We had the first meeting of our four week Introduction to Meditation Class at Yoga Bliss yesterday.  During the month of November we’re focusing on the basics in order to help each other build a personal practice:  alone and together!

Each week we’ll be practicing a basic form of mindfulness meditation and discussing the benefits and challenges we experience along the way.  We’ll explore ways to support practice including:  finding and sustaining the most helpful posture and building a personal practice that you can take with you wherever you go.  Our time together is precious.  It gives us the opportunity to learn from and support each other.   While meditation is something only you can do for yourself, a community of hearts “lighted with awareness” can be so encouraging.  You can tap into the spirit of connection at our group site,  Mind Yogis, at InsightTimer.com

We spent some time sharing our personal motivations to meditate.  Nearly everyone touched on benefits and qualities that have had proven results in the areas of: healing, stress reduction and mental capacity.  Every phase of life presents situations, unforeseen and uncontrollable events, that challenge us to adapt.   Building emotional and mental resilience through meditation is like a form of “mind yoga” that can help us with balance and inner stability.

While meditation techniques are quite simple they are not easy.  Just finding a position that  you can hold in stillness is something  you learn with experience and persistence.   One of my teachers, Dr. Rick Hanson, says that the best meditation is one that you will do.  That’s why I think finding your true motivation is so important.  Getting really clear about your heart connection is a good place to start.  I mention the heart because nearly every meditation teacher I’ve ever had encouraged me to enter the practice in the spirit of self-compassion.

Everyone has different tendencies with regard to their abilities to focus, filter distractions and inclination to seek stimulation. We all have our own “neurological” profile. It’s compassionate and sensible to adapt your approach to meditation according to your profile and improve attention over time.  We can use techniques to help us focus and sustain attention until we don’t need them any more – like the raft that gets us across the river.  Meditation teacher, Thich Nhat Hanh, reminds me that the magic of mindfulness involves where we begin, the journey across and also being on the other side.  I shared some of his writing from The Miracle of Mindfulness!  A Manual on Meditation:

Thus mindfulness is at the same time a means and an end, the seed and the fruit.  When we practice mindfulness in order to build up concentration, mindfulness is a seed.  But mindfulness itself is the life of awareness:  the presence of mindfulness is also the fruit.  Mindfulness frees us of forgetfulness and dispersion and makes it possible to live fully each minute of life.  Mindfulness enables us to live.

I will think of you with a smile as I imagine our hearts lighting together in meditation this week!   You can find this week’s homework and other resources that will help you with posture, setting up a home practice and guided meditations at:

November Introduction to Meditation Class 1 Homework Amended