Tag: therapy

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A Mind of Ease Inner vision Insight Meditation Integral Meditation Integrating Ego, Soul and Spirit Meditation and Psychology Meditation techniques Presence and being present Primal Spirituality spiritual intelligence Uncategorized

Indestructible safety (On Therapeutic & Tantric mindfulness)

“Tantric practices such as recognizing your indestructible-safety are all about making educated leaps of perception!”

Dear Integral Meditators, 

This week’s article takes vulnerability, safety & invulnerability  as the subject. If you enjoy it, it will be the subject of this week’s Tuesday, Wednesday & Saturday class. You would be welcome to join, either live-in-person, or online!

If you enjoy the therapeutic side of the article, then do check out my therapeutic mindfulness coaching, and also the Meditation & Mindfulness for working with your Child-self  on the 21st (workshop), & 23/24 (sessions) June. On early bird up until 7th June 10% off!
 
In the spirit of the indestructibilty,

 
Toby

Indestructible safety (On Therapeutic & Tantric mindfulness)
 
Therapeutic mindfulness
 
The purpose of therapeutic mindfulness is to create a safe space for us to explore the way that our difficult past experiences impinge upon our present experience. It enables us to work trough them in a way that we increasingly experience the present moment free from the baggage of the past. In a previous article I outline six mindful positions that are useful in this regard:

  • Grounding in the senses
  • Recognizing safety
  • Warmth & compassion
  • Appreciation
  • Curiosity & courage
  • A sense of being supported

 
In this article I want to use safety as an example of how to combine therapeutic mindfulness and Tantric mindfulness. Therapeutically, recognizing and resting in safety involves acknowledging your vulnerable or fearful self, and then:

  • Recognizing that in this moment you are physically safe, there are no immanent threats to your wellbeing. Letting your body, mind, and heart rest in this space of safety, using it to feel secure and relaxed as you navigate the day
  • Creating a psychologically safe space – Consciously abstaining from attacking or negative thoughts/emotions toward yourself, so that your inner space with yourself is one that feels increasingly safe, reliable, and consistent.

 
Tantric mindfulness
 
In contrast to therapeutic mindfulness, Tantric mindfulness is about recognizing and experiencing your ‘always already’ awakened, ‘perfected’ nature in the present moment. If it can be combined with therapeutic mindfulness, then they create a wonderful and powerful team. So how can this be applied to safety? The instructions below are short and may seem quite radical, but, well, that’s Tantric practice, it is all about making ‘educated leaps of perception!’
If you relax into the stillness of your consciousness-itself in the present moment, then you will become aware of a dimension of self that is formless and timeless, Eternal, and Free. Recognizing and resting in that formless-timeless self, recognize that it is indestructible;

  • Because it was not born, it does not die
  • Because it is formless and timeless, it cannot be destroyed by anything
  • Even if the outer circumstances in your life are limiting and oppressive, this part of you is completely and radically FREE from this limitation, free from the oppression of fear, free from anxiety around uncertainty

So, you practice recognizing your formless timeless nature, recognize its nature as being indestructible safety, and identify YOU as THAT.
 
Three positions to explore combining therapeutic & Tantric mindfulness
 
So, to put these together, practice cycling through:

  • Breathing and relaxing into physical safety, dialling down your nervous systems’ emergency triggering
  • Creating a psychologically safe space for yourself to rest and regenerate yourself within
  • Based on the above two, practice recognizing your formless-timeless indestructible self, and rest in the experience of indestructible safety, both in meditation, and as much as possible in your daily life

 
This practice invites you to combine the acknowledgement of both your vulnerability, and need for safety at the same time as recognizing your indestructability. Initially this looks like a paradox, but put into practice it quickly becomes working with a complementary polarity.
 
Enjoy your indestructibility!
 
Related reading: Toby’s therapeutic mindfulness anthology
Therapeutic mindfulness coaching
Combining your witnessing with Tantric meditation

© Toby Ouvry 2025, 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 & workshops

Ongoing on Tuesday’s & Wednesday’s (live & online), 7.30-8.30pm – Weekly integral meditation classes

Ongoing Tuesday & Wednesday’s weekly, 7.30-8.30pm – Embodied Transformation – An integrative introduction to Tantric meditation

Ongoing on Saturdays weekly, 5.30-6.15pm – Embodied Transformation – Saturday Tantric deep-dive meditation sessions

Saturday 24th May, 10.30am-12noon – Get Your Meditation Practice Started Now – The Shortest and Most Time Effective Meditation Workshop Ever

Level 1 – Friday 30th May, 8am-4pm, Level 2 – Friday 13th June, 8am-4pm – Freedom & Fullness – A practical introduction to Non-Dual Meditation Practice Retreat & Course

Tuesday 17th, Weds 18th June, 7.30-8.30pm – Summer solstice balancing & renewing meditation

Meditation & Mindfulness for working with your Child-self – Workshop: Saturday 21st June, 2-5pm SG time, & 
session series: Session 1 – Monday 23rd June, 7.30-9am (7.30-9pm Eastern time US), Session 2 – Tuesday 24th June, 7.30-9am (7.30-9pm Eastern time US)

Follow Toby on: LinkedIn, YouTube, Instagram

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Awareness and insight Integral Awareness Integral Meditation Meditation and Psychology Meditation techniques Mindfulness Presence and being present

Four Methods for Cultivating Mindful Relationships

Dear Integral Meditators,

Do you have a strategy for integrating mindfulness into your relationships? This mid-week article is an invitation to investigate four simple techniques that I have found effective.

Yours in the spirit of mindful relationships,

Toby

Four Methods for Cultivating Mindful Relationships

The following are four techniques for cultivating more mindfulness or, put another way integrating a greater degree of consciousness into your everyday relationships. Each one of them is relatively simple to understand and to put into practice on a basic level, and each one can be cultivated to deeper and deeper levels over time. Just practicing one can be very beneficial, but I have found they really come into their own when practiced together as an integrated unit.

Being the fly on the wall – Imagine you are a fly on the wall observing yourself in real time interaction with your partner, boss or child (etc…) Observe the interaction objectively for a while. What do you see happening? Are your words, behaviour and body language helping or hindering the relationship? How is the other person experiencing you? Get familiar with this new perspective on what is going on and integrate it into the way you approach interacting with others.

Taking the perspective of the other – Imagine inhabit the body, mind, eyes and so on of your partner, child, parent, friend (etc…) What is their world view? What does it feel like to be treated by you in the way that they are? Imagine your words spoken to them and their emotional reaction. Get used to really taking on the perspective of the other regularly, each day.

Acknowledging difficulties – Take time to deliberately get in touch with the emotional wounds, resentments, pain and so forth that you are experiencing in a relationship. Deliberately look them out, bring them to mind, acknowledge them and release them as they arise on a daily basis, so that they can be released as they come up. Anger, resentment, shame, jealousy and so on are not pleasant, but if we are regularly repressing them then they won’t do anything but poison the relationship.

Appreciation – Focus daily upon the gifts, positives, and other valuable attributes of your relationships. For example different stages of bringing up a child each have their own challenging sides, but they also have their delightful sides. Don’t let the different stages of your relationships go by without enjoying them, they will be gone as you move to the next stage…

You can practice these as formal sitting mindfulness techniques, or just deliberately take them into consideration as you are going about your daily relationships. After having focused on one or other of the practices for a while it can be useful to ask yourself the questions “What insight have I gained from this reflection?” and “What might I consider changing in the way I approach this relationship as a result of this insight?”

© 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 

 
 
Categories
A Mind of Ease Biographical creative imagery Inner vision Integral Awareness Meditating on the Self Meditation and Psychology Presence and being present Shadow meditation Stress Transformation

Melting the Ice of the Heart, Cooling the Inferno of the Soul

Dear Integral Meditators,

One of my main inspirations Ken Wilbur was once asked what the process of growing and evolving is like. He answered simply “You laugh more and you cry more”. I’ve found that to be true, and this midweek article is something of an exploration of that.

Yours in the spirit of ice and fire,

Toby

Melting the Ice of the Heart, Cooling the Inferno of the Soul

Last week was one of those weeks where there was a lot of tension in my life professionally, personally and physically I found and felt myself to be under an unusual amount of pressure. As a meditation and stress transformation coach I know the signs that I am not coping too well with pressure, for example:

  • I could feel my body armoring itself from the psychological pressure by becoming physically tense
  • I could hear my language with my family becoming abbreviated and sometimes harsh
  • Listening to the inner conversation in my mind I could see how reactive it had become
  • My the centre of my chest or heart space felt like a place where I could not go , it felt inhabited by an energy that was not under my control

In short it felt like my body and soul had simultaneously turned into fire and ice, where there is the quality and heat of anger and frustration, together with the coldness and detachment that comes when you start to feel alienated from your reality through resentment and fear.

At this point I started to feel a little bit like I was having to start my mind-training all over again, like I had to re-learn to mindfully transform my stress. What was the quality that I found most helpful to negotiate my way out of what was happening and find meaning?

Curiosity.

That is to say I did not try and resist any of the things that I was experiencing, or try to change the person I was in that moment. Rather I just tried to become curious about myself and what I was going through, to be interested. To be curious carries a balance of the qualities of observing objectively with caring subjectively. As soon as I started to become mindfully curious about myself

  • I could feel a window for self compassion opening up in my heart
  • I could feel a deeper part of myself becoming present to what I was going through
  • I saw the inner dialog in my mind become slower, kinder, more relaxed
  • There seemed to be a space where a calm me could co-exist without conflict with the part of me that was wounded and upset
  • I felt the tangible presence of hope
  • Despite the feeling of emptiness in my heart I found myself smiling quietly to myself

So, the next time you feel in a fix and your soul is on fire whilst your heart has shut down, perhaps you can invite curiosity into the situation. Sit quietly, relax your judgemental mind and enquire of yourself

  • How are you?
  • What an interesting experience this is, let’s see what we can notice about what is going on
  • We may feel pretty terrible right now, but were still worth paying attention to in a caring way, let’s do that and see what happens

Allow your curiosity to lead the way toward self understanding and compassion.

PS: Curiosity is also a theme I explore in my recent article on Applying Mindful Curiosity to Your Relationships.

© 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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creative imagery Inner vision Integral Awareness Integral Meditation Meditation techniques Presence and being present Primal Spirituality spiritual intelligence

The Way of the Rat

Dear Integral Meditators,

If you look at my website, articles and workshops, you’ll see there is quite a lot of material on transforming difficulties, re-directing negativity into positive energy and so on. Who taught me all this? Well I had a meeting with a rat 14 years ago that set me on the right track…

Yours in the spirit of fur and claws,

Toby

The Way of the Rat

When I first came to Asia as a Buddhist Monk in 1999, I stayed for 6 months or so in Johor Bahru at a small Buddhist Centre, whilst making regular trips into Singapore to explore the possibilities of setting up a meditation center there.
Over the 2-3 days of new year period 2000-2001 I was at this small centre, pretty much all alone, and at the time having doubts about my capacity to do the work that I had been asked to do. The meditation center was an apartment on the top story of a shophouse, with the stair well being the only way in and out.
During this period of aloneness and self-doubt, a large rat ran up the stairs from the street and disappeared under a cupboard before I could scare it back out. Realizing I was stuck with it for the night, I shut my bedroom door firmly before bed!
The next morning I was sitting meditating on the floor in the main shrine room, deeply relaxed, when suddenly I felt this pressure on my knee. I opened my eyes and this big rat had crept up on me and now had its front paws on my knee and was staring up at me inquisitively. He only had half of his fur, and was clearly a bit worse for wear! I had actually been in quite deep meditation, and so having a big rat suddenly leaning on my leg and staring up at me really shocked the cr**p out of me! I jumped up very quickly with a yell and he then ran off and hid in my bedroom.
I never saw him again. After checking he had moved out from my bedroom, I left front door open that night, with the metal gate shut, and I think he must have just gone down of his own accord when he found there was nothing much to eat!

Qualities of the rat
My encounter with the rat was the beginning of a series of experiences where I became aware that chance meetings with animals were actually playing and active part in my spiritual path and journey. This was a time in my life where I had really been thrown back on my own resourcefulness and capacity to survive, persist and problem solve as intelligently as I could. What better a companion, example and object of meditation could there be for me than the rat, an animal that survives and thrives in the most difficult, dirty and persecuted of circumstances?

Looking out for animals in your life
If a dragonfly flies through your window and spends a couple of hours with you while you are cooking dinner, or you go for a run and see a snake in the path, it’s worth just exploring what the qualities of the animal are and how its virtues and strengths could be applied to the challenges that you are going through right now. You may find it surprising how quickly your mind can free-associate a tangible and useful meaning between the qualities of the animal and what you need to do.

Re-awakening to our intimacy with the animal kingdom
For our ancestors living close to nature it would have been natural to feel close to animals (to both love and fear them), and to see spiritual meaning in their interactions with them. I think contemporary society has numbed our sense of intimacy with the natural world, but looking out for the coming and going of animals in your life in the way described above can be a first step toward re-awakening our own intimacy with, care for and support from wild creatures, even the dirty ones that live in our drains!

© Toby Ouvry 2013, you are welcome to use or share this article, but please cite Toby as the source and include reference to his website www.tobyouvry.com

Categories
Awareness and insight creative imagery Inner vision Integral Meditation Integrating Ego, Soul and Spirit Meditation and Psychology Meditation techniques Presence and being present spiritual intelligence

Transforming Specific Aspects of Your Past Through Shadow Meditation

Dear Integral Meditators,

I hope that you have had a good week that you feel has served your inner growth well! This weeks article explains an meditation practice that I really have something of a soft spot for, and that is of real practical value. Our past experience is constantly impacting our experience of the present, and the meditation is specifically designed to effect a healthy ongoing relationship between our past and present, so that we can face the future with confidence.

In the “upcoming courses” section you’ll see that I have mapped out the  workshop program from now until the end of the year (I’ll have to see about online courses, I’m not sure yet). The main thing that is ‘new’ is that I will be backing up the Shadow and Zen meditation workshops with level 2 workshops, so for those of you that have done the introductions, there will now be an opportunity to go onto the next step!

For any of you that missed the mid-week email with the free meditation audio on transforming stress, you can have a listen just by clicking HERE.

Toby

Upcoming Courses at Integral Meditation Asia:
Sunday October 27th, 3-6pm – Finding Freedom From What Holds You Back in Life: Practical Meditations And Techniques For Working With your Shadow-Self – A Three Hour Workshop

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

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

Dec 1st – Shadow Meditation Level 2 (full details shortly)


Transforming Specific Aspects of Your Past Through Shadow Meditation

This article explains a practical way of working with aspects of your own individual past history in order to transform the way in which we experience the effects of that past in our lives right now.

Often we are not fully aware of the effects that our past history is having upon our present moment experience; the purpose of this meditation is improve our awareness of the way our past is impacting our present, and to effect a healthy communication and reconciliation between the person we are now and the person who went through those past experiences.

Those of you that have done some shadow coaching with me, or attended a shadow workshop will recognize some of the techniques in this meditation. The meditation technique is simple but powerful, and there is plenty of room for you to follow your own intuition and imagination.

The Practice:

Stage 1: Select a past experience to focus on 
Choose an area of your past that you wish to investigate, perhaps one that you consciously or intuitively feel that there are some unresolved issues for you. Examples might be:

  • A particular period of your childhood upbringing or schooling
  • A particular relationship with a parent, sibling or teacher
  • A difficult time such as post-divorce, being layed-off at work, or times when you had to experience your parents going through this

Stage 2: Connect to and travel down your life tree:
Having set the past experience you wish to investigate, set your intention to investigate it. Then sit down in meditation and see yourself in front of a huge tree, with its roots going deep into the earth, and its branches reaching high up into the sky. Think of this tree as your own personal Tree of Life, or Life Tree.
In the bottom of the trunk of the tree there is a door. When you are ready open the door. See extending down into the earth below there is a spiral staircase. Follow it down as far as it goes until you find a second door, which takes you out into a landscape connected to the period of your life that you wish to investigate.

Stage 3: Encounter and communication
In that landscape you encounter a figure connected to that past period of your life. For example if you are investigating a period of your schooling, then you might meet yourself as a young boy, or one of your teachers (whatever appears at this stage is right for you, trust what you see). Investigate the feelings that arise from your encounter with this figure (or figures). When you are ready, ask the figure three questions:
What is it you wish to communicate to me?
How can I help resolve the issues that you are unhealed?
How can I be of service to you?
Pay attention to and note the answers that come back.

Stage 4: Conclusion
When you are ready, say goodbye and return back up the spiral staircase to the surface world. Try and implement whatever insights you have gained from your encounter into your present life.
© Toby Ouvry 2013, you are welcome to use or share this article, but please cite Toby as the source and include reference to his website www.tobyouvry.com

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Awareness and insight Biographical Insight Meditation Integral Awareness Integral Meditation Meditating on the Self Meditation and Psychology Meditation techniques Motivation and scope

How Much Happiness Are You Prepared to Tolerate?

Dear Integral Meditators,

What if happiness were easier than we think, and the only thing getting in the way was that we often find being happy profoundly uncomfortable?

This weeks integral meditations article is in the form of a series of questions that invites us to look a bit deeper into the real causes of our lack of happiness.

I’m in the process of setting up the rest of the meditation program for the rest of 2013, you can see the dates below, full details will be out by next week.

Yours in the spirit of uncomplicated happiness,

Toby

Upcoming Courses at Integral Meditation Asia:

Starting Sunday October 7th  – Qi Gong for Improving your Health and Energy Levels and Removing Your Inner Stress – A Four Class Series

19th & 24th November – An Introduction to Meditation from the Perspective of Zen Levels 1&2 (full details next week)

October 27th, Dec 1st – Shadow Meditation Levels 1&2 (full details next week)

How Much Happiness Are You Prepared to Tolerate?

What if happiness was easy?

What if the obstacle to happiness was not the fact that it was not available to you each day, but rather the experience of being unconditionally happy was something that you had a very low tolerance level to?

What if being happy actually caused you anxiety on a subtle and unconscious level, life surely could not be this good?

What if you are actually avoiding being happy because a large part of you actually prefers being unhappy, struggling with life?

What if the idea of working towards happiness as a future goal seems attractive to you, but accepting happiness as it exists in the present moment is something that makes you genuinely uncomfortable to the extent of avoidance?

The word meditation and its applied practice really means to ‘ponder deeply upon’, or ‘to look deeply into’. This week your meditation practice is to ask yourself the above questions and the one question below, to ‘penetrate the question’ so to speak.

What if real genuine happiness was available to you right now and the only thing standing in the way of it was your acceptance of it?

© Toby Ouvry 2013, you are welcome to use or share this article, but please cite Toby as the source and include reference to his website www.tobyouvry.com

Categories
Insight Meditation Integral Awareness Integral Meditation Mindfulness Uncategorized

Four Types of Deep Calm, Four Types of Dynamic Power

Dear Integral Meditators,

What do you think of when you think “calm”? This weeks article looks at how calmness is not just a passive relaxational activity, but a type of dynamic inner power that we can build in our mind and life each day.

Yours in the transformative power of inner calm,

Toby

 

Four Types of Deep
Calm, Four Types of Dynamic Power

Sometimes the impression that we have of calmness is that it is a passive, purely relaxational experience that we can use to escape and gain relief from the trials and tribulations of our daily life.
If we are a little more serious about investigating the potential of calm however, we discover that contained within the experience of calm there is the experience of an inner dynamic power which adds a new dimension of strength that we can bring into the centre of our most difficult life circumstances.
We can use this inner power to direct and transform such situations in a practical and beneficial way.
In meditation we can think of the co-development of inner calm and power as having four basic types:

The calm of solidity
This is the calm presence that comes from being deeply embedded in awareness of our physical body and our physical world. It leads to a calm power that is mountain, stone or earth like in nature; it is able to remain very solid, stable and fixed in the midst of changing and difficult circumstances.

The calm of flow
This is a type of emotional calm that arises from the ability to let your emotions flow in an open and healthy manner, which in turn gives you the confidence to direct the natural power inherent within emotion toward positive ends in your life.

The calm of structure
This is a type of mental calm that comes from having a well structured and ordered mind. A well structured mind is like a good plumbing or electrical system in a house; it enables you to access and direct the power of your mind to the task at hand efficiently, without ‘leaking’ energy.

The calm of no-mind
This is a type of spiritual or existential calm that comes from developing the ability to suspend your thoughts and rest in the inner space that lies beyond them. Resting in the space of no-mind or no-thoughts gives access to deep calm even when in the midst of mental, emotional and physical turmoil, and facilitates the development of the trans-rational powers of mind that lie beyond the intellect

Integral meditation training involves the complementary development of all four types of calm power. Each can be looked at in depth, but here is a short exercise you can try to get a feel for it. Stay with each stage of the breathing for as long as you like:

As you breathe in be aware of the solidity and stability of your physical body,
As you breathe out relax into that stability.
As you breathe in allow your emotional being to open and flow,
As you breathe out relax into the power of that flow.
As you breathe in tune into the positive thought structures of your mind,
As you breathe out feel their power to contain and direct your mental energy.
As you breathe in be aware of the space beyond your thoughts,
As you breathe out relax into the power of that which lies beyond the mind.

© Toby Ouvry 2013, you are welcome to use or share this article, but please cite Toby as the source and include reference to his website www.tobyouvry.com

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Awareness and insight Meditation Recordings Meditation techniques

Recording of “What is Meditation?” Talk

Hi Everyone,

Please find below a recording of a free talk that I did last week entitles “What is Meditation, and the Role That it Can Play in Transforming Our Life”, Enjoy!

I have placed a resume of the talk content beneath the recording.

Yours in the spirit of the journey,

Toby

[audio:https://tobyouvry.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/09/What-is-Meditation-Free-Talk.mp3|titles=What is Meditation Free Talk]

FREE TALK:

“WHAT IS MEDITATION AND THE ROLE THAT IT CAN PLAY IN TRANSFORMING OUR LIFE”

With meditation teacher Toby Ouvry

As modern life continues to make more and more demands upon us more and more people are turning to the ancient art of meditation as a way of coping with stress, reducing anxiety and re-orienting their mind around positive mental and emotional habits that give  rise to peace of mind. But what exactly is meditation? This talk, given by Toby who has 15 years of experience of teaching meditation, including five years as a Buddhist monk aims to provide answers to the following questions:

  • What is meditation?
  • What are the different purposes that it can be used for?
  • How can I begin practicing meditation today in a simple and effective way that will enhance my quality of life?

Click HERE for a list of Toby’s current and upcoming meditation classes.

Categories
A Mind of Ease Awareness and insight Integral Awareness Meditation and Psychology

Seven Ways of Creating a Mind of Ease and Inner Wellbeing

One of my favorite personal growth “formulas” was coined by a guy called Timothy W Gallway (of “The Inner Game of Tennis” fame) who said that performance = potential minus interference. What this formula points out is that as often as not is we ourselves that get in our own way at least as much if not more than anything else in our outer environment.

So, the first stage of getting rid of our “inner interference” is learning to create a mind of ease and relaxation. Here are seven short meditative methods for creating a mind of ease and relaxation. They can be done on their own, either as super-short practices done for as little time as 15 seconds, or they can be done in combination with each other, taking a few moments to focus on each one, and then moving onto the next. Here they are:

  1. Create a time for safe space – For a specific period of time consciously recognize that you are at this moment not in any manifest physical danger. Make a decision also to abstain from inner criticism of yourself, and try to feel the Earth and your immediate environment as friendly rather than hostile. Allow your mind to rest in the safe physical and psychological space of these three recognitions for the time you have set aside.
  2. Extend a feeling of warmth and friendliness to yourself – Chose to be a friend to yourself. Focusing on your self-sense, gently extend a feeling of warmth and welcome to it. Relax as deeply as you can into this warm feeling of liking who you are, just for now!
  3. Find something positive to focus on – Mentally search through the last 24 hours. Find some positive achievement, experience of good fortune, recognition of a kindness that you have given someone or other such positive event. Having found such a positive thought focus on it, developing a sense of appreciation and enjoyment for what has transpired.
  4. Concentrate on a single object for a short while – Take a single object such as the breathing and focus on it exclusively for a short period of time. You can temporarily forget about the causes of your stress simply by learning to focus. your mind in this way.
  5. Utilize the exhalation – Following on from point 4, we can combine our focused concentration with a deeper release of stress by imagining inner tension leaving our body and mind on the exhalation. There is a natural releasing or letting go mechanism that happens in our body when we breathe out that we can leverage on consciously.
  6. Abstain from inner criticism – Expanding a little upon point 1, we can set aside a short period of time where we decide that no critical thoughts about ourself are allowed in our mind. Discover that it is possible to shut the door on self criticism for a while, and enjoy the inner space and ease that is created! Excluding critical thoughts of others can also be included in this section.
  7. Be aware of the space between your thoughts – Normally we focus on the content of our consciousness, the thoughts and feelings in our mind. In doing so we become completely oblivious ever present “inner space” that is constantly there in our mind. Setting aside time to focus exclusively upon the space between our thoughts helps us to find a source of wellbeing that is there all the time but that we often overlook!

Meditation is a mind that focuses on a positive object, an object that when we focus on it makes us peaceful and happy. All of the seven points above are simple objects of meditation that, through focusing on we can begin to build our own mind of ease.

A final point, you may find that when you try to use any of the above techniques and you find your mind resisting. For example you may  find that it is very difficult to develop a feeling of liking yourself when you try technique 2. If this happens then rather than struggling and trying to force yourself to get to that feeling simply be aware of your resistance to liking who you are, and take that resistance as your object of meditation. Accepting inner resistance that you encounter in meditation is one way of beginning to let go if the inner tension and blockages that are causing the resistance in the first place.

Categories
Concentration Meditation techniques

Meditation Technique For Brain Relaxation, Non-Conceptuality and Falling Asleep at Night.

Dear Integral Meditators,

How has your week been? I’ve been experiencing a few changes in routine which have been creating quite a lot of mental busyness for me, so this week’s article returns to the perennial meditation theme of “how to calm the mind”. I think you will find the technique that I describe very accessible and easy to use!

Yours in the spirit of calmness and clear seeing,

Toby

 

 

Meditation Technique For Brain Relaxation, Non-Conceptuality and Falling Asleep at Night.

This technique is designed to help people address one of the main problems that we face in meditation; Finding that we are thinking too much even whilst trying to concentrate our mind. It is also a technique that I particularly use when trying to go to sleep at night and want to clear and relax my mind. Actually it can be done anywhere whenever you have a spare moment which is one of the things that makes it so useful.

It can also be a useful meditation tool for calming down after emotional trauma, for stopping cyclical negative thoughts and also finding temporary relief from psychological difficulties such as depression.

The basic premise for the meditation is that your brain is your “organ of thought” so to speak. By bringing your physical brain into a state of deep relaxation it can actually be relatively easy and natural to calm the mind.

Meditation for Relaxing the Brain 

Sitting or lying down, bring your attention to your head, and in particular the area around the temples, forehead, eyes and eye sockets. Spend a short while consciously relaxing these areas of the face and head.

Now become aware of your brain and spend a few moments sensing it as a whole.

Once you have a sense or feeling for the brain as a whole, start scanning through it with your awareness. As you go through each part of the brain consciously relax each area. I normally start with the two frontal lobes of the brain immediately behind the forehead, as the front part of the brain is associated with the generation and functioning of conceptual thoughts. Spend awhile really relaxing all the tension from the front section of the brain. Once you have done this move to the mid-section of the brain and focus on relaxing it in the same way. Then move onto the back of the brain. Finally move down to the brainstem that connects to the brain to the spinal cord and release tension from it.

Perform this scanning meditation through the brain two or three times, then move back to a general awareness of the brain as a whole. You will find that with the brain relaxed in this way your mind will quite naturally quieten down and you will experience a sense of inner spaciousness and calm. Stay with this feeling of mental relaxation and calm for as long as you wish.

As I said, this is an easy and simple technique to use, you don’t have to be any kind of meditation expert to start practicing it by yourself and experiencing the benefits!

Here are a few other techniques from articles that I have written that are specifically designed to help reduce conceptual thought quickly:

Finding Inner Space in Your Mind by Focusing on Outer Spaces

Calming the Brain Fast! Mouth Breathing

Meditating “Cold Turkey”

Still Point Breathing Meditation