Tag: mindfulness

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Awareness and insight Meditation and Psychology Meditation techniques Mindful Breathing Mindful Resilience Mindfulness

Allowing your mind to be messy

Dear Integral Meditators,

Often when we need most to be mindful is often the time when we feel like doing it the least. The article below explains a method of being mindful that you can use when your mind and life are at their most chaotic and mindfulness seems most difficult!

In the spirit of the happily messy,

Toby

Allowing your mind to be messy

Often when we need most to be mindful is often the time when we feel like doing it the least. The meditation technique below is for when your mind and life feel chaotic, messy or when it is difficult for you to focus. For example:

  • When you are so anxious or exited by something that your mind won’t settle
  • When you are ill or taking a medication that impairs your ability to focus
  • When your life feels disorganized
  • When fatigue or pain in the body inhibits concentration
  • When you have jet lag or you can’t fall asleep due to the activity of the mind and emotions

The technique is very simple; you take one slightly deeper, centering breath to focus your attention, then you practice being aware of and accepting the messiness of your mind. Observe how it feels; the sprangled thoughts, the tension in the body, the texture, the dis-orientation and so forth. Watch and observe the messiness of your mind in this way, every now and again coming back to a single centering breath, and then continuing to watch and accept the messiness. That’s basically it!
The ‘technology’ here is that the act of accepting and observing itself allows the mind to start to settle and relax. By accepting the mess, you start to build a tidy little spot in the middle of it that you can rest in.

Today I am tired and sleep deprived, I have a number of appointments I’m working my way thru before packing tonight and flying for a trip tomorrow. My mind and circumstances feel ‘messy’, unsettled, frenetic. The technique above is simply the one I have been using myself to approach my circumstances mindfully; to relax and enjoy the mess.

It’s possible to be messy and mindful at the same time!

© Toby Ouvry 2016, you are welcome to use or share this article, but please cite Toby as the source and include reference to his website www.tobyouvry.com

Upcoming Courses at Integral Meditation Asia:

Ongoing on Wednesday’s, 7.30-8.30pm (next class August 10th) – Wednesday Meditation Classes at Basic Essence with Toby

 

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Mindful concentration in an age of distraction

“If you keep dripping water in a jug, then eventually it will fill. If for every day of the year you concentrate on a small number of mindful breaths each day, you will find the effects are far reaching!”

Dear Integral Meditators,

How can we build our mindful concentration when oftentimes we find ourselves in environments that encourage us to do the opposite? The article below offers a structure for us to get started!

In the spirit of mindful concentration,

Toby

Mindful concentration in an age of distraction

In an age where we are surrounded more distractions than ever before, the skill of being able to focus our mind in a single pointed manner has never been more important. Concentration (here meaning simply the ability to keep your mind and attention focused upon one object for an extended period of time) offers many benefits, amongst others:

  • Increased mental peace
  • The ability to get things done more effectively and with greater quality execution
  • Greater benevolent control of our mind, body and feelings

Concentration is also central to the practice of mindful meditation. If you can’t keep your mind focused, then it’s really impossible to achieve lasting results from your mindfulness practice, so building good concentration technique is a really essential for good mindfulness.
What I want to explain in this article is a daily mindful concentration practice that you can do as a complete beginner in order to build mindful concentration.
It is also a practice that you can do if you are a more advanced practitioner, but want to have a very short exercise daily exclusively related to concentration. One thing I notice is that it is very easy for our basic concentration technique to degrade over time unless we renew it daily.

Day of the month mindful concentration
The object of this exercise is very simple; keep your mind focused on the breathing. Each day of the month has a number, from 1-30/31. Every day your job is to sit down at least once and focus your mind on the breathing for the number of breaths that relate to that date. So for example today is May 21st, so my job today is simply to sit down at some point and focus on my breathing for 21 breaths without getting distracted. If whilst I am doing the exercise I get distracted, the I have to start again. The rules are I have to do 21 without distraction on the 21st of the month.
This will go on, increasing by one breath at a time until the 31st of May, when I do 31 breaths. So then on 1st June I go back to just one mindful breath(!), building up to 30 breaths on 30th June. On the days of the month that are small numbers, then of course you can take more than one mindful breath, but the point is if, every day of the year you spend between 10seconds and 5 minutes practice, your capacity for mindful concentration is going to increase with only a very small amount of effort on your part.

Drops of water in a jug
This practice relies upon consistency. If you keep dripping water in a jug, then eventually it will fill. If for every day of the year you concentrate on a small number of mindful breaths each day, you will find the effects are far reaching!

© Toby Ouvry 2016, you are welcome to use or share this article, but please cite Toby as the source and include reference to his website www.tobyouvry.com

Upcoming Courses at Integral Meditation Asia:

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

Saturday May 28th, 2.30-5.30pm – Finding Liberation Through the Witness Self – Connecting to Peace, Abundance and Creative Freedom Though Mindfulness Practice

JUNE
Saturday 11th June, 10am-5pm – An Introduction to Meditation from the Perspective of Shamanism

Starts Thursday June 9th – Thursday Evening Integral Meditation Classes @ Bencoolen Street

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Making Objects of Your Subjects

Dear Integral Meditators,

How does mindfulness help you grow and develop your mind? This weeks article considers this question from the perspective of subjects and objects, and offers a simple practice to start focusing upon.

In the spirit of inner growth,

Toby

Making Objects of Your Subjects

Mindfulness essentially is about learning to watch and observe your inner life objectively, like a witness.
One of the ways in personal growth can be explained is this: What previously we used to identify with absolutely at one stage of our growth becomes an object that we can dis-identify with and consider objectively when we move onto the next level.
Here are two quotes from developmental psychologists that explain this idea, the first is from Harvard psychologist Robert Kegan: “I know of no better way to describe development than that the subject of one stage of development becomes the object of the subject of the next stage.” The second is from Jean Gebser “The self of one stage (of development) becomes the tool of the next (stage of development)”.

Two examples:
When I was a baby, I was completely subjectively identified with my body. Thus when my body was hungry ‘I’ was hungry, and there was no self, other than the I that was hungry. Thus if I was hungry I had no choice than to be upset because my ‘I’ was completely identified with the hunger. As I grew up, I learned to distinguish my ‘self’ from my body, and thus I can recognize ‘My body is hungry’, and separate my sense of I-ness from the hunger. This enables me to exert self-control so that I can be hungry but not upset.
At a relatively low level of development I may be completely identified with my emotions. When my emotions are angry ‘I’ am angry, and I have no choice but to be angry because I completely identify with my emotions as being self. As I move to the next level of my inner growth I develop the capacity to detach from my emotions, so that when I experience anger I am able to separate ‘me’ from my anger. By doing this the anger becomes an object of my awareness rather than the subject, which in turn gives me the choice as to how I am going to deal with it; the anger is in my mind, but it is not ‘me’.

Mindfulness as the stimulator of inner growth
So, mindfulness works as a tool of inner growth simply by encouraging us to make objects of our subjects; to take the aspects of our body and senses, mind and emotions that we are currently very identified with, and simply learn to observe them as objects.

Videotaping
One image that I got from Ken Wilber’s new book Integral Meditation (highly recommended!) is that the process if mindfully turning subjects into objects is like videotaping; you simply watch an aspect of your mind or self that you are currently very identified with. Imagine you are behind a camera videotaping it; just watch, observe and film, don’t get involved.

‘People are so stupid’
Over the last day or so I have been caught up in a certain view of some people that is essentially very frustrated with their (perceived) stupidity, I notice that ‘I’ am very identified with this frustration with this sense of their laziness, lack of drive, lack of curiosity. So I chose this as my object of ‘mindful videotaping’ sitting down, acknowledging it and them simply watching it, witnessing it, videotaping it. As the observer I note:

  • The frustration feels like this, in this area of my body
  • The inner dialogue or conversation in my mind around stupid people sounds like this
  • The outer events in my life giving rise to the frustration and judgment are this, this and this

As I continue to watch my frustration and judgment, gradually it ceases to become ‘me’ and becomes instead an object of my awareness. It is in my mind but it is not me. This in turn enables me to make conscious choices about what I am going to do with the emotion, which is mostly just let go of it, and make a conscious choice about what, if anything I am going to do about the situation.
Like most other aspects of mindfulness, the aim of turning subjects into objects is to give us greater inner freedom and intelligence and take empowered control of our life choices and experience.

© Toby Ouvry 2016, you are welcome to use or share this article, but please cite Toby as the source and include reference to his website www.tobyouvry.com

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Six Aspects of Good Psychic Self Defence

Dear Integral Meditators,

This weeks article is a practical exploration of psychic self-defence, specifically from a mindfulness perspective, I hope you find it practical & useful!

In the spirit of the journey,

Toby

Six Aspects of Good Psychic Self Defence

Psychic self-defence is that art of effectively defending yourself and your energy from negative people, energies and places outside of yourself, as well as the fears, inner demons and problematic emotions that you feel present within yourself.

Below are six fundamental aspects of psychic and psychological self-defence that are practical and useful to know.

1. Don’t attack yourself !– sounds obvious, but often we are the ones who are attacking ourselves most vehemently with negative thoughts, judgments, regrets and so on. Make the mindful effort each day to be a friend to yourself, extend warmth and support to yourself, and thereby make yourself automatically more resilient to negative energies from other people or from your environment.

2. Develop your psychic awareness – Ask yourself the question “What is my body’s intuitive and instinctive response to the energy of this person (or place or situation)?” Temporarily stop rationalizing/thinking and enter into a state of awareness where your are opening to the feedback that your body, senses and feelings are giving you about your experience. If you do this regularly your awareness of the subtle psychic dynamics of any given situation will naturally increase.

3. Know your vulnerabilities – Make list of times, places and people in your life right now around which or whom your energy and mind tend to become chaotic, fragmented or confused. Take time to explicitly focus on these experiences mindfully, get to know them and take care of them. Make a note of your vulnerabilities,  so that when you find yourself under pressure in real time you will be ready and bringing your full attention to what is going on.

3. Building your sources of support – When you are under pressure energetically and psychologically you can feel isolated and alone. As well as supporting yourself (see point 1 above) being aware of and receiving positive energy and support from friends, family, close colleagues and others who are ‘for’ us is a really important part of fending of negative psychic energy.

4. Disciplining your attention & choosing your attitude – Negative psychic environments and people can make it very easy for our own attention to be drawn to negative contemplation, thinking and feelings. When you feel under attack be very conscious about where you are placing your attention, don’t allow it to settle upon objects that break up and fragment your attention.

5. Practising non-resistance – This is a technique that I discuss at some length in my article ‘Soft Forms of Psychic Self-Defence’, but essentially it means learning to let negative or difficult energy pass through you; letting it come and letting it go without resisting or holding onto it.

6. Say no to people – Cultivate your awareness of the intentions of others and what they are projecting onto you, why they are saying what they are saying, what it is they (consciously or subconsciously) want from you. If you don’t feel comfortable receiving any of these things, say no, either literally, or by inwardly simply choosing to not receive or engage with the energy they are extending to you. Keep the boundaries regarding what you are prepared to accept and not accept clear, and assert them.

A practical exploration of psychic self-defence in your own life
You might like to pick a situation you are experiencing in your life right now where you feel under attack energetically, feel fragmented or confused, or that is a challenge for you. Go thought each of the six points above with your challenge in mind and think about how you can apply them to your own circumstances on a practical level.

© Toby Ouvry 2016, you are welcome to use or share this article, but please cite Toby as the source and include reference to his website www.tobyouvry.com

Upcoming Courses at Integral Meditation Asia:

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

Saturday  March 19th, 2.30-5.30pm – Psychic & Psychological Self-Defence – Practical mindfulness meditation techniques for taking care of your energy, mind & heart in the face of the push & shove of daily life – A three hour workshop

Saturday  March 26th, 9.30am-12.30pm – Living Life From Your Inner Center – Meditations for Going With the Flow of the Present Moment – A three hour workshop

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Don’t Let Difficult Feelings Become Negative Thoughts

Dear Integral Meditators,

When you are feeling bad, its easy to think negative. The article below explains how to use mindfulness to stop difficult feelings becoming negative thoughts in your mind.

In the spirit of the journey,

Toby

Don’t Let Difficult Feelings Become Negative Thoughts

At the moment I have jet lag, which means that I wake up feeling groggy and dis-oriented, and when I lie down to sleep I have been spending some hours wide awake. The dis-orientation from the jet lag produces a lot of difficult, turgid, feelings which, if I let them could very quickly start to produce negative thoughts, which in turn would start to generate full blown negative emotions. So, here my basic object of mindfulness is to be attentive to the fact that I am experiencing a lot of difficult feelings in my body due to the jetlag, and simply focus on noting them as feelings, and not letting them escalate into something else. This is the basic practice of not letting difficult feelings become negative emotions.

Similarly, if I am with someone who is irritated or upset, and they start to direct it at me, then I experience a difficult or unpleasant feeling as a result. If I don’t watch out, then I’m going to find my mind creating a lot of negative thinking around that feeling and the other person’s action, so I will suffer more than I need to, and may do something that I regret.

There are many other situations where we may find difficult energy around us:

  • On the commute home when there is a lot of ambient irritability in the minds and bodies of the commuters
  • When things aren’t going our way at work or in our relationships
  • When we are ill or fatigued
  • When we are upset or anxious regarding change or uncertainty
  • When we feel disapproved of by ourself or others

The list goes on, but the main thing is that if we can catch difficult feelings and energies within us early enough through mindfulness, then we can save ourself a lot of pain by making a conscious choice not to let difficult energies we face trigger negative thinking.

Awareness of feelings and energies
A lot of progress in this art and discipline involves simply greater awareness of the energies and feelings that you are experiencing in the moment. What you are aware of you can start to exert benevolent control over, what you are not aware of can easily mushroom into a cloud of negativity before you really know it. So a really basic mindfulness exercise is simply to ask yourself regularly ‘How am I feeling?’ and use this question to direct your awareness mindfully to what is there in the present moment.

Difficult feelings need only be that, they don’t need to become negative thoughts.
© 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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Experiencing the Mind as the Mind

Dear Toby ,

Often meditation and mindfulness work well when you use a short, significant phrase as your object of enquiry. In the article below I share one that I have been enjoying over the holiday season.

Wishing you, your families and loved ones all the very best for the Christmas season!

Toby & Integral Meditation Asia

Experiencing the Mind as the Mind

Often meditation and mindfulness work well when you use a short, significant phrase as your object of enquiry, which can then lead you relatively naturally into progressively deeper states of awareness. Over the Christmas holiday and winter solstice period the phrase I have been focusing upon is ‘Experience the mind as the mind’ (or my mind as my mind). This phrase invites me to connect to the experience of consciousness itself as directly and non-conceptually as possible.
Normally we experience our mind conceptually, dividing into different categories, for example:

  • Positive and negative thinking
  • Conscious and unconscious
  • Practical and daydreaming
  • Mundane and spiritual
  • Busy and peaceful
  • Upset or happy

With the practice of experiencing the mind as the mind I am deliberately setting aside all of these (useful in their own context) conceptual ways of experiencing my mind, and simply trying to experience the mind as a whole, directly in the present moment. At different times during the day different things will be appearing to my mind, which is fine, but I am focused simply to being conscious, and paying attention to what that experience feels like. As a result of this I have found that:

  • Many of the things that my habitual and conceptual mind normally does not see start to become visible
  • I naturally start to move back into the peaceful centre of my world and experience in the present moment
  • I am freed to then think or approach my daily life and challenges with my experiential, problem-solving intelligence operating at a higher level

If you like over the next few days you can take experiencing ‘the mind as the mind’ (or your consciousness as your consciousness) as an object of mindfulness in your own meditation practice, either formally or informally, and allow it to invite you into the space of immediacy and presence that it invites!

© 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 

JANUARY 2016

Ongoing on Wednesday’s, (Jan 13th, 20th, 27th) 7.30-8.30pm – Wednesday Meditation Classes at Basic Essence with Toby
Saturday January 16th, 9.30am-12.30pm – Mindful Flow – Meditation & mindfulness for cultivating a state of optimal flow in your mind, body, heart and life – A three hour workshop
Saturday, January 30th, 2.30-5.30pm  – Meditations for Transforming Negativity and Stress into Energy, Positivity and Enlightenment – A Three Hour Workshop

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The Inner Sky of the Mind – Distraction, anxiety, mood and the principle of awareness 

Imagine you were to spend a week everyday looking at the sky, just watching and witnessing it. Some days it would be bright and full of light, other days there might be light clouds, sometimes monotonously grey, or aggressively rainy with thunder and lightning. Every time that you looked, the idea would be simply to witness and observe the sky closely, like an artist or a scientist.
In mindfulness and meditation the principle of being aware of our mind and its contents is like this sky watching exercise; we learn to watch the inner sky of our mind using awareness to witness its contents rather than be involved with it.

 
 
The act of being aware under pressure
Normally we are not used to witnessing the contents of our consciousness in this way. Particularly under pressure we feel as if we are completely caught up in the contents of our mind; tossed around by our distractions, feeling as if we are our moods, and overtaken by our anxiety. To be mindfully aware means to practice the discipline of awareness even when under pressure, and using the principle of awareness to unify and relax our mind, even when it contains multiple impulses to feel fragmented or un-peaceful. For example:

 

  • My mind feels distracted and disoriented, but I can reach a feeling of centeredness despite this by being aware
  • I am anxious about the choices I have to make, but I can relax into that anxiety using the act of witnessing and being aware
  • My mood feels disturbing, but I can learn to benevolently tolerate it because I can witness it, just like watching a cloudy sky

Action or non-action subsequent to awareness
What practising the principle of awareness enables us to do is to connect to a state of peace, centeredness and presence within ourself even when we are feeling moody, disturbed or anxious, and to keep making conscious choices about how we are going to respond.

Last week whilst seeing a series of arguments occurring between colleagues, I was feeling disturbed, like I needed to ‘do’ something in order to help them resolve their dispute. Checking with myself however I could see that most of the impulse that I had to act was mainly due to my own discomfort (“I need to fix this for them so that I can feel more comfortable”), and that the best thing that I could do (in my opinion) was to simply be present and let the drama play out for now. Practising the principle of witnessing awareness enabled me to feel comfortable not acting, even though part of me felt emotionally uncomfortable and impulsive.
Practicing the principle of awareness gives us the freedom to act or not to act as our circumstances demand of us, rather than be pushed around by the tension and impulsiveness that we may feel.

This week you might like to practice watching your mind as if you were watching the sky, just for a few minutes each day. By doing so you will be building the principle of witnessing awareness in your mind in such a way that you can start to use it practically when you are really feeling under pressure.

© 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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The Dance of Mindful Supression and Repression

Dear Integral Meditators,

Meditation and mindfulness encourage states of mental and emotional flow, but achieving these states consistently is tough if we are habitually supressing and repressing the content of our consciousness in an unhealthy way. The article below looks at how we can mindfully grow a positive relationship to suppression and repression, so that it is helping us in our inner journey, rather than getting in the way!

In the spirit of conscious and benevolvent supression,

Toby

The Dance of Mindful Supression and Repression

Psychological suppression is when you consciously block a thought, emotion or part of self from arising or developing within your mind. Let’s say I’m getting angry with someone, I am aware I am getting angry, but I block it, I don’t allow it to manifest as speech or behaviour.

Suppression is different from repression, which is when I unconsciously block a thought, emotion or aspect of self. Taking the same example, let’s say I’m getting angry with someone, but I’m not consciously aware that I’m getting angry, I reflexively repress the anger, pushing it down into my unconscious mind  without even realizing that I have done it. I now have the energy of repressed anger contained within my body-mind, but I am not aware of it.

Positive suppression is when I exert self control over myself for a positive purpose:

  • I find myself getting annoyed with a client, but I purposefully suppress that anger and remain pleasant, which enables me to complete a business transaction I want
  • I know I am feeling afraid or insecure, but I put on a brave face and smile  for the child I am with so that s/he will feel reassured and safe in my company

If I suppress something in this way, I am doing so for a definite purpose, and I know that later on I will have to come back to the thing in my mind I have supressed in order to look after it and de-suppress it appropriately.

Negative suppression is – When I deliberately turn away from an emotion, thought or aspect of self that I really need to pay attention to:

  • I know I feel guilty about something I have said to my partner, but I’m still resentful of her, so I block the guilt and just let it fester unattended
  • I know my business needs to change its marketing strategy, but I am afraid a new, untried strategy might make things worse, so I just suppress what I know, and keep on doing the same marketing as before, thus guaranteeing my business remains in a rut

Integrating suppression and repression into your mindfulness practice


Sit quietly and let your mind travel back, event by event over the last 24 hours of your life. As you do so take note of the places where you notice there is still an emotional charge within you around what happened. When you come to each of these places, take a note of the thoughts, feelings nd parts of self you may have:

  • Deliberately set aside (positive suppression)
  • Suppressed due to fear or laziness (negative suppression)
  • Unconsciously repressed, for example simply because you were not aware of the feeling arising at the time due to the busyness of what was going on around you

Take the time to become aware of, acknowledge and release these  aspects of self, so that you do not end up with an ever increasing back log of suppressed and repressed parts of your mind, heart and body that get in the way of your mental clarity, your emotional balance and physical health!

© 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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What’s the Difference Between Your Higher Self and ‘Big Mind’? (The Doorway)

Dear Integral Meditators,

After last week’s article on Connecting to Your Big Mind I was asked ‘What is the difference between your Higher Self and your Big Mind’. Since it is a good question, I thought I may as well address it in an article, which you will find below!

In the spirit of the doorway,

Toby

What’s the Difference Between Your Higher Self and ‘Big Mind’? (The Doorway)

The term ‘Higher Self’ is used in various western and Indian (generally Theistic) spiritualities to denote our soul, or the deeper part of our individual nature. This Higher Self  or ‘Soul Self’ is conceived to be engaged in a process of learning and evolution that spans not just one life but multiple lifetimes, each lifetime hopefully building upon the experience of the last in order to lead to a gradual maturation of the individual. Unless the individual person is quite evolved, generally he or she will not be experientially aware that he or she has a soul or Higher Self that is ‘looking after’ her. However as s/he matures spiritually will generally become aware of this deeper or higher aspect of her own being that is guiding and directing them. Over a period of time a sense of connection and communication will be established between this person and their Higher Self that eventually leads to the person effectively merging with and functioning as the Higher Self on Earth. The Higher Self is still an individual self, with a history and particular individual characteristics, generally located on the higher mental planes; it is not an abstract, formless timeless spirit.
‘Big Mind’ on the other hand is a term used in some Zen traditions to describe the experience of primal, formless timeless awareness. This formless timeless lies at the heart of our experience of each moment, but it is completely open and limitless, beyond any kind of individual self, beyond time, beyond space; it is pure limitless awareness or spirit. So Big Mind really refers to a unified experience of ‘spiritual’ consciousness that lies beyond our individual ego, but also beyond the limitations of our Higher Self or Soul. The Big Mind is all pervasive, ever present, something that you can learn to recognize and relax into at any time through meditation and mindfulness training.

The Doorway
The doorway is an image I find very helpful as an image that helps to connect the above idea to an actual experience. Imagine your Soul or Higher Self as a doorway. If you look in one direction you see yourself in time and space, going about your daily life in the world. If you look in the other direction you find yourself staring into the experience of a formless, timeless infinity, and expanse of open awareness without limitation; the Big Mind. You are the Soul, the Higher Self that links the world of your individuality and daily life with the formless, timeless experience of Big Mind. In meditation you simply turn and face in the direction of Big mind, allowing yourself to be absorbed into it, when you come out of meditation you simply turn around, face your daily life and walk back into it. Your doorway is the gateway you can come back to at any point in your day to reconnect to your Higher Self and to Big 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

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Combining Your Meditation and Mindfulness Practice Together (Meditating on relaxation)

Dear Integral Meditators,
What is the difference between meditation and mindfulness? Are they the same or different? This weeks article looks at working definitions of both and how they can be combined into an effective daily practice, enjoy!

In the spirit of the mindful journey,

Toby

Combining Your Meditation and Mindfulness Practice Together

To be mindful of something means to bring a certain focused,  non-judgmental awareness and attention to something in order to understand it and get to know it better.
To meditate means to focus your attention very specifically upon a particular state of mind in order to really ground it experientially for you and to integrate it into the foundational, habitual structure of your consciousness. Combining meditation and mindfulness together into a single practice optimizes the effects of both. Let’s take a simple example of how to do this using the basic but profound quality of relaxation.

Mindfully investigating relaxation.
What does relaxation meant to me? When in my life have I felt truly relaxed on all levels? By asking yourself questions like these you can begin a process of mindful enquiry where you bring to mind different experiences of relaxation that you have had in the past. As I’m sitting here writing, I am thinking of a beach in Langkawi that I have been to where I had a particularly relaxing time. As I remember and picture the beach and my experiences there I notice my body, mind and heart starting to respond to those memories; the cellular structure of my body relaxes and rests at ease.

Meditating on relaxation
Now that my process of mindful enquiry has helped me find a mental, physical and emotional state of relaxation, I can now meditate on it. To meditate on relaxation, I simply practice focusing upon and holding that state of relaxation with meditative concentration; breathing it in and breathing it out. By meditating on relaxation in this way I really allow my body mind and heart to ‘soak’ in the feeling of relaxation, so that I really become very familiar with the feeling. By meditating on relaxation I can integrate it much more deeply into my daily, habitual consciousness, and thus I can start to use it more and more effectively; when I find myself under pressure at work, when I feel emotional stress in my relationships and so on…

If you understand how to combine meditation and mindfulness in this way, then you can basically accelerate the development of any inner quality or experience that you want. For example if I want to develop my creative energy I can first mindfully investigate what creativity means to me, and recall times in the past when I have felt in ‘the creative flow’. Having investigated mindfully in this way I can then use meditation to ‘soak’ my body-mind in that state of creative flow so that it becomes a stronger and stronger part of my basic habitual psychological makeup.

Perhaps this week you might like to start working with combining your own meditation and mindfulness practice together taking the example of relaxation above. Alternatively pick any quality that you want to develop right now and use that!

© 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 events at Integral Meditation Asia in October

Every Wednesday, 7.30-8.30pm – Wednesday Meditation Classes at Basic Essence with Toby

Saturday 3rd October, 2.30-5.30pm – Going From Over-whelmed to Over-well: Meditation for Quietening the Mind – a three hour workshop

Sunday 11th October, 8.00-10.30am – An Introduction to Walking Meditation Workshop

Wednesday  14th October 2015, 7.30-9pm – Evening Event: Integral Mindfulness –Co-creating Your Professional Success and Personal Wellbeing

Saturday 17th October, 2.30-5.30pm – Meditation & Mindfulness for Creating a Mind of Ease, Relaxed Concentration and Positive Intention 3 Hour workshop

Saturday October  31st, 9.30am-12.30pm – Engaged Mindfulness: Take Control of Your Life Direction and Wellbeing Through Awareness, Curiosity, Courage and Care – A Three Hour Workshop

Integral Meditation Asia