We had our Sunday Introduction to Meditation Class at Yoga Bliss today. We’ve been working with the four foundations of mindfulness: awareness of the body, feeling tone, thoughts, emotions and then all phenomena. We drew our practice inspiration from B. Alan Wallace’s Minding Closely: The Four Applications of Mindfulness. We included two practice periods and a walking meditation.
Alan suggests ways of enhancing concentration by balancing two mental faculties: mindfulness and introspection. He writes that “mindfulness requires discerning, ethical concern. We must apply mindfulness strategically and discerningly because we care about ourselves. Are we flourishing or are we sowing the seeds of our own misery and discontent?”
