We had our Sunday Introduction to Meditation Class at Yoga Bliss yesterday.  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.

We continued to practice with the second application:  mindfulness of feelings.   We explored the way sensory experience evokes feeling and feeling often triggers an impulse to avoid or cling to feeling.  We systematically scanned areas of the body to enhance and focus perception.  I find it fascinating to observe the way my mind responds by recalling associations from past experience, imagining or rerunning scenarios from current life or planning the future.  These “mind moves” happen lightening fast.  They also seem to have a life of their own once they get going.

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We had our Sunday Introduction to Meditation Class at Yoga Bliss yesterday.  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.

Yesterday we continued to practice with the second application:  mindfulness of feelings.  We established a foundation of bare attention while settling our bodies, minds and speech.  Then we focused on sensation perceived through the five sense fields:  the visual – what you can see, the auditory – what you can hear, olfactory – what you can smell, gustatory – what you can taste and the tactile sensation – what you can feel throughout your body.  We explored the feelings arising in response to these perceptions:  pleasant, unpleasant or neutral.  Alan encourages students to follow the links between sensation, feeling and the impulse to respond by avoiding what’s unpleasant or holding on to what is pleasurable.  He also suggests noticing whether it is possible to find a direct experience of “I, me or mine” in these direct experiences.

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We had our Sunday Introduction to Meditation Class at Yoga Bliss yesterday.  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.

For the past weeks we’ve been focusing on the first application:  mindfulness of the body. We’ve been practicing the ability to sustain “bare attention” focusing on the “tactile field” of the body.  Yesterday we began to practice with the second application:  mindfulness of feelings.  We established a foundation of bare attention while settling our bodies, minds and speech.  Then we engaged our faculties of imagination, memory and intelligence to cultivate loving kindness.

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We had our Sunday Introduction to Meditation Class at Yoga Bliss yesterday.  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.

We used Alan’s guided meditation On the Elements:  earth, water, fire and air.  We directed our attention to the tactile experiences of solidity, fluidity, relative heat and coolness and lightness and movement.  In studying these experiences we investigated whether they were stable and unchanging.  Alan asks:

As you attend to all the subtle and coarse movements within the field, is there anything that suggests ownership? Or are these merely emergences of motion, arising within a tactile field to which you have privileged access?

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We had our Sunday Introduction to Meditation Class at Yoga Bliss yesterday.  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.

We used Alan’s Mindfulness of the Body practice in which we scanned the body’s tactile sensations in three dimensions.  We used the in-breath to enhance our awareness of feeling in the area of focus and then moved to a different location with the out breath.  Body scanning is a common stress reduction technique.  This approach is unique in the way it expanded focus in three dimensions.  This novelty helped students enhance and sustain their attention.

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We had our Sunday Introduction to Meditation Class at Yoga Bliss yesterday.  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.

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We had our Sunday Introduction to Meditation Class at Yoga Bliss yesterday.  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.

In meditation we work with the mind to establish cognitive balance, a direct experience of equanimity.  Alan describes balance as having two critical aspects:   seeing the impermanent as impermanent and differentiating the true sources of happiness from false ones.  In cultivating mindfulness we first focus on the “the body and physical sense fields”; then attend to feelings of pleasure, pain and indifference; then events arising in mental domain; finally to the space of all phenomena and their interdependent relationships.

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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 observing what we perceive and how we perceive it.  Oh yes, and don’t get caught up with proliferating thoughts about whatever “it” your awareness lights on.  Sounds simple but it isn’t easy.  The key to practice is to feel the body as the body; feel thoughts and emotions simply as thoughts and emotions; experience all phenomena, internal and external, just as phenomena.  Notice when you are embellishing the direct experience of what you perceive with a projection of your own.  How are you cloaking your experience?  Are your windows of perception clear?  Sometimes the veils are so thin they’re really tough to recognize.

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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?”

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We had our Sunday Introduction to Meditation Class at Yoga Bliss yesterday.  We expanded our focus to include 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 guides students in systematically settling the body, breath and speech.  He encourages relaxation and vigilance while allowing all that arises in the various modes of perception to simply be and then pass away.  What remains is the luminous quality of unwavering awareness which “knows” or “cognizes.”  This awareness illuminates appearances.

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