Practices of
awareness and
transformation
What is this practice?
Mindfulness meditation is about learning—or remembering — how to be still.
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During mindfulness meditation classes, we learn different ways to be still. Any good teacher wants to help each person find the way(s) that will work for them.
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Different ways work for different people. You probably already know ways that help you be still-- other than mindfulness meditation-- maybe you practice yoga, breath awareness, recite a favorite word or phrase, walk mindfully, do visualizations, or engage in prayer.
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Mindfulness meditation offers special types of practices to still the body, the emotions, and the mind. There are practices to
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train our attention
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train our ability to feel and recognize emotions,
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train our ability to notice and observe our thoughts and though patterns,
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help bring inner resources into our lives.
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Why do we do this practice?
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With practice, we get to know better all aspects of who we are -- physically, emotionally, and mentally.
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As the body and mind become calmer and clearer, we begin to notice all the ways in which we operate habitually, how much of our life is lived on automatic pilot -- physically, emotionally, and mentally.
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It is often said that the time we spend in formal sitting meditation is like going to “the gym for the mind”. That’s because we engage in a training of the mind, that has the effect of transforming the mind and, as scientists have now documented, transforming the brain itself.
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As we see ourselves and the world around us more clearly, with less confusion, we also begin to understand better the obstacles that the mind can create at time.
Is there more to it than just learning to be still?
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Yes, in addition to stilling the mind and body, we also learn or remember how to open our heart to life as it is.
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By practicing regularly and keeping an open heart, we transform the ways we see ourselves, others, and the world around us, and we begin to relate in new ways.
Is this religious, or will it conflict with my religion?
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The practices and philosophy presented here are not religious practices: they are not Christian practices, or Buddhist practices, or Hindu practices.
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The practices as they are taught here are called secular. They can be used by anyone who wants to use them.
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It is also understood that each one of us will bring our own religious beliefs and inclinations and we will weave our own beliefs and practices into our meditation practice, because each one of us is one person and cannot separate the various domains of our lives.
Training our attention: the foundational practice
The stepping stone of any meditation practice is to develop enough stability of the body-heart-mind for mindfulness to begin to take hold.
We begin by bringing our body into an upright posture that will be conducive to extended sitting.
And then we turn toward our inner experiences and learn to stabilize the continuous flow of inner experiences that arise. There are many ways to do this. Usually we use the sensation of our own breath to anchor our attention.
Training our ability to feel and recognize emotions in the body
All emotions always have a component in the body. We can actually feel them if we pay attention. By learning to sense emotions in the body we begin to know our emotional state moment-by-moment.
The main practices are the body scan and the walking meditation.
Training our ability to observe our thoughts as just thoughts
Although beautiful and unique, the human thinking mind can sometime make our lives miserable as it can create doubt - self doubt, doubts about others - or distorted reality, or stories of lack and strories of failure. In Meditation, we can learn to see thoughts as just thoughts, arising and passing away just like physical sensations and emotional states arise and pass away.
Training our ability to bring inner resources into our lives
As we grow in our practice we begin to transform and get to know what is traditionally known as the fruits of practice: wisdom, compassion, loving kindness, equanimity, gratitude, sympathetic joy. We can also include practices that cultivate these states. In Western psychological terms, these are called resourcing practices because they are practices of calling on our own internal “resources” such as our natureal (self)compassion or gratitude