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Mindfulness Meditation Course Wk 5 – Homework

zencast — Sat, 05 Apr 2008 07:00:44 +0000

Homework to Zencast 151 – Mindfulness Meditation Course Wk 5

Mindfulness Meditation (Week 5)

by Gil Fronsdal

Now that we have practiced with mindfulness of the breath, body, emotions and thoughts in previous weeks, the new instruction is to turn the attention around and notice the mind itself. Not just the content of the mind in terms of particular feelings or thoughts, but the quality of the mind; the mood of the mind; the state of the mind.

Sometimes it is not easy to notice the overall state of the mind because we are focusing so much on the details of what is happening during mindfulness practice. This often can be the case in daily life as well, especially when we are preoccupied with what we want or don’t want. It is like focusing on the details of driving while noticing neither how dirty the windshield is nor the strain of looking through the dirt. Part of mindfulness practice is to step back from the details of what we are experiencing in order to notice the subjective feeling of being aware. So, for example, does our awareness or our mind feel contracted or spacious, tense or relaxed, scattered or focused?

States of the mind are closely connected with our mood or attitude. Whether subtle or strong they have a pervasive quality that is more lasting than particular thoughts or impulses of the mind. For example, angry thoughts sometimes may appear briefly without affecting our mood. In contrast, an angry state of mind can shape our entire demeanor. While in an angry mood, not all our thoughts may be angry. However, the mood can linger as a background for whatever we are experiencing, sometimes significantly coloring our perception of things.

For some people, this background attitude is at the heart of what motivates their life. All too often it is closely connected to people’s suffering. When they are not aware of the influence their attitude has, people can feel trapped in their suffering. An attitude or mood can create a bias in how we see our experience. Moods of desire or aversion can influence us one way, moods of generosity or friendliness another way. When we are clearly aware of our mood we are less likely to be unduly influenced by it.

If we do not notice the underlying attitude it can fester and build up stress and tension in our lives. The attitude may only cause relatively mild tension or stress in any given moment, but if it is chronically reinforced, then the tension can become great and lead to greater suffering.

In becoming mindful of attitude it is useful to distinguish between what is happening at any given moment and what our relationship is to what is happening. Mindfulness practice helps to tease these apart so that we can be more discerning about how our opinions, judgments, attitudes and feelings may or may not accurately represent what is happening. The space between what is happening and our relationship to what is happening is a door to peace.

The suffering and stress that mindfulness practice is meant to help address is less about how things are and more about our relationship to how things are. Fortunately freedom is not as much about what is happening in the world or within us, but more about how much freedom we have in relating to what is happening.

Meditation Instruction: Mindfulness of the Mind

During meditation periodically ask yourself what is your relationship to what is happening. For example, you may feel some discomfort. Be mindful of your relationship to the discomfort. Are you clinging or resisting? Are you relaxed, generous, or kind towards the discomfort? Once you notice the relationship, hold it in the warmth of your attention. Once you have done this, you can investigate some of the present-moment elements of how you are relating. How does it affect your breathing? Are there any physical sensations or emotions associated with it? What are your beliefs behind it? Also, as you notice the relationship, ask yourself if that relationship or attitude represents a way you want to be or whether it contributes to a sense of dissatisfaction or dis-ease.

Also, remember that there is no need for judging, criticizing or being upset with what we see when we look at our relationship to the present moment, even if what we see is unfortunate or difficult. Similarly, there is no need to praise or get involved with fortunate or preferred attitudes. In either case, the practice is to be mindful of the relationship or attitude without being for it or against it. This practice then allows the relationship or attitude to settle or relax.
Periodically notice the general state of your mind. Does it feel tired or alert, contracted or expanded, calm or agitated, fuzzy or clear, resistant or eager, pushing forward or pulling back? Putting aside whatever commentary or judgments you might have about the state of your mind, use your mindfulness to become more aware of the state. What emotions come with it? What is its felt sense? What relationship is there between your mind state and how your body feels? What does it feel like to step back and observe the state of mind rather than be in it? What happens to your state of mind as you are mindful of it?

Mindfulness Exercises for the Fifth Week

Choose an activity you do on a daily basis. This can be driving to work, preparing breakfast, reading email, etc. For one week each time you do this chosen activity become aware of your state of mind. How does your state of mind influence how you relate to the activity? Keep a log of your changing states over the week and compare the role your mind state has on how you do the activity.
Consider what ordinary activity you do that helps you have a good state of mind. During this week, do this activity more often and become more mindful of what this state of mind is like physically, emotionally and cognitively. Explore how you might realistically maintain this state of mind after you have finished the activity that tends to bring it on.
Have a conversation with a good friend (or complete stranger if that is easier) about what might be the most common attitudes that you operate under. How do these attitudes influence what you do, how you see life, and how you relate to yourself? How do you tend to relate to people who have similar attitudes to your most common ones?

Mindfulness Meditation Course Wk 4 – Homework

zencast — Sat, 29 Mar 2008 07:00:42 +0000

Homework to Zencast 150 – Mindfulness Meditation Course Wk 4

Mindfulness Meditation (Week 4)

by Gil Fronsdal

Sometimes people think that the point of meditation
is to stop thinking — to have a silent mind. This does happen occasionally,
but it is not necessarily the point of meditation. Thoughts are an important
part of life, and mindfulness practice is not supposed to be a struggle
against them. It’s more useful to be friends with our thoughts than
thinking them unfortunate distractions. In mindfulness, we are not stopping
thoughts as much as overcoming any preoccupation we have with them.

Mindfulness is not thinking about things. (It is not "meditating
on" some topic, as people often say.) It is a non-discursive observation
of our life in all its aspects. In those moments when thinking predominates,
mindfulness is the clear and silent awareness that we are thinking.
I found it helpful and relaxing when someone said, "For the purpose
of meditation, nothing is particularly worth thinking about." Thoughts
can come and go as they wish, and the meditator does not need to become
involved with them. We are not interested in engaging in the content
of our thoughts; mindfulness of thinking is simply recognizing we are
thinking.

In meditation, when thoughts are subtle and in the background, or when
random thoughts pull you away from awareness of the present, it is enough
to resume mindfulness of breathing. However, when your preoccupation
with thoughts is stronger than your ability to easily let go of them,
then direct your mindfulness to being clearly aware that thinking is
occurring.

Strong bouts of thinking are fuelled largely by identification and preoccupation
with thoughts. By clearly observing our thinking, we step outside the
field of identification. Thinking will usually then soften to a calm
and unobtrusive stream.

Sometimes thinking can be strong and compulsive even while we are aware
of it. When this happens, it can be useful to notice how such thinking
is affecting your body, physically and energetically. It may cause pressure
in the head, tension in the forehead, tightness of the shoulders, or
a buzzing as if the head were filled with thousands of bumblebees. Let
your mindfulness feel the sensations of tightness, pressure, or whatever
you discover. It is easy to be caught up in the story of these preoccupying
thoughts, but if you feel the physical sensation of thinking, then you
are bringing attention to the present moment rather than the story line
of the thoughts.

When a particular theme keeps reappearing in our thinking, it is likely
that it is being triggered by a strong emotion. In that case, no matter
how many times you recognize a repeated thought or concern, come back
to the breath. If the associated emotion isn’t recognized, the concern
is liable to keep reappearing. For example, people who plan a lot, often
find that planning thoughts arise out of apprehension. If they do not
acknowledge the fear, the fear will be a factory of new planning thoughts.
If there is a repetitive thought pattern, see if you can discover an
emotion associated with it, and then practice mindfulness of the emotion.
Ground yourself in the present moment in the emotion itself. When you
acknowledge the emotion, often it will cease generating those particular
thoughts.

Thoughts are a huge part of our lives. Many of us spend much time inhabiting
the cognitive world of stories and ideas. Mindfulness practice won’t
stop the thinking, but it will help prevent us from compulsively following
thoughts that have appeared. This will help us become more balanced,
so our physical, emotional and cognitive sides all work together as
a whole.

Mindfulness Exercises for the Fourth Week

For the remaining two weeks of this class, extend
your daily meditation session to 30 minutes. For at least the first
ten minutes, keep your meditation simple — focus on the breath.
To the best of your ability, when some other experience gets in
the way of being with the breath, simply let it go and come back
to the breath. After this ten-minute warm-up period, switch to more
open mindfulness. This means continuing with the breath until something
else becomes more compelling. When physical sensations, emotions
or thinking predominate, let go of the breath and focus your meditative
awareness on these. When nothing else is compelling, come back to
the breathing.
Spend some time reflecting on the assumptions,
attitudes and beliefs you have about your thoughts. Do you usually
assume that they are either true false, right or wrong? Do you identify
with your thoughts? That is, do you think that what you think defines
who you are? Do you believe that your thinking will solve your problems
or that it is the only means to understand something? After you
have reflected on this on your own, have a conversation with someone
about what you have discovered.
Once during the next week, spend a two-hour period
tracking the kinds of things you think about. Find some way to remind
yourself every few minutes to notice what you are thinking. Are
the thoughts primarily self-referential or primarily about others?
Do they tend to be critical or judgmental? What is the frequency
of thoughts of "should" or "ought"? Are the
thoughts mostly directed to the future, to the past, or toward fantasy?
Do you tend more toward optimistic thoughts or pessimistic ones?
Do your thoughts tend to be apprehensive or peaceful? Contented
or dissatisfied? This is not an exercise in judging what you notice,
but in simply noticing. Most people live in their thoughts. This
is a two-hour exercise in regularly and frequently stepping outside
of the thought-stream to take up residence, albeit briefly, in a
mindful awareness that is bigger than the thinking mind.
Once during the next week, spend a two-hour period
giving particular attention to your intentions. Before we speak
or act there is always an impulse of motivation or intention. Notice
the various kinds of desires and aversions that fuel your intentions.
For this exercise, you might choose a period where you can go about
some ordinary activity in a quiet and mostly undisturbed way. You
might even slow your activities down some so that you are more likely
to notice and evaluate your motivations.

Mindfulness Meditation Course Wk 3 – Homework

zencast — Sat, 22 Mar 2008 23:42:57 +0000

Homework to Zencast 149 – Mindfulness Meditation Course Wk 3

Mindfulness Meditation (Week 3)

by Gil Fronsdal

In mindfulness practice we keep our attention on the
breath, unless some other experience is so strong as to pull us away
from the breath; then we turn our attention to that other experience.
One kind of experience that can pull us away is physical sensations,
which we talked about last week; another is emotions.

No emotion is inappropriate within the field of mindfulness practice.
We are not trying to avoid emotions, or to have some kinds of emotions
and not others. We are trying to allow them to exist as they arise,
without the additional complications of judgement, evaluation, preferences,
aversion, desires, clinging, resistance or other reactions.

The Buddha once asked, "If a person is struck by an arrow, is that
painful?" Yes. The Buddha then asked, "If the person is struck
by a second arrow, is that even more painful?" Of course. He went
on to say, that as long as we are alive, we can expect painful experiences
– the first arrow. Often the significant suffering associated with an
emotion is not the emotion itself, but the way we relate to it. If we
condemn, judge, hate, or deny the first arrow, that is like being struck
by a second arrow. The second arrow is optional, and mindfulness helps
us avoid it.

An important part of mindfulness practice is investigating our relationships
to our emotions. Do we cling to them? Do we hate them? Are we ashamed
of them? Do we tense around them? Are we afraid of how we are feeling?
Do we measure our self-worth by the presence or absence of an emotion?
Can we simply leave an emotion alone?

Mindfulness itself does not condemn or condone any particular emotional
reaction. Rather, it is the practice of honestly being aware of what
happens to us and how we react to it. The more aware and familiar we
are with our reactions, the easier it will be to have, for example,
uncomplicated grief or straightforward joy, not mixed up with the second
arrows of guilt, anger, remorse, embarrassment, or judgement. Emotional
maturity comes, not from the absence of emotions, but from seeing them
clearly.

Mindfulness helps us to be as we are without further complications.
If we can be accepting of ourselves in this way, then it is much easier
to know how to respond appropriately with choice rather than habit.

How To Attend Emotions

Generally, during meditation, keep yourself centered on the breath.
If there are emotions in the background, leave them there; keep the
breath in the foreground of awareness as if it were the fulcrum for
your experience.

When an emotion becomes compelling enough to make it difficult to stay
with the breath, then bring it into the focus of meditative awareness.

There are four aspects to the mindfulness of emotions. You don’t have
to practice all four each time you focus on an emotion. At different
times, each is appropriate. Experiment to see how each can help in developing
a non-reactive attention to emotions. The four are:

Recognition: A basic principle of
mindfulness is that you cannot experience freedom and spaciousness unless
you recognize what is happening. The more you learn to recognize the
range of your emotions, including the most subtle, the more you will
become familiar and comfortable with them, and the less you will be
in their thrall.

Naming: A steady and relaxed labeling of the emotion
of the moment, e.g., "joy," "anger," "frustration,"
"happiness", "boredom," "contentment",
"desire," and the like, encourages us to stay present with
what is central in our experience. Naming can also help us become calm
and less entangled with the emotion, less identified with it or reactive
to its presence.

Acceptance: This does not mean condoning or justifying
certain feelings. It means simply allowing emotions to be present, whatever
they may be. Many people frequently judge and censure their feelings.
Formal meditation practice offers us the extraordinary opportunity to
practice unconditional acceptance of our emotions. This does not mean
expressing emotion, but letting emotions move through you without any
inhibitions, resistance, or encouragement.

Investigation: This entails dropping any fixed ideas
we have about an emotion and looking at it afresh. Emotions are composite
events, made up of bodily sensations, thoughts, feelings, motivations,
and attitudes. Investigation is not analysis, but more a sensory awareness
exercise of feeling our way into the present moment experience of the
emotions. It is particularly useful to investigate the bodily sensations
of an emotion, letting the body be the container for the emotion,. In
a sense, the body is a bigger container than the thinking mind which
is easily exhausted, and which tends to spin off into stories, analysis,
and attempts to fix the situation – away from acceptance of the present
moment experience.

Mindfulness Exercises for the Third Week

Lengthen your daily meditation session to 25
minutes. When you first sit down, notice the main concerns, feelings,
physical sensations that may be pre-occupying you. Acknowledge them
and remain attentive to any tendency to become lost in your thoughts
concerning these experiences. Meditation proceeds easiest when we
are willing to suspend – for the duration of the meditation – the
need to think about anything.
At least once during the week "ride out
an emotion." Sometime during the week when you are feeling
a strong desire, aversion, fear, or other emotion, don’t act on
the feeling. Rather, bring your mindfulness to the feeling and observe
the changes it undergoes while you are watching it. You might choose
to sit, stand or walk around quietly while you do this study. Things
to notice are the various body sensations and tensions, the changes
in the feeling’s intensity, the various attitudes and beliefs that
you have concerning the presence of the emotion, and perhaps any
more primary emotion triggering the feeling. If after a time the
emotion goes away, spend some time noticing what its absence feels
like.
Spend part of a day making a concentrated effort
to notice feelings of happiness, contentment, well-being, joy, pleasure,
and ease. Even if your day is primarily characterized by the opposite
of these, see if you can identify even subtle and seemingly insignificant
moments of these positive states. It can be as simple as appreciating
the texture of a doorknob or a flash of ease in your eyes as you
notice the blue sky after the fog has burned off. This is not an
exercise for manufacturing positive states but rather discovering
that these may be much more a part of your life than your preoccupations
allow you to notice.
Spend part of another day noticing which feelings
tend to pull you into a state of preoccupation. Sometimes there
are patterns in the kinds of feelings that lead to becoming lost
in thoughts. Common sources for distraction are desire, aversion,
restlessness, fear, and doubt. Are any of these more common for
you than the others? What is your relationship to these feelings
when they appear? As you notice the patterns, does that change how
easily you get pulled into their orbit? By clearly noticing their
presence, can you overcome any of the ways in which these interfere
with, or inhibit, whatever activities you need to do?

Mindfulness Meditation Course Wk 2 – Homework

zencast — Sat, 15 Mar 2008 22:49:44 +0000

Homework to Zencast 148 – Mindfulness Meditation Course Wk 2

Mindfulness Meditation (Week 2)

by Gil Fronsdal

Mindfulness of breathing is a wonderful beginning to
cultivating awareness. It strengthens our ability to concentrate and
steadies the attention on our present moment experience. It also weakens
our tendency to get lost in reactive emotions and mental preoccupations.
With time, attention to the breath helps us to develop a clear, non-reactive
awareness that can then be turned to the full range of our human experience.
As mindfulness develops, we begin to bring this awareness to other areas
of our lives.

Mindfulness is an embodied practice. By practicing mindfulness, we learn
to live in and through our bodies. Learning to be mindful of bodily
experiences is one of the most useful aspects of mindfulness. It is
much easier have a balanced, healthy awareness of the rest of our lives
when we are in touch with our immediate physical experience.

During this week we expand the practice to include the body. Many people
ignore their bodies. The busier a person’s life, the easier it is to
discount the importance of staying in touch with how the body feels.
Many people may be attentive to their body, but it is from the outside
in; that is, they are concerned about body image and appearance. Mindfulness
of the body is attention from the inside out. We notice what the body
is feeling, in and of itself. We give a generous amount to time to be
with the felt sense of the body. Not only does this help the body relax,
remaining mindful of the body is a safeguard from getting wound up with
mental preoccupations.

Benefits of Mindfulness of the Body

Mindfulness of the body has several benefits. First,
cultivating mindfulness of the body increases our familiarity with our
bodies and with how the body responds to our inner and outer lives,
to our thoughts and emotions, and to events around us. The Buddha saw
the human mind and body as unified. When we suppress or ignore aspects
of our emotional, cognitive, and volitional lives, we tend also to disconnect
from the body, from the physical manifestations of our experience. Conversely,
when we distance ourselves from our physical experience, we lose touch
with our inner life of emotions and thoughts. The awakening of the body
from within that comes with mindfulness can help us to discover, not
only our repressed emotions, but also, more importantly, a greater capacity
to respond to the world with healthy emotions and motivations.

Second, in cultivating mindfulness we are developing non-reactivity,
including the ability to be present for our experience without turning
away, habitually seeking or resisting change, or clinging to pleasant
and avoiding unpleasant experience. All too often, our automatic desires,
aversions, preferences, and judgments interfere with our ability to
know what is actually happening. Learning to not respond automatically
and unconsciously makes possible a deeper understanding of the present
moment and our reaction to it, and gives us more freedom to choose our
response. Being non-reactively present for our physical experience goes
a long way in learning to do so with the rest of our lives.

Last, but not least, mindfulness of physical sensations helps us both
to relax tension and to understand its causes.

Mindfulness Exercises for the Second Week

Continue your daily twenty-minute meditation
session.
In the midst of your regular activities, devote
two one-hour periods during the week to being mindful of your body.
During this time, perhaps using a timer or some other cue to remind
yourself, periodically check in with your body, maybe every five
minutes or so. Notice, in particular, your shoulders, stomach, face,
and hands. If you find tension in any of these places, relax.
Devote one meal to eating slowly and mindfully,
paying attention to the tastes, textures, temperature, and other
qualities of your food, and to the experience of your body eating.
(When does your body tell you that have had enough?) If possible,
take the meal in silence, with no other activities to distract you.
You might want to put down your spoon or fork between bites. Whenever
your mind wanders, or whenever you get caught up in reactions to
what is happening, relax and come back to the simplicity of eating
mindfully.
Start noticing when, how and by what, your attention
becomes distracted or fragmented. Are there any common themes or
patterns in the kinds of thoughts, feelings, activities, or pre-occupations
where your mindfulness disappears? If you discover any, discuss
what you find with somebody: a friend, relative, or colleague.

Meditation Instruction: Mindfulness of the Body

During meditation, center your awareness primarily on the physical sensations
of breathing. With dedication, but without strain, keep the breath in
the foreground of attention. The idea is to be relaxed and receptive
while alert and attentive. As long as other experiences such as bodily
sensations, sounds, thoughts, or feelings are in the background of your
awareness, allow them to remain there while you rest your attention
with the sensations of breathing.

When a strong physical sensation makes it difficult for you to stay
with the breath, simply switch your awareness to this new predominant
experience. The art of mindfulness is recognizing what is predominant
and then sustaining an intimate mindfulness on whatever that is. When
the mind wanders and you lose the mindful connection with the sensation,
gently and without judgment return your attention to the physical sensation.

As if your entire body was a sensing organ, sense or feel the physical
experience. Simply allow it to be there. Drop whatever commentary or
evaluations you may have about the experience in favor of seeing and
sensing the experience directly in and of itself. Carefully explore
the particular sensations that make it up – hardness or softness, warmth
or coolness, tingling, tenseness, pressure, burning, throbbing, lightness,
and so on. Let your awareness become as intimate with the experience
as you can. Notice what happens to the sensations as you are mindful
of them. Do they become stronger or weaker, larger or smaller, or do
they stay the same?

As an aid to both acknowledging the physical experience and sustaining
your focus, you can ever so softly label the experience. The labeling
is a gentle, ongoing whisper in the mind that keeps the attention steady
on the object of mindfulness. You should primarily sense directly the
experience and what happens to it as you are present for it.

Be alert for when the focus of your attention moves from the physical
sensations to your reactions to the sensations and your thoughts about
them. If this happens move your attention back to the felt-sense of
the sensations. Try to keep yourself independent of whatever thoughts
and reactions you have. Relax.

Once a physical sensation has disappeared or is no longer compelling,
you can return to mindfulness of breathing until some other sensation
calls your attention.

Mindfulness Meditation Course Wk 1 – Homework

zencast — Sun, 09 Mar 2008 14:46:41 +0000

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.