We had our first meeting of our Introduction to Meditation and Mindfulness series at Yoga Bliss today. Over the next few weeks we will be developing mindfulness on the meditation cushion and in our daily lives. As we live with more awareness other qualities begin to arise – caring, intimacy, patience, tolerance – even freedom. We free ourselves from the causes and conditions that lead to suffering. We begin to recognize and appreciate the conditions for our happiness. Inner resources of insight and understanding start to affect the way we live.
Course Outline
The course content is adapted from the wonderful work of Insight Meditation teacher, Gil Fronsdal. We began by summarizing the focus of each week’s focus:
Week 1: Creating our meditation posture. Mindful attention to your breathing. We use the breath to develop concentration and to pay attention to how we pay attention.
Week 2: Mindfulness of the body. Being connected to the body is essential to developing awareness. Tuning into present moment sensations keeps us in present moment awareness.
Week 3: Mindfulness of emotions. Emotions are a big part of our life. We aim to learn how to include them in the field of attention in a wise way.
Week 4: Mindfulness of thinking. Many people think you’re not supposed to think while you meditate. We’ll learn a wise way to pay attention to thinking, so that thinking doesn’t carry us away. We can allow our thoughts to be in our present moment awareness.
Along the way, we’ll explore how we can practice mindfulness in daily life. And as with anything we want to learn, we begin to truly embody the subject of study with practice, with repetition.
Paying Attention to How We Pay Attention
As we pay attention to how we pay attention we quickly recognize the short limits of our attention. We get distracted and drift into future thinking, past thinking or into fantasy. We pay attention, get distracted, become involved with the distraction, so we’re no longer attending what is happening in the moment. Recognizing this moment is essential. The place where we get distracted helps us to learn what motivates us, what our values are, what our fears are, what we cling to — our hooks and our buttons. The place we get caught is also the place where we are going to feel stress.
When we meditate, we try not to judge anything as being bad or inappropriate. Instead, we try to fold everything – emotions, sensations, thoughts – back into the space of our attention. We simply notice. This principle is really important. We can find a way of paying attention without being caught or driven by what’s going on, inside or outside ourselves. This realization gives rise to freedom. We don’t have to be pushed around by our inner compulsions or the pressures outside ourselves. We learn this by learning how to use our attention in a new way.
Breathing
We use breathing as the focus of our attention. Breathing is continuous and each in-breath and out-breath is unique. The breath is constantly shifting and moving. It’s actually easier for the mind to pay careful attention to something that is changing in a very subtle and quiet way.
Breathing is also closely tied to our emotional, psychological and energetic states. Our lives are affected by our breathing. Our breathing affects our lives. When feeling fear, our breathing can get constricted and tight; we feel it in our upper chest. If we’re relaxed and happy, our breathing tends to feel more fluid; we feel it in our bellies. If we’re anxious about something we might breathe faster. If we relax, we might breath more slowly.
As we entrain our attention on our breathing the relationship between the breath and the attention tends to create a calming effect on us. Of course our experience varies. Most people who follow breathing consistently find themselves becoming more calm and peaceful over time. Yet we don’t “try to become more peaceful.” Our primary goal is to pay attention. So, if we become agitated as we meditate, we can remind yourselves: “let me pay attention to this, let me fold this back into the meditation. Let me do mindfulness of agitation.” Allowing yourself to do this will help you to attend to things that you might not have looked at very carefully in your life.
We quickly realize the mind has a mind of its own. It will take you away. We are trying to train the mind to stay in the present so we can offer careful attention to what is going on in the present. We can only feel truly alive if we are present to this moment – right here, right now. We use our breath to train ourselves to calm down enough to settle our minds. Breath meditation is a foundation for mindfulness – and from that foundation, we expand the attention beyond that, eventually to include all of our life. So we’ll start very narrowly, just the breathing, this week. Then next week, the body, then emotions, then thoughts, including more of our being in our awareness. Hopefully our practice together over the next few weeks will give us a sense on how to bring this clear non-reactive, non-judgmental attention to all aspects of your life. That’s our goal.
Basic Elements of Meditation Posture
We begin the mindfulness meditation with paying attention to two things, our posture and our breathing. Posture expresses the state of our awareness. Let your body be a support for your attention. You can sit with awareness on the floor or in a chair. Try not to force your body into an uncomfortable position.
You can find a summary of guidelines for creating your meditation posture on the linked file: Basic Elements of Posture. It can be helpful to use this summary to tune into these points of posture as you settle into your practice.
Guided Meditation
Guided meditation can be just as helpful as sitting in complete silence. You can find a summary of the 15 minute practice on the linked file: Guided Meditation on the Breath. You can use this outline to help your daily sitting practice during the week.
Walking Meditation
We use silent walking meditation to widen the lens of our awareness to include movement. You can practice walking meditation to practice mindfulness throughout your day. You can try it while walking from your car to your office or grocery store. It is a wonderful way to get interrupt long periods of sitting and allow your body to release areas that have been holding tight.
Closing Remarks & Homework
This course works best if you meditate every day. Your experience will be enriched by repetition. You can find a summary of homework suggestions on the linked file: Introduction to Meditation Mindfulness of Breathing Homework.
If you find yourself struggling you can count your breaths as a concentration practice. Counting can help to ground your attention. The usual way to do it is to count 1 to 10. Each breath gets a count of 1. And then, when you get to ten, you start all over again. If you lose count in the process, don’t try to figure out where you are, just go back to one.
Instead of counting, you can do mental noting or labeling. A simple “in-out”, “rising-falling”. The mind kind of wants to think. It’s kind of hard to stop the mind from thinking and getting caught by your thoughts. What we use a name or a label, so that the thinking mind is engaged. So with the breathing it could be “in” as you breath in, “out” as you breathe out. Quiet and relaxed, almost effortless. Like a little whisper that’s encouraging you to stay there. Experience the in breath, experience the out breath.
As we develop awareness, sustained attention, it’s like making more room in the mind. Awareness or attention can have the sense of being spacious. The more centered you are, the more grounded you are in attention or awareness, the bigger this mental space is in your mind. Sometimes, giving space or awareness to what’s going on, just noticing and giving space, allowing it to be there, certain ease tension. Sometimes other qualities will grow and develop in that space: wisdom, clarity, integrity, patience, and concentration.
During this first week try to meditate 20 minutes every day. Next week I’ll suggest 25 minutes, and the week after 30 minutes. We’ll level off there.
Many people find that it’s most useful to meditate early in the morning. Before the day begins, before a lot of society wakes up. Your phone is likely to ring. It’s an ancient tradition to get up early in the morning and meditate. Some people find for whatever reason that late afternoon or early or late evening works better for them. Find what works best for you. But also consider that when you sit down to meditate that you are really going to keep the meditation time.
When you sit down to do your 20 minutes, you don’t want to be disturbed. It’s helpful to designate some part of your home – like a corner of your bedroom – that you designate as a meditation place. So that you associate meditation with this place. The power of association can be very helpful.
Give yourself a time keeper. Many people use smart phone applications. InsightTimer is a popular app which you can find at: https://insighttimer.com. You can use the timer and find many wonderful guided meditations to help you build your practice.
Bringing Mindfulness into Your Daily Life
Today’s class was about paying attention and noticing how you are paying attention. This week I encourage you to practice mindfulness in conversation. You can learn a lot about yourself if you pay attention to how you are in conversation. We might discover how little we really listen. Listening can be considered a synonym with mindfulness. The qualities you need to really listen well are the same qualities needed to be mindful well. So you can experiment in a conversation with people to be in more of a listening mode, be a good listener as opposed to a good speaker. Do you notice that you interrupt? Do you notice that your opinion is more important than what you’re hearing? What’s going on there?
I look forward to listening to you next week.