Tag: mindful of emotions

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Guided meditation for emotional wellbeing

Dear Integral Meditators,

Here is an eight minute guided meditation that is designed to help you cultivate your emotional wellbeing, strength and harmony:

8minute power meditation on emotional wellbeing

It explores two positions essentially:

  1. Becoming aware of and acknowledging emotions that are present in order to process them more fully
  2. Connecting to energies within landscape that strengthen and uplift your emotional self

If you enjoy it, then you can listen to a longer meditation from last weeks newsletter: Traveling while staying indoors

The Men’s Group starts again on the 27th April, online of course!

In the spirit if harmony,

Toby

PS: Another related article: Mindful of your moods, emotions and dispositions

Starts April 27th 7-8.15pm – The Men’s Group Online – The path of conscious manhood

How can you move from coping to thriving in your life as a man?

Much is asked of men in their traditional roles as fathers and sons, partners and husbands, students and teachers, employees and employers….read full details

 

Online Integral Meditation & Mindfulness classes
Build focus, beat stress, cultivate wellbeing!

Each session involves simple practices that you can apply to make a real difference to your wellbeing and effectiveness in life…full details of classes

Online Class schedule:

Sunday evening, 6-.45pm – Class link: https://zoom.us/j/675470535

Monday lunchtime, 12.30-1.15pm – Class link: https://zoom.us/j/590663680

Tuesday lunchtime, 12.30-1.15pm – Class link: https://zoom.us/j/321314189

Tuesday Evening: 7.30-8.30pm – Class link: https://zoom.us/j/555319558

Wednesday Evening: 7.30-8.30pm – Class link: https://zoom.us/j/609271461

Thursday evening, 18.30-19.15 – Class link: https://zoom.us/j/757015034

All classes in Singapore time. Not in Singapore? Check the time for your country HERE.

How to sign up: Simply message info@tobyouvry.com or +6596750279 with the time of the class that you wish to attend. The link to attend each class is next to the class. Then make payment using the methods detailed below.

Cost: SGD$30 per class, or set of 4 classes for $100

Payment can be made in Singapore using PayNow on +6596750279, Or you can use the PayPal Link HERE to pay from anywhere in the world.

To pay for a set of 4 classes on PayPal, click HERE.

 

April 17th-19th – The Way of Energy: Qi gong foundation course & Program for coaches and trainers

THIS WORKSHOP IS ALSO AVAILABLE ONLINE AS A LIVE-STREAM SESSION!

This is s a practical introduction to Qi gong for those who want to understand the principles and develop their own practice. It also offers a series of simple practices for coaches, trainers and therapists that they can use with their clients to help them to build energy and wellbeing…. read more about the course

All upcoming classes and workshops for at IMA:

Weekly 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)

Saturday 25th April 10.30am-12noon – ONLINE Get your meditation practice started now – The shortest & most time effective meditation course ever

Starts April 27th 7-8.15pm – The Men’s Group Online – The path of conscious manhood

Friday, Sat, Sunday 17,18,19th April Online – The Qi Gong Foundation Program & Program for coaches and trainers 

Tues 5th & Weds May 6th – Online Full Moon Meditation & Manifestation Session

Ongoing  – The Integral Mindfulness & Meditation Online Program, January-July 2020

Integral Meditation Asia

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

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creative imagery Insight Meditation Integral Meditation Integrating Ego, Soul and Spirit Life-fullness Meditating on the Self Meditation techniques Presence and being present Shadow meditation

Facing what you cannot face (Mindful inoculation)

Dear integral Meditators,

This weeks article explores the idea of ‘mindful inoculation’, how you can become stronger and more resilient by deliberately turning and facing your most difficult inner issues. It’s a dimension of the ‘shadow work’ that I do.

In the spirit of turning and facing,

Toby

 

Facing what you cannot face (Mindful inoculation)

Inoculation from a disease involves injecting a small amount of the disease into your body, so your body’s immune system recognizes and become resilient to the disease. In order to become immune from the disease, you need to expose your body to the disease in small doses.
When building your psychological health, the same is true. To make yourself resilient to your most difficult and debilitating anxieties and stresses, you have to deliberately seek out and expose yourself to them each day. By doing so you ‘normalize’ the experience of the anxiety, so that it does not feel overwhelming or threatening; you build your immunity to it. You might think of this method as a sort of ‘mindful inoculation’ of your psyche from debilitating stress.

The challenge of doing this is it runs against much of our instinctive strategy regarding pain, anxiety and stress. When we sense a feeling or thought in our mind that is painful, sad (etc…) our first reaction is most commonly to distract ourselves from it, turn away from it, or repress and deny it. The last thing we want to do is turn and face it, let alone accept it!

The benefits of turning towards our sources of pain for short periods of time in the day is that we learn to accept and process them. This results in us taking far less time to work though the emotional trauma of bad experiences, and we become very confident. After all, if we can face down the very worst of what we find in the recesses of our mind, what is there left to intimidate us in life?

The method: Turning towards
To do this practice, take a domain in your life, eg: relationships. Then ask yourself the question “What anxiety or pain is it in my relationships that I am not acknowledging or facing right now?” Let your mind sit with the question, and start to investigate. Before too long you will come across an issue that you really don’t want to face. Once you have found it, mentally turn and face it. Move your attention towards it. Breathe with and acknowledge it. Relax into the experience (uncomfortable as it may be) for at least a minute. Over the next week or so your task them becomes to deliberately turn your mindful attention to the issue that you cannot face, and face it for short periods of time. By doing this you will gradually ‘inoculate’ yourself from the issue. It is not that it is no longer there, it is just you can turn and face it with confidence, you know how to look after it. It ceases to feel like a threat to your wellbeing.

An example
Relatively recently, a romantic relationship that I had been in for a few months came to an end. As we were moving toward the final split (but had not reached that decision yet) I asked myself “What is it about this relationship that I am not acknowledging or facing right now?” Quite quickly the answer came back ‘I cannot face that I may have to let this relationship go’. So, then my object of mindful inoculation became the loaded sentence ‘I may have to let this relationship go’. Repeatedly exposing myself to this, and the feelings around it moved my experience quite quickly from aversion: ‘I can’t let this relationship go’, to acceptance: ‘I need to let this relationship go’ to confidence: ‘This relationship is over, and I’m excited about the future and all the new possibilities!’
You don’t necessarily need a lot of time to get over challenging, difficult or painful experiences, but you do have to have the courage to turn and face them and ‘mindfully inoculate’ yourself from them!

Related article: The quickest way through the rain

© Toby Ouvry 2018, you are welcome to use or share this article, but please cite Toby as the source and include reference to his website www.tobyouvry.com

Upcoming Courses at Integral Meditation Asia

Ongoing on Wednesday’s, 7.30-8.30pm – Wednesday Meditation Classes at Basic Essence with Toby

Ongoing on Tuesday evenings, 7.30-8.30pm – Tuesday Meditation Classes at One Heart with Toby (East coast)

Tuesday & Wednesday’s in March/April – Inner Peace, Inner Power – An Introduction to Integral & Engaged Meditation Practice

Saturday 14th April 9.30am-12.30pm – Integral meditation & mindful walking deep dive half day retreat

Saturday 28th April, 9.30am-1pm – Finding Freedom From What Holds You Back in Life: Practical meditations & techniques for working with your shadow-self

Saturday May 26th, 9.30am-12.30pm – Zen Walking Meditation Workshop

Sunday 20th May, 10am-5pm – How to do Soul Portraits Workshop

Integral Meditation Asia

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

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

The Pendulum Swing of Happiness and Sadness

Dear Integral Meditators,

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

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

In the spirit of the pendulum swing,

Toby

The Pendulum Swing of Happiness and Sadness

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

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

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

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

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

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

© Toby Ouvry 2015, you are welcome to use or share this article, but please cite Toby as the source and include reference to his website www.tobyouvry.com

New I-Awake Track: Profound Releasing

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

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

Integral Meditation Asia

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Awareness and insight creative imagery Energy Meditation Inner vision Integral Awareness Life-fullness Meditation and Art Meditation and Psychology Mindful Self-Leadership Presence and being present Primal Spirituality

Your Emotions as Horses

Dear Integral Meditators,

Because emotions are non-linear in their behaviour, quite often images can work better than direct instructions as to how we can go about working with them in a healthy way. The article below considers our emotions as horses.

In the spirit of the ride,

Toby

Your Emotions as Horses

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Related article: The Sea Snakes of the Mind
The Wild dogs of the Mind

© Toby Ouvry 2015, you are welcome to use or share this article, but please cite Toby as the source and include reference to his website www.tobyouvry.com

 

Upcoming Courses at Integral Meditation Asia:

JULY & AUGUST 

Wednesday July 29th 7.30-9pm – Integral Meditation Session @ Basic Essence – Meditation for connecting to a positive attitude

Saturday 1st August, 9.30am-12.30pm – Finding Simplicity in the Complexity: An Introduction to Meditation From the Perspective of Zen

Saturday 1st August, 2.30-5.30pm – Meditations for Developing the Language of Your Shadow Self – A Three Hour Workshop

Friday 14th August, 7.30-9pm –  Integral Meditation Session @ the Reiki Centre

Saturday 15th August, 9.30am-12.30pm – Going From Over-whelmed to Over-well: Meditation for Quietening the Mind – a three hour workshop

Saturday 15th August, 2.30-5.30pm – Mindful Self Confidence – Developing your self-confidence, self-belief & self-trust through mindfulness & meditation

Integral Meditation Asia

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