Doors of Perception
We had the second meeting of our Yoga for a World Out of Balance Meditation Book Group yesterday at Yoga Bliss. We began with a yoga practice to explore sensation and also a sense of interconnectedness, relatedness as we moved together. We practiced sitting meditation and explored walking meditation as a way of broadening our field of awareness. Our discussion focused on the second and third chapters, Restraint in Times of Unrestraint and Lack.
We had our third Introduction to Meditation Class at Yoga Bliss yesterday. We shared a guided meditation of breathing, relaxing, feeling, watching and allowing. Sound simple? When you actually go to try this practice, often the first thing you experience is resistance, doubt and distraction.
I’m often pleasantly surprised to see people take time out on a sunny weekend in Seattle to come inside to affirm the value of pausing. Michael Stone, author and guiding teacher of Centre of Gravity, a meditation and yoga center in Toronto observed our “forward-headed” tendency by invoking Rollo May.
We had the first meeting of our Yoga for a World Out of Balance Meditation Book Group yesterday at Yoga Bliss. We began with a yoga practice. In standing, we explored sensation and experience of being rooted like a tree. Our book revolves around the ethics of leading a conscious life – known in yoga speak as the Yamas. These principles of restraint will be our foundation – the ground from which we’ll grow over the next few weeks as we begin to integrate them into our daily lives. We come from different backgrounds and stages of life. Yet we are drawn together to grow – like those trees whose roots connect underground and branch out in the light.
We had our second Introduction to Meditation class at Yoga Bliss today. Practice takes on a greater depth when we can see and hear human experience on the face and through the voice of a friend. I believe the intention we share in coming together to cultivate awareness and sensitivity forms a friendship – at the very least a supportive psychic space. Rodney Smith, guiding teacher for the Seattle Insight Meditation Society, says his intention in teaching meditation is not to make us all better meditators. Rather, it is to help us become more aware human beings.
We had our first Introduction to Meditation class at Yoga Bliss today. We came together to learn and practice a skill that we can take off the mat to support our lives – lives that include our families, friends and communities.
It was an inspiration and a joy to see so many of us in the room. I could feel our collective energy and the power of something special, something sustainable, building among us. It felt like a quality of aliveness – I think we were truly awake!
As molecular scientist turned Buddhist monk, Matthieu Ricard, writes:
“We have the potential to be more kind, to practice mindfulness, and to experience well-being, but we only use a small fraction of the potential we have. So that’s what meditation is about: to cultivate the qualities that we have the potential for but that remain dormant, latent, unused, and to develop them to the best of our own potential.
In modern Western societies, happiness is often equated with the maximization of pleasure, and some people imagine that real happiness would consist of an interrupted succession of pleasurable experiences. This is far from what the Buddhist notion of sukha means. Sukha refers to an optimal way of being, an exceptionally healthy state of mind that underlies and suffuses all emotional states, that embraces all the joys and sorrows that come our way. It is also a state of wisdom purged of mental poisons, an insight free from blindness to the true nature of reality. Authentic happiness can only come from the long-term cultivation of wisdom, altruism, and compassion, and from the complete eradication of mental toxins such as hatred, grasping, and ignorance.”
We had the fourth meeting of our Willpower Instinct Meditation Book Group at Yoga Bliss. We came together for gentle yoga practice, meditation and discussion of the third, fourth and fifth chapters in the Willpower Instinct: I Will, I Won’t, I Want: What Willpower Is, and Why It Matters. In these chapters Kelly describes how our brains mistake the promise of reward for happiness. We chase satisfaction from things and find they are empty – even harmful. She says that if we are to have self-control we need to need to identify the false promises of reward and aim ourselves toward that which has true value.
We had the third meeting of our Willpower Instinct Meditation Book Group at Yoga Bliss yesterday. We came together for gentle yoga practice, meditation and discussion of the second, third and fourth chapters in the Willpower Instinct: I Will, I Won’t, I Want: What Willpower Is, and Why It Matters.
In these chapters author Kelly McGonigal explores willpower as a biological instinct. She suggests ways of choosing and framing our challenges in ways that truly motivate us to choose wisely. She cautions us against viewing our challenges as measures of moral worth. She observes that we often reward ourselves for doing something “good” with an indulgence of doing something “bad”. She asks us to consider how we identify ourselves: Are we the person who needs to be controlled? Are we the person who is inspired and dedicated to pursuing a goal? Our perceived identity informs our choices for better or worse.
We had the second meeting of our Willpower Instinct Meditation Book Group at Yoga Bliss yesterday. We came together for gentle yoga practice, meditation and discussion of the second and third chapters in the Willpower Instinct: I Will, I Won’t, I Want: What Willpower Is, and Why It Matters.
In these chapters author Kelly McGonigal describes the willpower as a biological instinct that evolved to help us protect ourselves from ourselves! She also compares it to a muscle that tires from use and regular use makes it stronger.
In our gentle movement practice we explored Kelly’s premise that self-control is a physiological state or in yoga-speak a body/mind state. We began by simply focusing awareness on our current state: bodily sensations, experience of energy and quality of heart and mind. We attended to how these expressions of life changed with breathing, moving and pausing. Kelly describes the self-monitoring system that attends to our thoughts, emotions and sensations that works to keep us safe from ourselves by detecting impulses to act in ways that undermine our wellbeing. She calls this capacity the pause and plan response. We cultivated this state by slowing our breathing, by moving intuitively and by pausing to experience a sense of equanimity.
We had the first meeting of our Willpower Instinct Meditation Book Group at Yoga Bliss yesterday. This is truly a “yogic” book, in the sense that yoga is an awareness practice or even a way of living a conscious life. We came together for gentle yoga practice, meditation and discussion of the first chapter in the Willpower Instinct: I Will, I Won’t, I Want: What Willpower Is, and Why It Matters. Author Kelly McGonigal begins her book by asking whether you are clear about what matters most to you. This “I Want” is where we find our motivational power – the fuel we need to cultivate the resilient ability to either do the “harder thing” (I will clean the house) or to refrain from doing the “impulsive thing” (I won’t eat donuts for breakfast).
We had the last meeting of our Taking the Leap Meditation Book Group at Yoga Bliss yesterday. We came together for gentle yoga practice, meditation and discussion of the next three chapters in Taking the Leap: Uncovering Natural Openness, The Importance of Pain and Unlimited Friendliness.