van Halen). I was hanging out with him on the void-deck of an HDB block of flats in Singapore. Preparations were underway for a concert, and after chatting enthusiastically to me for a short while, DL-R just got up on stage with his band and did the concert, singing and dancing around half-naked, and just letting go and enjoying himself with the small group of people that was there.
I woke up feeling light, energised, and encouraged. In the subsequent days, week’s, and still to this day (the dream was years ago) I often think of this dream, and imagine myself being like David L-R, just dancing though my life, meeting what is there with enthusiasm, spontaneity, and not being afraid of a bit of exhibitionism.
This idea, and working with it imaginatively really changed my self-concept, and consequently my sense of what is possible, what can energise me not drain me, and so on. In short, I re-worked my ego using a new image-template.
 
Using this expanded self for inner healing & growth
So, the basic idea is that if you have a psychological block that is holding you back, or you don’t think you care ‘capable’ of achieving something, you create an image or idea of yourself that can, and then start relating to that image.
 
Paths beyond the ego
If you are connected to the Soul level of things, quite often you will find that ideas, images, and happenings occur in your life that you can readily use for this type of work, so pay attention!
The ego is the mental/psychological level of self, so there are a number levels of self beyond ego on the soul and spiritual level of things. However, the ego and self-concept are really ‘lynch-pins’ between the upper and lower levels of self, so we really need to work on making our self-concept a healthy, resilient, wise and fun-loving one!
 
Related reading: Your bright shadow – The one who can do what you can’t

Article content © Toby Ouvry & Integral Meditation Asia 2023. you are welcome to share, but please cite the source, thanks! Contact info@tobyouvry.com  

In case you missed last week’s video: ‘Subjects to objects – How meditation helps you grow to greater degrees of freedom’

Summary: This video discusses two main subjects related to meditation. The first part explores why and how a meditation practice helps individuals grow as individuals. Meditation is described as a process that transforms subjects of consciousness (e.g., body, emotions, ego) into objects of consciousness, leading to reduced identification with these aspects and increased inner freedom…watch full video

Integral Meditation Asia

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

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Mindfulness of mood & atmosphere of your life-story

“You might think about your inner mood as being like the weather. If you are playing a game of tennis in a sunny, lightly breezy day, its completely different from playing it on a rainy, very windy day. We can usually shift ourself at least partially toward a better mood if we try, and this then affects everything for the better”

Dear Integral Meditators, 

This week’s newsletter slightly early, and has three things in it:

  • Firstly, an article on the importance of mindfulness around your mood.
  • Secondly if you are interested in meditation sound technology, I have been using I-awake for many years now. They have some great products, and they are all on a 30% off Labour day sale until 4th September (US time). This technology is also a great way to help change the mood and ambience of your life for the better!
  • Thirdly, beneath the article you can find all the courses and workshops for September, quite an exciting line-up, starting with the Qi gong workshop on the 9th September!

 
In the spirit of mood & atmosphere,

Toby 

Now Live: iAwake Labor Day Weekend Sale
 
From August 31 – September 4, 2023, we are holding our annual Labor Day Weekend Sale, one of our biggest sales this year. This sale features 30% OFF on Digital Tracks and 25% OFF on CDs + Digital. Check out our catalog and take advantage of this annual opportunity to receive huge discounts on iAwake tracks and add to or complete your iAwake toolkit.
 
Discount Coupon Code for DIGITAL (30% OFF): IAWAKELABOR2023

Mindfulness of mood & atmosphere of your life-story
 
When trying to improve our daily experience through mindfulness quite often peoples focus is upon

  • Focusing better
  • Thinking more positively
  • Thinking less
  • Relaxing more

These are all noble pursuits of course, but what I find often gets missed is attention to the mood and the inner atmosphere that we do things. If you think about it our mood is very important. For example, if your mood is habitually anxious and fearful then this naturally

  • Interrupts your focus
  • Makes it difficult to think positively
  • Creates low-grade mental busyness/ habitual overthinking
  • Makes it tough to relax

In my classes and coaching recently, one of the things that I have been emphasizing to students and clients is awareness of their habitual moods, and deliberately moving them toward a lighter more benevolent inner atmosphere. For example, if having noticed our inner mood in the moment we then direct it towards a combination of

  • Curiosity & playful inquisitiveness
  • Warmth & care

Then if we can establish that as an atmosphere in our body-mind, it then starts to colour our daily experience and activities

  • Warm & curious atmospheres are easy to build relaxed-focus in
  • Its natural and quite easy to think positively
  • We feel less compelled to think all the time
  • Activities just ‘feel’ naturally more enjoyable

 
The weather you are playing the game in
You might think about your inner mood as being like the weather. If you are playing a game of tennis in a sunny, lightly breezy day, its completely different from playing it on a rainy, very windy day. We can’t always completely control our mood, but we can usually shift ourself at least partially toward a better mood if we try, and this then affects everything for the better.
Playing with moods therapeutically
In my article last week on Therapeutic mindfulness I outline six practices which might also be thought of as ways of creating inner moods that are both strengthening and healing:

  • Grounded & sensory
  • Safety & non-emergency
  • Warmth & compassion
  • Appreciation
  • Curiosity & courage
  • A sense of being supported

All of these are possible moods that you can cultivate. Of course, there are many more that you could choose to focus on, according to your needs and inclinations. It’s something to have fun cultivating!


If you enjoy this article, you might enjoy the upcoming Therapeutic mindfulness course beginning on 26/27th September!

Related article: Mindful of your moods, emotions and dispositions

© Toby Ouvry 2023, 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


All upcoming classes and workshops at IMA:

Ongoing – Weekly Tuesday, Wednesday Online class schedule

Ongoing on Wednesday’s, 7.30-8.30pm – Wednesday Meditation for stress transformation and positive energy with Toby (Bukit Timah)

Ongoing on Tuesday evenings, 7.30-8.30pm – Tuesday Meditation for stress transformation and positive energy with Toby  (East Coast)

Ongoing Tues/Weds in August/Sept – The Wisdom of Awakening Series: Meditations for developing wisdom around inner-growth, happiness & fulfillment

Saturday August 26th, 9.30-11.30am – Monthly Qi Gong & Taoist Breathwork Clinic & Mini-retreat

Saturday Saturday 9th September, 9am-12.30pm – Qi Gong for Improving your Health and Energy Levels and for Self-Healing

Wednesday 20th September, 7.30-8.30pm – Autumn Equinox balancing & renewing meditation

Starting Tues 26th & Weds 27th September – Re-discovering your inner vitality & joie-de-vivre – An introduction to integrative therapeutic mindfulness & meditation

Saturday 30th September & Sunday 1st October, 9.30am-1pm – Meditations for connecting to the Tree of Life, and growing your own personal Life Tree

Saturday October 7th, 9.30-11.30am – Monthly Qi Gong & Taoist Breathwork Clinic & Mini-retreat

Saturday & Sunday October 28th & 29th – Integral Meditation Two Day Retreat

Tues/Weds Oct 31st, Nov 1st – Seasonal class: Samhain – Healing the wounds & receiving the gifts of our ancestors

Tues/Weds Nov 14th/15th – Seasonal class: Deepavali -connecting to your inner light

Integral Meditation Asia

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

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Creating an inner therapeutic mindfulness space – six positions

“The purpose of therapeutic mindfulness is to go back to previous stages in our development in order to reconnect to feelings, emotions, body sensations & memories that we have repressed, denied, or lost touch with. The healthy re-integration of these experiences sets the scene for a renewed sense of wellbeing within our present life, & for safely engaging in higher, deeper levels of personal growth.”

Dear Integral Meditators, 

On the 26th/27th September I will be starting a 10 module program – “An introduction to integrative therapeutic mindfulness & meditation – Re-discovering your inner vitality & joie-de-vivre“, the article below explores how we can create a context for mindfulness as a therapeutic practice. Many of the positions below I’ve written about reasonably extensively before, but the ordering of them is specific to doing therapeutic mindfulness. 

If you enjoy the article I invite you to click on the link & find our more about the course!

In the spirit of our inner support system,

Toby 

Creating an inner therapeutic mindfulness space – six positions
 
The purpose of therapeutic mindfulness is to go back to previous stages in our development in order to reconnect to feelings, emotions, body sensations and memories that we have repressed, denied, and lost touch with. The healthy re-integration of these experiences sets the scene for a renewed sense of wellbeing within our present life. It also lays the foundation for then exploring the higher, deeper levels of meditation states (psychic, subtle, causal, non-dual) in a way that is balanced and sustainable. Below are a set of qualities to cultivate when engaging in therapeutic mindfulness. Each one of them has benefits in an of themselves, but practiced together they make for a good combination within which we can then go on to do some inner healing work.
 
Grounding in the senses – Work that involves contacting potentially volatile emotions or feelings needs to be done whilst grounded enough in the present moment in order to feel the stability of our senses supporting us, so that we don’t feel completely ‘carried away’ by the experience.
Safety – Repressed emotions can feel dangerous, so connecting to the basic safety of this moment – recognizing that there are no immanent threats to our present wellbeing – is a fundamental position to be familiar with.
Warmth & compassion – Establishing as far as we can a feeling of basic warmth and compassion toward ourselves at the beginning of the session, and as we encounter our experiences during the TM session.
Appreciation – Having an appropriate sense of our life being a good place with the existence of people, places and experiences that make it rich and enjoyable. This then means that when we encounter challenges in our therapeutic mindfulness practice, it is always contextualized by this sense of overall appreciation/ positivity.
Curiosity & courage – TM can feel like heavy work sometimes, so cultivating a sense of lightness and curiosity is helpful in this regard. It helps us avoid getting overly caught up and identified in the experience. Similarly, courage can help us hugely as, by its nature TM involves contact and sometimes confrontation with parts of us that we fear or would otherwise wish to avoid. This doesn’t mean you have to be some kind of big hero, just that you have whatever courage you possess present and available to you when doing TM.
A sense of being supported – It can be useful if you have any belief or sense of a higher, deeper supporting being or intelligence to invoke or feel the presence of it/her/him before you engage in therapeutic mindfulness practice. This is personal and can be done any way that the practitioner finds acceptable or appropriate.
 
With these six positions available to you and in place, you should then feel confident in engaging in any kind of therapeutic mindfulness practice that you might want to, with a sense of these qualities supporting and enhancing your practice.

© Toby Ouvry 2022, 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


All upcoming classes and workshops at IMA:

Ongoing – Weekly Tuesday, Wednesday Online class schedule

Ongoing on Wednesday’s, 7.30-8.30pm – Wednesday Meditation for stress transformation and positive energy with Toby (Bukit Timah)

Ongoing on Tuesday evenings, 7.30-8.30pm – Tuesday Meditation for stress transformation and positive energy with Toby  (East Coast)

Ongoing Tues/Weds in August/Sept – The Wisdom of Awakening Series: Meditations for developing wisdom around inner-growth, happiness & fulfillment

Saturday August 26th, 9.30-11.30am – Monthly Qi Gong & Taoist Breathwork Clinic & Mini-retreat

Saturday Saturday 9th September, 9am-12.30pm – Qi Gong for Improving your Health and Energy Levels and for Self-Healing

Wednesday 20th September, 7.30-8.30pm – Autumn Equinox balancing & renewing meditation

Starting Tues 26th & Weds 27th September – Re-discovering your inner vitality & joie-de-vivre – An introduction to integrative therapeutic mindfulness & meditation

Saturday 30th September & Sunday 1st October, 9.30am-1pm – Meditations for connecting to the Tree of Life, and growing your own personal Life Tree

Saturday & Sunday October 28th & 29th – Integral Meditation Two Day Retreat

Integral Meditation Asia

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

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How to meditate when you are ill or sick

“When you are ill, trust your body and it’s capacity for healing. Relax and get yourself out of the way. Dropping into short spaces of non-doing really helps to stay stable and keep on keeping on, even when your energy is low and you are feeling somewhat dis-oriented”

Dear Integral Meditators,

This weeks article is a personal reflection on some of the basic meditation techniques I use when I get ill. They are relatively simple positions that, if you can remember to do them make a huge difference! If your going through a  stage where your being exposed to bugs at the same time as having to work hard (like I am with a pre-schooler in the house), then having a meditation plan around sickness is a game changer…

If you enjoy the article, then you might be interested in the Meditation and Mindfulness for Self-Healing and Creating High Levels of Energy workshop that I will be doing on Saturday the 8th July 9.30am-12.30pm as a live & live-stream session.

In the spirit of health & energy,

Toby 

How to meditate when you are ill or sick
 
This last week I have been a little under the weather with a flu and cough bug. Even a minor illness has quite a lot of power to incapacitate our meditation efforts, so what I have done below is to outline a few positions I use when I am ill to navigate the process smoothly, and also maintain the basic momentum of my practice even though I’m not feeling great.  
 
Basic positions: Being primarily present & maintaining functional breathing  
Your basic task as a meditator is to establish your awareness as being primarily present in the moment, and secondarily thinking about stuff. This is the easiest and most essential position to stay with. You can take your body and breathing to do this, and it’s surprising how calm it can make you feel, even when you’re not feeling great.
Within your ‘primarily present’ position, you can then pay attention to your manner of breathing, and focus on ‘functional breathing’, which is breathing through your nose, and sending the air down into the lower lungs on your inbreath, connecting your nose to your belly. This is often one of the first things to go when you get ill, sustaining it helps your body to get on with its job of healing.
These two practices are your basic ‘navigation tools’ while you are sick. If you stay with them, the journey whilst you heal will be very much a part of your meditation journey.
 
Extending compassion to yourself & your body
Your body and you are suffering from the illness, so basic care and compassion is a no brainer that is easy to overlook. Will doing this help your body to heal faster? Maybe. It will certainly ease the process of the journey.
 
Trusting your body & non-doing
Trust your body and it’s capacity for healing, relax and get out of the way! One of the best ways to help your body is to do nothing, not just physically, but mentally and emotionally. If you are not able to stop working to recover, then dropping into short spaces of non-doing really helps to stay stable and keep on keeping on, even when your energy is low and you are feeling somewhat dis-oriented.
 
Context through appreciation
Just because you are ill doesn’t mean there is suddenly nothing to appreciate in life. Recognizing this and appreciating what there is to feel good about undoubtedly helps you get through a bout of illness.  
 
Minimalist meditations
If normally I would do let’s say 100 Medicine Buddha Mantras per day, I might change that to five-ten mins of the following pattern:

  • Three mantras, followed by a pause (back to basically present & functional breathing), three mantras, pause, and so forth

Less is more!
 
Mindful pro-activity
Final ‘active meditation’ is to ensure that you put together the best ‘healing protocol’ that you know regarding that illness. Creating and following such a routine is empowering. I have a routine of eastern and western supplementation, power napping (and prioritizing sleep in general) and gentle movement I follow for flu-type sickness. As so as I notice the signs, I activate the plan, and use the strategy to minimize the ability of the sickness to get a grip on my system.
I hope this give you a few ideas for when your next feeling under the weather!

© Toby Ouvry 2023, 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



All upcoming classes and workshops at IMA:

Ongoing – Weekly Tuesday, Wednesday Online class schedule

Ongoing on Wednesday’s, 7.30-8.30pm – Wednesday Meditation for stress transformation and positive energy with Toby (Bukit Timah)

Ongoing on Tuesday evenings, 7.30-8.30pm – Tuesday Meditation for stress transformation and positive energy with Toby  (East Coast)

Ongoing, Tues/Weds evening 7.30-8.30pm– Becoming a self-determining entity – A six-week course in Mindful Self-Leadership

Saturday the 8th July 9.30am-12.30pm – Meditation and Mindfulness for Self-Healing and Creating High Levels of Energy

Saturday July 15th, 9.30-11.30am – Monthly Qi Gong & Taoist Breathwork Clinic & Mini-retreat

Integral Meditation Asia

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

Categories
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Making yourself big

“It can be helpful to work on changing our idea of our inner self, and the scale on which it is able to work”

Dear Integral Meditators, 

Do you have a question about meditation or mindfulness?
If you have a question about meditation & mindfulness, either that you have been wondering about, or you may have asked people before but not received a satisfactory answer? If so then please send me a message with it to: info@tobyouvry.com. I’d like to start integrating some questions into my articles and videos, and it would be fun to do it with questions from you!

New course coming up: Do check out the mindful self-leadership workshop & six week course that I’ll be putting on over the weekend (the workshop), and then beginning next week (six week course).

And finally, please find below the article relating to this weeks Tuesday & Wednesday class. 

In the spirit of mindful questioning, 
 
Toby 

Making yourself big
 
When we get onto some kind of evolutionary path, we start to develop bigger intentions and aspirations. Rather than simply thinking about ourself and our close circle of family and friends in a material and temporary manner, we start to think in terms of benefitting the planet and the evolution of humanity. When this happens it can feel intimidating, ‘What can someone as small as I do in the face of such large forces? Can I really make any kid of significant impact?’
If we continue to identify our ‘self’ as being a small being trapped in a small physical body, then this can indeed feel overwhelming, as there is a mismatch between ‘self’ and ‘goal’. It can be helpful therefore to work on changing our idea of our inner self, and the scale on which it is able to work. A traditional Hermetic meditation technique is to visualize yourself as becoming very big, literally! Here is a source quote from a text called ‘the Corpus Hermeticum’:

“Increase thyself to an immeasurable height, leaping clear of all body, and surmounting all time, become eternal and thou shalt know God. There is nothing impossible to thyself. Deem thyself immortal and able to do all things…become higher than all height, and lower than all Depth…to be everything at the same time in earth and sea and heaven. Think that thou art as yet begotten, that thou art in the womb, that thou art young, that thou art old, that thou has died and art beyond death: perceive all things together…and thou shalt know God. But if thou shuttest up thy soul in thy body, and abasest thyself and sayest ‘I know nothing, I can do nothing, I am afraid of earth and sea, I cannot mount heaven, I know not what I was or what I shall be;’ then what hast thou to do with God?”

The basic idea here is that, if I identify myself as a small, limited, ignorant being, then I won’t leap beyond that limited idea of myself into my true potential. There are a lot of ideas to work with in the quote, but to make it very simple, as you sit in meditation you could imagine your body becoming larger, to the size of the room, then the house, then the apartment block, then your feet on the floor your head above the clouds, then country-size, then Planet size….You can go as big as you want or feels appropriate. As your body expands, feel your consciousness expanding with it, experience your everyday personal worries as insignificant, and yourself as a powerful effector of positive change on a great scale. If you relax and start to experiment with this, you will find your consciousness, and your sense of who you are and what you are capable of will change significantly. If you do it in a positive, balanced way all these changes can be used for the good.
 
But will I become delusional?
One fear that we may have in doing this is that we will simply become delusional, using this as a way of evading our reality and getting a completely inappropriate sense of who we are and our importance in the world. So of course, everything has to be held in balance here. If we understand the purpose of the exercise is to transcend our limited self-concept, freeing us to work in a way that currently we cannot. Understanding this specific purpose, we can do this exercise safely and get the benefits without falling into any potential dangers. It is also an exercise you can do when your ‘small self’ is simply feeling overwhelmed by life and its challenges. It can change the context of your experience very powerfully for the good.
 
Enjoy working with your ‘big body!

© Toby Ouvry 2023, 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


All upcoming classes and workshops at IMA:

Ongoing – Weekly Tuesday, Wednesday Online class schedule

Ongoing on Wednesday’s, 7.30-8.30pm – Wednesday Meditation for stress transformation and positive energy with Toby (Bukit Timah)

Ongoing on Tuesday evenings, 7.30-8.30pm – Tuesday Meditation for stress transformation and positive energy with Toby  (East Coast)

Ongoing Tues/Weds, 7.30-8.30pm – Meditations for thriving and energy creation – An eight week course

Saturday June 10th, 9.30am-12.30pm – Mindful Self-Leadership: A Three-hour mindfulness & meditation workshop

Starts Tues/Weds, June 13th/14th – Becoming a self-determining entity – A six-week course in Mindful Self-Leadership

Saturday June 24th, 9.00am-5pm – Taoist Breathwork Day Meditation Retreat

Integral Meditation Asia

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

Categories
Inner vision Insight Meditation Life-fullness meditation and creativity Meditation and Psychology Meditation techniques Mindful Self-Leadership Presence and being present Stress Transformation Using the Energy of Negative Emotions

Discovering the pleasure of alone

“Enjoying your alone time then offers a whole new experience of being in the company of others. You can enjoy humans and other living beings for what they have to offer, and for the joy of connection, rather than the fear of loneliness”

Dear Integral Meditators, 
This week’s article explores our relationship to being alone, and how to move from being lonely to enjoying being alone. 
This Tuesday & Wednesday is the annual Spring Equinox balancing and renewing meditation , with the Monthly Qi Gong & Taoist Breathwork Clinic & Mini-retreat on the Saturday. You are welcome to join either or both, live or online.

Finally, heads up for the next major weekly meditation series starting mid-April: Starts Tues/Weds April 11th/12th , 7.30-8.30pm – Meditations for thriving and energy creation – An eight week course

In the spirit of alone not lonely, 

Toby 

Discovering the pleasure of alone

In this article I want to focus on a few points that lie between going from feeling lonely to the pleasure of being alone. It’s a huge advantage to feel comfortable being alone, and is entirely complementary to a real and deep enjoyment of being in the company of others.

Mammalian and existential loneliness
As humans we are naturally a fairly lonely lot. On the mammalian level we crave the security of the pack, and tend toward a primal nervousness and vulnerability when alone because of this. We also have a natural and understandable desire to be seen and appreciated by others as an affirmation of our fundamental value. On a deeper existential level there is also the challenge of knowing that we are all alone in our experience, no one can truly know us and what we are going through. This is something that we tend to resist, trying very hard instead to been seen, heard and recognised by others.  All of this becomes particularly acute if our self-image, and therefore or basic sense of our value and capability is shaky.

Avoiding alone because of loneliness
For all the reasons above we can find ourselves avoiding being alone in order to avoid having to confront our loneliness. This then means that we miss out on all the opportunities to experience what you might think of as the joy of being alone. After all, people can be quite bothersome, and this can be compounded by our own neediness of them. These two together often results in us seeking people out, and then at the same time disliking being in their company, which is a bit of a lose-lose situation!

Reframing alone

  • Being alone is a way to re-connect to yourself, and make your own inner connection to yourself warm, healthy and stable
  • It’s time to catch up with yourself, heal your wounds and return to wholeness
  • Being alone is freedom to enjoy your own company and not be obligate to others for that time
  • It’s time to enjoy your creativity and imagine new possibilities
  • It’s time to recover your energy
  • It’s time to connect to silence, or at least less inner noise
  • It’s time for you to arrange your thoughts and thinking in a way that sets you up for success in life
  • And of course, it’s time to meditate and pursue your other interests

What other reasons can you think of to help you start looking forward to the next time you are alone?

Meditation and the freedom of alone
Meditation of course is, at least in part the art of enjoying being alone. Before you start to really enjoy being alone, meditation is a great place to start learning how to enjoy being alone, to notice and make peace with your loneliness, and the other reasons that compel you to seek out company as a way of avoiding yourself. If you sat for five-ten minutes each day for the next week, oriented your mindful attention around the ‘reframe list’ above you might find yourself enjoying it faster than you think.

Happy alone, happy in company
Enjoying your alone time then offers a whole new experience of being in the company of others. Rather than being there because you need to be, you can be there because you want to be in their company. You can enjoy humans and other living beings for what they have to offer, and for the joy of connection, rather than the avoidance of loneliness.

Related article: Independent interdependence

© Toby Ouvry 2023, 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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All upcoming classes and workshops at IMA:

Ongoing – Weekly Tuesday, Wednesday Online class schedule

Ongoing on Wednesday’s, 7.30-8.30pm – Wednesday Meditation for stress transformation and positive energy with Toby (Bukit Timah)

Ongoing on Tuesday evenings, 7.30-8.30pm – Tuesday Meditation for stress transformation and positive energy with Toby  (East Coast)

Tues 21st & Weds 22nd March, 7.30-8.30pm – Spring Equinox balancing and renewing meditation

Saturday March 25th, 9.30-11.30am – Monthly Qi Gong & Taoist Breathwork Clinic & Mini-retreat

Sat & Sunday 1st, 2nd April – Two day integral meditation retreat

Starts Tues/Weds April 11th/12th , 7.30-8.30pm – Meditations for thriving and energy creation – An eight week course

Saturday 15th April 9am-12.30pm – Meditations for Developing the Language of Your Shadow Self Workshop

Tues 30th/Weds 31st May – Wesak meditation

Integral Meditation Asia

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