Tag: meditation

Wednesday

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Trigonos Wales

 

While in Trigonos, at the Mindfulness Teacher Training Retreat organised by Bangor University, one of my fellow home group participants, Lindy, shared a wonderful poem with us, that she had written during the day of silence. As this poem really expresses what a day of stillness can be about and with her permission, I am publishing it for you below. Enjoy!

 

Wednesday

A day of silence
What a wonderful day
A present to myself
A time to take back the child that was me
Stare at the trees blowing
Listen to the distant dogs barking
Think and wonder and be
A precious day for me

 

How to stay focused in a mindful way

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Every one of us has already experienced sitting in a meeting or being on the phone and suddenly thinking of something completely different, drifting away. This usually results in losing the thread of the conversation, feeling bored or uninterested and thus in a disengagement of what is happening.

In order to stay focused on one thing, the working memory in your cortical brain regions is moderately stimulated through a steady stream of dopamine, keeping the gate, which allows information to come in, closed. On the other hand, as soon as the stimulation decreases significantly or if there is a new opportunity or threat (thus a spike), the gate opens, resulting in you being distracted by something else. In short, as long as the amount of stimulation remains above a certain threshold, there is no need for your brain to seek for more stimulation. But when stimulation drops, you are triggered to get more now. (You can read more on this in “Buddha’s Brain” from R. Hanson, 2009; the insights presented here are taken from the book).

5 things you can do to stay alert and concentrated:

1. Ensure you get enough sleep, i.e. take care of yourself. ‘Enough’ depends on your personal factors and environment. It is interesting to note here, that if you are practicing meditation as a method of relaxation for example, 20 minutes of focused meditation can equal 2-4 hours or even more of deep sleep.
2. If you are sitting, sit up in in an erect posture, if you are standing, stand up straight. Your internal network of nerves will tell the brain that you need to remain vigilant and alert.
3. Take a couple of deep breaths; by doing so, the oxygen saturation in your blood will be increased and your brain revived. If you can, you could also take a walk before getting back to work.
4. Stretching your body will also help, even rolling your shoulders, stretching your legs and arms. Tensions will be released, oxygen will circulate and your focus will be established again.
5. ‘Brighten your mind’, infusing your awareness with energy and clarity. Steadily high dopamine levels like from positive feelings prevent drops in stimulation. The more enjoyable and intense your feelings are, the greater the dopamine release and the more concentrated your attention. Just imagine a situation where you were extremely happy and feel what you were feeling. Or imagine giving a big hug to yourself. It sounds funny, but it truly helps, you will see!

No matter where you start, you can become better at concentration, believe me. This will not only help you at work but also when at home and with whatever you will be undertaking.

Looking forward to your thoughts and comments, and thanks for reading! Jenny

On the path of self-transformation

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brain

 

 

 

 

 

Currently reading an excellent book in order to prepare for a ‘mindfulness in the workplace’ training I am going to attend, it struck me how easy it can be to bring calm and quietness into our daily lives. If you ever had anything to do with psychology, yoga, coaching, stress-reduction techniques or mediation you will certainly know this but bringing it all together to the point is what really makes a difference.

Did you for example know that:

  • What happens in your mind changes your brain and vice versa? You can actually train your mind to change your brain in lasting ways.
  • Small positive actions every day will add up to large changes over time? You will gradually build up new neural structures.
  • Human beings evolved to pay great attention to unpleasant experiences? This negativity bias highlights bad news and creates anxiety and pessimism. It takes about five positive interactions to overcome the effects of a single negative one.
  • Psychological pain draws on many of the same networks as physical pain and can thus trigger the same negative experience and suffering?

Little steps you can do on your path to change:

  • Turn positive facts into positive experiences. Bring your mindful attention to these facts, be open and allow them in. Let them affect you!
  • Hold these moments/experiences in awareness, being fully with them, savoring every moment. Focusing on your body sensations and emotions, let the experience fill your body and be as intense as possible so that both your body and mind can absorb it. Every time you do this, you build a little bit of neural structure. This will gradually and over time change how you feel and act.
  • Relax your body whenever you can by taking a deep breath for example or by focusing systematically on different parts of your body. There are many ways to train this from simple methods to yoga, meditation etc. Practicing ‘offline’ will allow you to foster and build strategies for your body which will then also be available to you when a stressful situation arises.

Let me finish for today with a quote:

“We are what we think. All that we are arises with our thoughts. With our thoughts, we make the world.” – Buddha Quotes (Sources of Insight)

Have an excellent day/evening/morning! Jenny

The quote of today: Happiness

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Happiness cannot be found
through great effort and willpower,
but is already present, in open relaxation and letting go.

Don’t strain yourself,
there is nothing to do or undo.
Whatever momentarily arises in the body-mind
has no real importance at all,
has little reality whatsoever.
Why identify with, and become attached to it,
passing judgment upon it and ourselves?

Far better to simply
let the entire game happen on its own,
springing up and falling back like waves –
without changing or manipulating anything –
and notice how every thing vanishes and
reappears, magically, again and again,
time without end.

Only our searching for happiness
prevents us from seeing it.
It’s like a vivid rainbow which you pursue without ever catching,
or a dog chasing its own tail.

Although peace and happiness do not exist
as an actual thing or place,
it is always available
and accompanies you every instant.

Don’t believe in the reality
of good and bad experiences;
they are like today’s ephemeral weather,
like rainbows in the sky.

Wanting to grasp the ungraspable,
you exhaust yourself in vain.
As soon as you open and relax this tight fist of grasping,
infinite space is there – open, inviting and comfortable.

Make use of this spaciousness, this freedom and natural ease.
Don’t search any further.
Don’t go into the tangled jungle
looking for the great awakened elephant,
who is already resting quietly at home
in front of your own hearth.

Nothing to do or undo,
nothing to force,
nothing to want,
and nothing missing.

Emaho! Marvelous!
Everything happens by itself.

A Spontaneous Vajra Song by Venerable Lama Gendun

Empathy and loving-kindness: what can it do for you?

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Today I want to write about something I came across when learning to practice mindfulness which I thought was extremely strange and funny at the same time. I am sure that many of you will smile when you read this as you might have experienced the same.

I actually want to talk about the “loving-kindness meditation”[1] and how it can impact us. The loving-kindness practice is actually an old Buddhist practice called “Metta Bhavana”[2] which exists since over 2500 years. It is fairly easy to do as you simply need to direct ‘loving-kindness’ to yourself wishing you happiness, fulfillment, peace (as if you would give yourself a big hug) and then let the feeling envelope you in order to be subsequently able to wish the same to a good friend or dear person, then to a neutral person and finally to a difficult one, eventually opening up to all human beings. Really quite simple in theory but when I first had to do this, I actually found it quite ok to send these wishes to myself and my loved ones but neutral people and then people with whom I had difficult relationships proved to be really a challenge and even somewhat awkward. Funnily, afterwards, every time I saw the ‘neutral person’ or ‘difficult person’ again, I was kind of expecting something extraordinary to take place which of course never really happened… well, over time, as everything, it becomes easier with training and I actually found myself really wishing people happiness and even developing empathy towards persons I did not particularly like. Suddenly, I saw no apparent reason to dislike them anymore, which I thought was rather strange but actually a relief as it did not bother me any longer and I could focus my attention on something else.[3]

Empathy as we know is one major ingredient of building a trustful relationship with somebody else, be it at work or in private life. As soon as we are interested in another person’s life and issues, listening with attention and providing feedback will establish a solid foundation for any further interactions. Being a coach and a leader this truly is essential as without it, the basis of a relationship would be missing, hence the trust.

In summary, for me personally, the loving-kindness meditation is an excellent tool for training patience, receptivity, and appreciation/empathy. It helps me stay open-minded and non-judging, thus facilitates my work in a multicultural and fast paced environment.

You might want to try it out for yourself:

“May I be well”

“May I be happy”

“May I be free from suffering”[4]

[1] See for example this site for a good explanation of what this meditation is all about : http://www.jackkornfield.com/2011/02/meditation-on-lovingkindness/

[2] See ‘Metta’ on Wikipedia : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mett%C4%81

[3] See also Charles A Francis’ site who has developed a variation of the loving-kindness meditation called ‘writing meditation’: http://www.mindfulnessmeditationinstitute.org/what-is-writing-meditation/

[4] Search Inside Yourself, Chade-Meng Tan, p.172.