Homework to Zencast 147 – Mindfulness Meditation Course Wk 1
Mindfulness Meditation (Week 1)
by Gil Fronsdal From: Insight Meditation Center
Insight meditation, or Vipassana, is one of the central
teachings of the Buddha. It has continued as a living practice for 2500
years. At the heart of insight meditation is the practice of mindfulness,
the cultivation of clear, stable and non-judgmental awareness. While mindfulness
practice can be highly effective in helping bring calm and clarity to
the pressures of daily life, it is also a spiritual path that gradually
dissolves the barriers to the full development of our wisdom and compassion.
During the five-week introductory course, the basic instructions in insight
meditation are given sequentially, each week building on the previous
one. The first week focuses on the basics of meditation and on mindfulness
of breathing. The second week discusses mindfulness of the body and expands
the area of attention to include all our physical experiences. The third
week introduces mindfulness of emotions. The fourth week addresses mindfulness
of the mind and thinking. The fifth week focuses on the role of mindfulness
in daily life and in deepening one’s spiritual life.
Insight meditation is nothing more mysterious than developing our ability
to pay attention to our immediate experience. We are often pre-occupied
with thoughts about the past or the future or with fantasies. While sometimes
such pre-occupations may be innocent and harmless, more often they contribute
to stress, fear and suffering. Mindfulness practice is learning how to
overcome pre-occupation so that we can see clearly what is happening in
our lived experience of the present. In doing so, we find greater clarity,
trust, and integrity. Mindfulness relies on an important characteristic
of awareness: awareness by itself does not judge, resist, or cling to
anything. By focusing on simply being aware, we learn to disentangle ourselves
from our habitual reactions and begin to have a friendlier and more compassionate
relationship with our experience, with ourselves and with others.
Mindfulness is the practice of being attentively present. It is called
a practice in the same way that we say that people practice the piano.
Being attentive is a skill that grows with practice. It develops best
if we set aside any self-conscious judgements or expectations of how our
meditation is developing. The practice is simply to relax and bring forth
an awareness of what is happening in the present.
In order both to develop the skill and experience the joys of non-reactive
presence, a daily meditation practice is helpful.
Mindfulness of Breathing
Insight Meditation usually begins with awareness of breathing. This is
an awareness practice, not an exercise in breathing; there is no need
to adjust the breathing in any way. We simply attend to the breath, getting
to know it as it is: shallow or deep, long or short, slow or fast, smooth
or rough, coarse or refined, constricted or loose. When we get distracted
by thoughts or emotions, we simply return to the physical sensations of
the breath.
Because of the mind’s tendency to be scattered and easily distracted,
we use the breath as a kind of anchor to the present. When we rest in
the breath, we are countering the strong forces of distraction. We train
the mind, heart, and body to become settled and unified on one thing,
at one place, at one time. If you are sitting in meditation and your mind
is on what you did at work today, then your mind and body are not in the
same place at the same time. Fragmented this way, we all too easily lose
touch with a holistic sense of ourselves.
Mindfulness of breathing is a powerful ally in our lives. With steady
awareness of our inhalations and exhalations, the breath can become an
equanimous constant through the ups and downs of our daily life. Resting
with, even enjoying, the cycles of breathing, we are less likely to be
caught up in the emotional and mental events that pass through us. Repeatedly
returning to the breath can be a highly effective training in letting
go of the identification and holding which freeze the mind and heart.
It also develops concentration.
Mindfulness Exercises for the First Week
You will get the most benefit from this course if you engage yourself
with the practice during the week between our class meetings. During the
first week please try the following three practices:
-
Sit one twenty-minute session of meditation
each day. For this first week, focus on staying aware of your breath
as described in the next section of the handout. Begin and end each
sitting with, a minute of conscious reflection: At the start, clearly
remind yourself that you are about to devote yourself to being mindful
and present. Consciously let go of any concerns, remembering that
you will have plenty of time to take them up again later. At the
end, reflect on what happened during your meditation session. There
is no need to judge what happened; you just want to strengthen your
mindfulness through a brief exercise in recollection. -
Choose one routine physical activity that you
perform most days and experiment with doing it mindfully. This means
doing just this one activity while you are doing the exercise -
not listening to the radio at the same time, for example. It is
also best to let go of any concern about the results or in finishing
quickly. Remain in the present as best you can. When the mind wanders,
simply come back to the activity. Activities you might choose include
brushing your teeth, washing the dishes, or some routine act of
driving or walking. -
For one half-hour period during the week, maintain
some regular attention of your posture as you go about with some
normal activity. Without straining, assume a posture that is alert
and upright. Notice what happens to your mood, thoughts, feelings,
presence, and degree of mindfulness as you do this exercise.
Meditation Instruction: Mindfulness Of Breathing
Sit in a comfortable but alert posture. Gently close
your eyes. Take a couple of deep breaths, and, as you exhale, settle into
your body, relaxing any obvious tension or holding. Then, breathing normally,
bring your awareness to your body, sensing for a short while how the body
presents itself to you. There is no particular way to be; just notice
how you are at this moment.
Then, from within the body, as part of the body, become
aware of your breathing, however it happens to appear. There is no right
or wrong way to breathe while doing mindfulness practice; the key is to
simply notice how it actually is right now. Let the breath breathe itself,
allowing it to be received in awareness. Notice where in your body you
feel the breath most clearly. This may be the abdomen rising and falling,
the chest expanding and contracting, or the tactile sensations of the
air passing through the nostrils or over the upper lip. Wherever the breath
tends to appear most clearly, allow that area to be the home, the center
of your attention.
Keep your attention connected with the inhalations and exhalations, sensing
the physical sensations that characterize them. Let go of the surface
concerns of the mind. Whenever the mind wanders away, gently come back
to the breath. There is no need to judge the wandering mind; when you
notice that the mind has wandered, simply return to the breath without
evaluation.
To help maintain contact between awareness and the breath, you may use
a label or mental note. Softly, like a whisper in the mind, label the
in-breath and out-breath, encouraging the awareness to stay present with
the breath. You can label the inhalations and exhalations as "in"
and "out," or perhaps use "rising" and "falling"
for the movement of the abdomen or the chest. Don’t worry about finding
the right word, just use something that will help you stay connected.
There is no need to force the attention on the breath;
to strengthen your ability to become mindful and present, use the gentle
power of repeatedly, non judgmentally returning and resting with the breath.
Filed under: Gil Fronsdal, Meditation, Mindfulness Meditation Course, Practice | 4 Comments
Meditation in thoughtless awareness is helping to open Agnia chakra and Kundalini can continue to Sahasrara chakra.
Permit this one comment on mindfulness practice. The primary emphasis in mindfulness is on the reduction of rumination, but non-conscious distractive events are also implicitly reduced in mindfulness but have never been separately controlled in the literature of meditation. If they were, it would engender a new procedure that would could produce many of the benefits of mindfulness without the control of rumination.
The following argument and procedure is derived from an article in the International Journal of Stress Management in 2006.
The Cinderella Effect
In our workaday lives, to literally get to where we consciously or non consciously want to go, the striated musculature is employed. Yet, the striated musculature is divided into two main types that are different physiologically and are activated separately and not necessarily simultaneously. The question is whether they are different psychologically. Type 2 or fast twitch muscular fibers are phasically activated when we physically manipulate our world and as operant behavior are modulated by their consequences. However, another class of muscular fiber, or type 1, slow twitch, or ‘Cinderella’ fibers are tonically activated during conditions of choice, and this sustained activation often causes pain and exhaustion. Type 2 fibers are commonly thought to embody voluntary, operant or R-S mechanisms, whereas the activation of type 1 fibers is commonly attributed to be directly or indirectly elicited by involuntary, reflexive or S-R mechanisms as a component of a ‘flight or fight’ response. But is this indeed the case?
The problem for an analysis of the activity of type 1 musculature as a learned or operant behavior is that tension is a core component of emotional responses such as anxiety, fear or anger that are difficult to precisely define, and it is hard to tease apart the S-R from the R-S components that are purported to control the neuro-muscular aspect of emotionality. Perhaps the easiest way to analyze the discriminative stimuli that activate Type 1 musculature from the perspective of learning theory is to examine this behavior under conditions that minimize the presence of real or imputed reflexive S-R mechanisms. This is the case when we become tense as we make day to day choices between alternative contingencies wherein the choice of one marks a small opportunity loss of the other, or ‘distractive’ choices. Because the initiating cause for this tension is a simple discrimination between two alternative contingencies or choices, and not complex linguistic (rumination) information or the sudden perception of threatening physical stimuli (e.g. an oncoming train or a spider underfoot), tension may be examined as a function of simple cognitive and not reflexive mechanisms. This also implies that tension can be easily manipulated through the regulation of elemental aspects of decision making rather than the complex manipulation of rumination or the avoidance of Pavlovian like stimuli or stressors. In other words, tension is an attribute of an simple and easily managed information rather than an artifact of or complex cognitive or ruminative processes or a reflexive ‘flight or fight’ response.
Most importantly, this simple hypothesis imputes an equally simple procedure that may be easily tested, hence a method that I call Cinderella.
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Rest in Peace (and Quiet)
In the literature of stress, stress is commonly attributed to a monolithic ‘flight or fight’ reaction that accounts for all attributes of the stress response, from fear and anxiety to the tension that is elicited in a distractive day. Yet for minor or small scale choices or distractions, this ‘stress’ response begins with merely the slight yet sustained activation of low threshold or Type 1 muscular fibers. These muscles are activated easily and rapidly, deactivate slowly, and when sustained quickly fail and cause pain and exhaustion. (This is why at the end of a distraction filled working day we commonly report not fear or anxiety, but merely a state of exhaustion) This activation pattern does not entail fear or anger and is generally not reported as anxiety. Because of the neuro-muscular characteristics of this type of muscular activity, reducing the salience or frequency of distractive events is not enough to disengage this sustained or tonic tension. Distractions instead must be totally eliminated for a sustained period of time, and this is what is implicitly done in meditative practices. The question, yet unanswered, is what is the relative role of rumination and distraction in the maintenance of these low level stressors.
The Cinderella Effect
A common truism is that distractions not only cause us to get tense and remain tense during the day, but that tension ‘builds’ until we are sore and exhausted. However, the neuro-muscular processes behind this event are not widely known. Named after the fairy tale character who was first to awake and last to sleep, this ‘Cinderella Effect’ represents the fact that slight but continuous distractions (e.g. the continuous choice opportunities of surfing the internet or accessing email instead of working) elicit the continuous activation of low threshold units (also called Type 1, slow twitch, or Cinderella fibers) of the striated musculature, which unabated will lead to their failure and the successive recruitment of other muscular groups to take up the slack. The result is pain, exhaustion, and often a literal pain in the neck. (To elicit a similar result, try lightly clenching your fist for a minute or so.) In addition, as the name Cinderella underscores, this muscular activity does not immediately cease when distractions cease, and is sustained even when we take a break or rest.
Thus, even slight or intermittent distractions will elicit sustained or ‘tonic’ muscular tension, and usually to harmful and painful effect. It follows logically that only a radical and sustained reduction in distraction can result in a totally relaxed state. Thus, to be relaxed, a reduction in distractive choices is not enough, distraction must instead be totally eliminated or deferred, and that is what meditative practices implicitly do but ironically never explicitly concede. The problem is that meditation also entails a radical reduction in rumination as well as distraction, and the emphasis in meditative disciplines on the control of rumination obscures the distinctive influence of distraction in maintaining tense or anxious states. (Indeed, the respective roles of rumination and distraction have never been separately studied in the scientific literature on meditation.) However, if distraction and only distraction can be monitored and avoided in the many environments that are stressful primarily because of distraction, then one can achieve the means to be relaxed, even if the level of rumination is not altered. Thus one can learn to become relaxed even in workaday environments.
The Cinderella Method
The procedure:
First: Take a mental or physical inventory of all the minor unessential judgments in a working day that would entail minor avoidable gain/loss. These ‘distractions’ included doing one’s work vs. reading the newspaper, watching TV, chatting on the phone, internet surfing, or other diversions. This provides a comparative or base rate to which to compare future behavior, and trains you to notice or attend to distractive choices.
Secondly: Set aside fixed times during the day (e.g. 8-9 am, 1-2pm) when you will completely avoid these choices. Then simply perform your rationally considered behavior (i.e., your work), or if not, just sit.
That’s it.
By continuously eliminating these distractive choices from major portions of the day, you can still anticipate and be aware of them, but you cannot be stressed by choosing between them. By deferring irreconcilable choices, tension falls, relaxation occurs, and you can go about your day more relaxed, more alert, more productive, and without the painful regret that occurs from a day misspent. Finally, by providing a feedback function to train attention and to compare behavior across days, you can compare corresponding emotional behavior (i.e., tension) across behavior or ‘trials’, demonstrate the efficacy of the procedure, and be reinforced for the overall effort by that feedback.
What the Cinderella Method Does
The Cinderella Method is essentially a method of exercising a control over tension in its often initial form as a subliminal behavior that escapes conscious awareness. This method allows one to sustain a natural or homeostatic resting state that otherwise is disrupted in even a slightly distractive environment. Since for small distractions the proprioceptive stimuli which alert one to tension only indicate the presence of tension after tension has been sustained for some time, the isolation and control of the discriminative stimuli that are correlated with the initiation of slight or minor tension allow for tension to be avoided before its sustained occurrence taxes the musculature and autonomic nervous system. Conversely, the method also trains one to mentally recreate or ‘learn’ the proprioceptive stimuli associated with relaxation, and thus be able to ‘voluntarily’ induce relaxation. Since relaxation as a voluntary response (actually, what is learned is the inhibition of tension, since relaxation is not a response but is technically the non-activity of the musculature) is incompatible with tension, it will also mitigate tension caused by distraction and rumination even when both are not avoided.
Finally, the Cinderella Method sharply contrasts with prevalent stress control procedures, which emphasize the modification and control through psychotherapy and other means large scale or molar distractions or problems, such as domestic or other workaday difficulties and the rumination they entail. The Cinderella method is based on the premise that stress is predominantly caused by small scale or molecular problems or distractions that in contrast to rumination are far more frequent yet are more easily controlled. Because control is easy, time consuming therapeutic intervention is not required.
Marr, A. J. (2006) Relaxation and Muscular Tension: A Bio-behavioristic Explanation, International Journal of Stress Management, 13(2), 131-153
(A PDF copy of this paper is available free upon request: stassiagalenkova at yahoo.com)
i m thankful to IMC and specially gil.
i ve just listned a podcast of mindful mediation week 1.
i ve started practice of it. i m facing a confusion about it. previously i was using visualisation technique for all worldly belongings.
that old practice keeps on coming when i m doing mindfullness practice.
can i continue with the both practices at different time?
please guide me for that.
i live in india and i want to visit a zen centre in india, plz let me know about zen centres in india.