We had our fifth Introduction to Meditation Class at Yoga Bliss today. We shared a guided meditation of A Pause for Presence: Wakeful, Open & Tender. I drew this inspiration and meditation instruction from meditation instructor and author Tara Brach. In her book, True Refuge, Tara describes Natural Presence as the integrated expression of these qualities.
Category Archives: Sunday Introduction to Meditation Class
Home Base
We had our fourth Introduction to Meditation Class at Yoga Bliss yesterday. We shared a guided meditation of Embodied Presence, Home Base & Remindfulness taken from meditation instructor and author, Tara Brach. Again, I deeply appreciate that students are willing to dedicate the time and presence to this practice. It’s almost a revolutionary act to stop and disentangle ourselves from the web – digital and real – of busyness and distraction.
Being Here Now Together
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.
Waking Up Together
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.
Heartfulness
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.”