Instructions for Mindfulness of Feeling

Try out these tips to invite more moments of mindfulness into your life.

• Begin your meditation as previously instructed using the breath as the primary object of meditation.
• If a sensation or experience in the body is strong enough to pull your attention away from the breath, allow your awareness to rest in that sensation.
• Notice whether the experience is pleasant, unpleasant or neutral.
• As different experiences become predominant in your awareness, continue to notice the feeling quality of each experience, and your reaction to it such as holding on, pushing away or becoming bored.
• As you meditate with the feeling quality of experience, notice whether it is something that lasts, or whether it is something that comes into awareness, is present for a while and then dissipates.
• If you become lost in thought or sensations, when you notice it look back at the thought or sensation to see whether it was pleasant, unpleasant or neutral. This will help to reveal how the mind gets caught in reacting to the feeling-tone of an object of experience. Then, gently return your attention to the breath and continue with the instructions above.
• If you ever feel confused about what you are experiencing or what you should do, simply return your attention to the breath.
• Continue with the practice of mindfulness of feeling until your meditation period is over.
• After your period of meditation, you may find it useful to reflect on what you have noticed about your experience. Here are some questions to explore as you reflect on your experience. Does every moment of your experience have a feeling-tone, either pleasant, unpleasant or neutral? Is there actually a tendency to hold onto the pleasant, to push away the unpleasant and to be bored by the neutral? If you bring mindfulness to a pleasant experience does it last or does it come into awareness and then leave? How about unpleasant experiences and neutral ones?
• During the day, spend some time noticing the feeling tone of your experiences and how you react to them.

Fight Fire With Water

If your honest you can admit that revenge feels good. It's only natural to want to fight someone who hurt others but I've always hated the phrase fight fire with fire; don't most people use water...

For a while I did not know how to turn the other cheek. Then I started working with people who'd been diagnosed with a traumatic brain injury. I've had clients hit, spit, choke and sexually harass me. As an employee I was not allowed to retaliate, instead staff had a mandatory training course where we the learn steps to take to help deescalate a client's intense and sometimes scary temperament. There I learned to see the bad behaviors as separate from the good people who wronged me.

It became easy to forgive my clients because I knew about their injury and my heart went out to them; in a way their bad behaviors were acceptable, though never justified. It also helped that a major part of my job was to institute consequences for bad behavior; the clients had motivation to exchange offensive behavior for better communication skills. The longer I worked in the field, the stronger my affection grew for people who's actions were often hurtful.

I have many fond memories of my clients and the things that I've learned in those days. One thing that I've learned is that all people have egos and baggage that lead them to react inconsiderately sometimes. So what do you don't have your agitator's medical history. It helps to first have a strong motivation to stay calm and to believe that there is strength in patience. When you think that something important is in jeopardy anger becomes our can of spinach. Taking in anger, instead of observing it, gets you prepared to fight. However when anger comes from within it helps us to see what boundaries need to be set to prevent future attacks. It also helps us to see grace as a powerful weapon against injustice.

Of course I'm not perfect; I'm still learning how to accept people unconditionally. One thing that helps me to have patience is to think about moments in my life that my action resemble, even vaguely, the agitator's offense. Armed with humility I find it easier to imagine why the person may react in a negative way. This practice usually leads to empathy and help me to become aware of the best way to handle the situation.

Sometimes fighting fire with fire is necessary, like when there's not access to water or when the fire is too big to manage. In other words you may have to fight from time to time, with words or occasionally to physically defend yourself. When you need to react quickly the adrenaline from fear or anger will help... But if you have some patience handy I still say try that first : )

Mindless Moments

headless buddha uploaded by mindluge

I believe that mediation is a great way to bring balance and peace to life. However, as of lately, I've found it increasingly difficult to make time to quiet my mind and be still. Even when I do put meditation into my schedule my mind is so consumed with thoughts and feelings that moments of awarness still seem elusive...and it shows.

...You know the moments in life where you are barely functioning because for you are too preoccupied increases the likelyhood of you making a huge mistake. Being present, aware or mindful lessens embarrasing or even dangerous behaviors.

Don't worry. I'm not defeated, but I am a little overwhelmed and off balanced. Instead of sharing meditation practices I thought I would share some of oops to inspire you take time to smell the roses and connect with yourself.

(Warning: Some of the moments bellow might gross you out. So if you have a weak stomach or a critical nature, you might want to skip my mindless moments and read Introduction To Mindfulness instead.)

Mindless Moments

1. One day while eating I noticed some food on the floor. I was sitting in a chair with wheels so I wiped the food up with my napkin started to roll towards the trash can but end up running over my cats tail in the process. I apologized to Tink profusely then continued eating. When I wiped my mouth I was startled by the all the hair on my lips. I realized that I never threw away the orginal napkin that now had lots of cat hair on it...Yuck!
2. My husband was driving while and I was on the passagner side enjoying the view when a big ugly bug flew into the car and landed on my leg. As a reflex I opened the door only to hear my husband say calmly, "Don't do that." Those words caught my attention and I become aware that I was opening up a car door on the freeway...Scary!
3. When I worked in the health care I had some medical responsibilties. For instance I'd suctionthrough my client's tracheostomy a few times a day.Then I would to clean out the suction containor that holds salivia and mucus. One day two coworkers were talking close to the sink where I emptied and washed out the suciton containor. I felt confused when I noticed one them gaging while the other one was looked disgusted. They both shared this respobitlty to I though they would be use to this process . I apologized but thought they should have been use to the sight by now. Two days later my mind replayed the previous incident and I realized that the real problem was that I was cleaning the suction container in the kitchen sink, not in the bathroom...Sick!
4. One winter morning I had to start my car to warm the engine and decided to wait inside. After about 10 minutes I went outside to leave but realized I'd locked my only set of keys in the car. I was so embarrassed when I gave a reason for why I would be late for work.
5. When I was fifteen love swiming so I could not resist an invition to the beach with my family and a couple of guys close to my age. I did not bring a bathing suit so I had borrow one from my aunt; it was a little big but it fit okay. My aunt stayed on the sand as we swam. It was so much fun until I wanted to impress the guys by showing them how long I could stay underwater. When I finally sprung up from the water all I noticed was two huge smiles and a swelling of pride because I out swam the fellas. It took about 20 seconds for me to realize that they were inpressed not by my swimming, but because my swimsuit fell down exposing my chest.
   

Did you laugh? It's okay, I laugh at myself all the time. I've accepted that I might be crazy.

Can you relate? If so share some of you mindless moments or meditation tips.

True Meaning of Meditation

Sogyal Rinpoche explains that there is much more to meditation than saying mantras and burning incense. Find out more - http://www.rigpa.org/

What meditation really is - Sogyal Rinpoche

Meditation is the highway home- Dolano speaks of her own experience with meditation, and what true meditation is. She confirms that one has to go far away from home in order to come back and value what is- simply what is. This is an audio excerpt from one of Dolano's open satsangs; see www.dolano.com for info on her intensive satsangs.

True Meditation - Satsang with Dolano

How often do you meditate? How have you made your meditation an unique or special experience?

Mindful Eating

Have you ever had trouble remembering what you ate for lunch when its dinner time? Does your spoon give you your only workout for the day as you shovel down a pint of ice cream? Have you ever choked on a big piece of food because you had not chewed it up enough? Well I don't know about you but I have been guilty of mindless eating. Whether I feel hungry or not, excited to eat or not, the results are usually the same, I sit down to eat while watching the TV or talking to my family without paying much attention to the food or my eating habits. 

I have decided to change my ways and get in shape so I started a web search on Mindful Weight loss which introduced me to the concept of Mindful Eating.


The Center Of Mindful Eating has created this a list of mindful eating priciples.


Mindful Eating is:
• Allowing yourself to become aware of the positive and nurturing
opportunities that are available through food preparation and consumption by respecting your own inner wisdom.
• Choosing to eat food that is both pleasing to you and nourishing to your body by using all your senses to explore, savor and taste.
• Acknowledging responses to food (likes, neutral or dislikes) without judgment.
• Learning to be aware of physical hunger and satiety cues to guide your decision to begin eating and to stop eating.




Stephanie Vangsness, R.D., posted an article on Brigham and Women's Hospital that included an eating exercise:

Do this exercise with a friend. You will need one small slice of an apple for each person. One person reads the instructions listed below while the other person completes the exercise.

1. Take one bite of an apple slice and then close your eyes. Do not begin chewing yet.
   


2. Try not to pay attention to the ideas running through your mind, just focus on the apple. Notice anything that comes to mind about taste, texture, temperature and sensation going on in your mouth.
   


3. Begin chewing now. Chew slowly, just noticing what it feels like. It's normal that your mind will want to wander off. If you notice you're paying more attention to your thinking than to the chewing, just let go of the thought for the moment and come back to the chewing. Notice each tiny movement of your jaw.
   


4. In these moments you may find yourself wanting to swallow the apple. See if you can stay present and notice the subtle transition from chewing to swallowing.
   


5. As you prepare to swallow the apple, try to follow it moving toward the back of your tongue and into your throat. Swallow the apple, following it until you can no longer feel any sensation of the food remaining.
   


6. Take a deep breath and exhale.

Here are few links I found very helpful:


Mindful Eating by Thich Nhat Hanh

Mindful eating vs. mindless munching by Goldman

The CAMP System

Just Drink Tea

Introduction To Mindfulness

Peaceful Reflection by perlawater

I stopped going to church about 2 years ago. I became a church member when I was 22 year-old and I thought of the church as my family. I loved church and it was a great sorce of learning and love. I was able to accomplish things that I htought were impossible for me. However, over a 6 year process, I started to find that my spirit felt heavy every time I attended a service. I knew that it was not the churches fault but I did not know what to do about it.

I thought that a short break might help, but I felt so much relief when I left I did not know when I should make my reentry. Instead I tried to find a new church that both me and my honey felt comfortable in. He found a church that he loved and I really enjoyed the service so we tried to make it home. It never become home for me, but soon felt like another burden. Finally, to my husband disappointment, I stop attending church all together. This time I felt no stress release, instead an the feeling become an unarticulated desire that left my soul feeling starved. I tried new Christian books, prayers, fasting and nothing seemed to work. I gave up for awhile and blamed it on the stress that I was experiencing at the time.

One restless night I went downstairs to sit in the dark alone. Instead of sitting I found myself kneeling and crying. Not the cute silent cry but the ugly loud cry that I thought would wake everyone up. With tears and persistence I cried out to God to help me find the thing that was missing in my spiritual life. I confessed to Him that I had no idea what it could be so I needed Him to make it easy for me to understand. Also I knew that I was very discouraged so I asked Him to help me stay motivated to follow his guidance. After what seemed like an hour of tearful prayers I felt calm and peaceful. When I feel down and out I have no problem asking God to baby me until I get stronger.

Later that day I watched Oprah and she revealed the next book club selection, A New Earth by Eckhart Tolle. I knew nothing about the book and assumed it was some brillant but complicated work of literature; why else would she provide free online classes for a book club? Although I'd never participated in Oprah's book club but knew I would this time. Later that night I had the book and read it with the anticipation of having my light bulb moment. By Chapter 2 I realized that A New Earth was my answered prayer. Not the book itself but the concept of awareness and the damaging effects of identifying with the ego.

I now understand that it is imporant to meditate and add awarness to your daily life. Since I don't have a spiritual guru handy I look for ways to learn the basics. One day I visted a blog called Country Contemplative and I came upon this presentation byJohn Kabat-Zinn. Just to warn you the video is 1 hour and 12 minute long presentation. If you are interested in mindfulness and meditation I think it is a great begining.

Mindfulness with Jon Kabat-Zinn

Read A Call to Conscious Evolution to find out more.

Terrific Thunderstorms

Thunderstorm - Crack !
Originally uploaded by Alan Norsworthy

I used to be scared of thunderstorms. When I was nine years old I'd visualizing lighting striking and our house engulfed in flames. I did not climb into my parent's bed or shake from fear,but I did not feel peaceful. When it stormed at night, I’d sit in bed reassuring myself that my family would probably survive and that I should not worry. One day I decided that I was not going to be scared any more. I had no clue how to accomplish that, but I believed that I owned my feelings and thoughts, they did not own me.

That was a pivotal moment for me. I was always intrigued by the power of emotions versus the inner strength. Up until then my feelings and thoughts came and went as they pleased; I’d never wondered whether or not I had some say in those moments. Lucky for me I usally emote and think in the middle of the bell curve, rarely the extremes. Before I could feel and hear my heart pound after each rattle of thunder, now I found myself in awe of the beauty that God orchestrated. Instead of hiding and hoping for the best, I was drenched with exhilaration and appreciation.

I’ve had other moments like that where I felt uncomfortable with an emotion or noticed an inappropriate thought and decided to exchange it with feeling good and constructive. I did not understand then how I achieved but I think I have some insight now. The heart of each soul is mindfulness. Mindfulness comes when you can observe your thoughts and feelings without identifying with them. Mindfulness is the source of peace, courage and wisdom and the path of success.

I've had a wonderful life; I even suspect that some would consider me a little sheltered. However there was some sadness, some scares and some stumbles only the way. Writing about the hard times in my life is not intended to be a pity party but a powerful exchange: sharing losses that others can relate to, letting go of the things that still haunt me, and forgiving faults (mine as well as others). Some posts will be about the challenging times in my life, but I hope that you leave LL&L feeling refreshed and relieved. I thank God for every victory and for every tear. I can’t imagine where I’d be without His love and His power.