Diana Winston – Grow Mindfulness

Accessing the Present Moment through Mindfulness Meditation

Diana Winston, Director Mindfulness Education at MARC, offers a guided meditation podcast on the theme, “Back to Basics”. She reminds us that mindfulness is very much about the capacity to pay attention in the present moment and to do so with curiosity, openness and a willingness to be with what is, including our habituated distraction behaviours. Without mindfulness meditation we tend to spend out time thinking about the past (replaying undesirable events/outcomes) or the future (worrying about possible negative events which rarely happen).

Mindfulness meditation enables us to build our concentration by staying fully focused on the present. The beauty of the present moment is that it is always accessible to us if only we focus our attention. However, our busy human brains are forever active – engaged in planning, categorising, criticising, exploring, and many other mental activities that manifest our intelligence. Diana notes that everyone gets distracted during mindfulness meditation but the power of the process lies in the ability to return to our anchor to restore present moment awareness and build our awareness muscle.

Diana suggests that if we become distracted by thoughts we can name what we are doing, for example, “planning” or “critiquing” and return to our anchor. She reminds us of the research that demonstrates the benefits of mindfulness, including building relational resilience and relieving pain. Neuroscience research shows us how mindfulness can increase our capacity to manage stress, enhance positivity and happiness and even alter the physical shape of our brains. Dr. Dilip Jeste, Professor of Psychiatry and Neuroscience, provides research to highlight the role of mindfulness in developing wisdom and compassion. Daniel Goleman and Richard Davidson in their book, Altered Traits: Science Reveals How Meditation Changes Your Mind, Brain, and Body, explain that mindfulness research provides very strong evidence that meditation builds self-awareness, self-management and social awareness.

Diana maintains from her research and extensive training of others in mindfulness practice, that “people who practise mindfulness report more gratitude, more appreciation and more connection with themselves and other people”. Sometimes, a particular location can provide us with the right environment to develop mindfulness. It may provide solitude and silence or reinforce our connection to country and community as Brooke Blurton frequently describes in her memoir, Big Love: Reclaiming myself, my people, my country. Nature has a way of developing mindfulness because it stimulates wonder and awe and all our senses – sight, hearing, smell, touch and taste.

The guided meditation

In the guided meditation, Diana encouraged us to adopt a comfortable posture to enable us to sustain our focus throughout the 20 minute meditation. She suggested we choose an anchor to enable us to restore our attention whenever we notice that we were distracted. The anchors suggested were our breath, external sounds or bodily sensations. I chose to focus on my joined fingers that were resting on my lap. I find that I can very quickly sense the tinkling, vibration and warmth in my fingertips once I have them joined. As I focused on the associated bodily sensations, I became aware of pain in my fingers and wrists which then became my focus.

Diana suggests that when you are starting out using meditation, it is best to maintain a focus on your anchor and not be diverted by strong emotions. There are, however, specific guided meditations for dealing with challenging emotions.

The guided meditation provided by Diana (which begins after 6.35 minutes of introduction) incorporates a 10 minute silent meditation. Towards the end of the meditation, Diana encourages us to sense how we are feeling, e.g., whether we are experiencing ease or relaxation.

Reflection

After the meditation, I recalled that one of the first mindfulness books I read was that by Eckhart Tolle, The Power of Now. Also In an interesting occurrence of synchronicity, I had been listening to mantra meditations on Spotify (via a Janin Devi Mix) as I wrote the first draft of this blog post and Alexia Chellun starting singing The Power Is Here Now (a song I have never heard before).

As we grow in mindfulness through our regular mindfulness practice, we can access the power of the present moment to gain greater self-awareness, heightened creativity, improved emotional regulation and a deeper sense of happiness and ease. There are many options available for us to choose, e.g., chanting, meditation, yoga, mantra meditations or movement meditations. We just need to choose the modality that works best for us and enables us to sustain our practice. I find that Tai Chi provides the greatest immediate benefits for me and that is my primary mindfulness practice (supplemented by other practices as well).

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Image by Ryan KLAUS from Pixabay

By Ron Passfield – Copyright (Creative Commons license, Attribution–Non Commercial–No Derivatives)

Disclosure: If you purchase a product through this site, I may earn a commission which will help to pay for the site, the associated Meetup group, and the resources to support the blog.

Making a Difference by Spreading Kindness

Diana Winston from MARC, UCLA, offers a guided meditation podcast on “kindness” and she maintains that we can make a real difference in the world by spreading kindness at a time when there is so much local, national and international conflict. Her loving kindness meditation cultivates mindfulness and a gratitude mindset for the practitioner and helps to diffuse anger and unkindness in the world. We know from experience that if we extend a smile or thoughtfulness to another person, it is often reciprocated, just as abruptness and rudeness stimulates a reciprocal response. Kindness is contagious and has a momentum of its own that leads to diffusion.

Diana reminds us that mindfulness involves being open and curious while accepting what is. Openness extends to being thoughtful towards people we find “difficult” or who constantly annoy us. Diana asserts, with conviction, that kindness is a natural property of the heart that we extend to others and also our pets. Kindness in her words is “the desire for another person t be happy” and has a mental, emotional and behavioural aspect. Mentally, it involves thinking kind thoughts and positive wishes for others; emotionally, it entails feeling kindly towards others and appreciating their uniqueness; and behaviourally, it means engaging in “acts of kindness”.

Diana’s guided meditation focuses on “radiating loving kindness” through our thoughts and emotions and involves creative visualisation, the use of imagery. She argues that kindness is inherent in mindfulness practice because it involves being willing to show up, to accept what is (including individual differences) and acknowledge connectedness to everybody and everything. In her experience, not everyone will warm to this form of meditation as it involves visualising a “lake of kindness” . However, for people who are not particularly visual, she offers the suggestion to focus on the positive thoughts and emotions behind the process.

Guided meditation

Diana begins the meditation in the usual way encouraging us to adopt a relaxed and comfortable posture and to take a number of deep breaths to enable us to relax and focus on the mindfulness activity. One of the aims of mindfulness mediation is to really focus on the present moment, avoiding obsessing about the past or becoming preoccupied with planning future activity (my main source of distraction!). Diana moves onto encouraging us to focus on our own breathing in an accepting, non-controlling way. She suggests that our focus can be on the up and down movement of our abdomen or chest or the in and out flow of air through our nose. She follows this activity with a focus on the sounds in the room or external environment, again just being open to what is sounding not trying to identify the source or interpret the meaning. Diana suggests that if we become distracted (everyone does, even the mindfulness experts like Diana), we can re-focus on one of the anchors mentioned, e.g. our breathing or sounds.

Diana begins the visualisation process after about five minutes of silent meditation. She encourages us to visualise walking with a companion (someone we admire or a close friend) beside a scintillating blue lake, whose radiance touches everything around it. She calls this the “lake of kindness”. After a short while, we enter the inviting waters with our companion, experiencing sensations of gentleness, warmth and immersiveness of the “kindness waters” – sensations that elicit feelings associated with kindness. Now, we imagine our friends, who are on the bank of the lake, joining us in the water so that they too are immersed in kindness as the lake expands through displacement.

The challenging part of the guided meditation is envisaging other people, who we are not positive about, joining us in the “lake of kindness” – dissolving to some extent our reticence to be with them and encouraging us to extend kindness to them. We are then all enveloped in the “kindness waters”. We can then envisage the kindness waters moving into the ocean; up the rivers of villages, towns and cities; and extending to all the waterways of the world thus “suffusing the world with kindness”.

Reflection

Kindness is natural but we become absorbed in our thoughts, negative emotions, stereotypes and sense of superiority – thus precluding us from radiating warmth and kindness to others. It behoves us to reflect on times when we have omitted to show kindness and to consciously undertake acts of kindness, such as sharing a meal with someone who usually eats alone. We can genuinely make a difference in the lives of individuals and everyone we come in contact with, if we approach them with kindness in our heart, even through the simple act of smiling or sharing a book.

As we grow in mindfulness and kindness through loving kindness meditation, we can make a real difference in our own lives and spread kindness in the world. For example, you often see people who have been given the opportunity to enter a line of traffic, extend this kindness to someone else further along the road.

Mindfulness meditations help us to reflect on our words and actions and their impact and reminds us that we are all connected as we share the fragility and vulnerability of the human condition. It is a useful practice to reflect at the end of each day and think about our “acts of kindness” as well as when we overlooked an opportunity to be kind to someone.

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By Ron Passfield – Copyright (Creative Commons license, Attribution–Non Commercial–No Derivatives)

Disclosure: If you purchase a product through this site, I may earn a commission which will help to pay for the site, the associated Meetup group, and the resources to support the blog.

Integrating Kindness with Mindfulness Meditation

In a recent guided meditation podcast, Radiating Kindness Practice, Diana Winston reinforced the view that kindness is integral to mindfulness – kindness to ourselves and others. She maintained that being kinder to ourselves (e.g. overcoming negative self-evaluation) and to others (loving kindness towards both people we love and those we dislike), is embedded in meditation. In the guided meditation, she integrates kindness with the meditation process by incorporating three different loving kindness practices that she describes as:

“Dry loving kindness”
“Wet loving Kindness”
“Radiating loving kindness”

At the start of the meditation, Diana encourages us to adopt a comfortable position that will aid relaxed breathing and assist us to express kindness to ourselves and others. She begins with taking slow breaths before engaging in a brief body scan to identify points of tension or tightness. After encouraging us to release the tension/tightness by softening the point in our body, she moves onto undertaking the different kindness practices in the order indicated above.

Dry loving kindness

Diana explains that the idea behind dry loving kindness is repetition of words that supplant any negative thoughts. The idea is to stop ourselves from engaging in unflattering comparisons, negative self-evaluations, caustic critiques or cycles of worry and anxiety. The concept is simple and is easy to undertake. Basically, you can repeat words like, May I be happy, may you be happy, may we all be happy. The approach adopts the intention to change our inner dialogue from negative to positive, from denigrating ourselves and others to empowering each of us through the repeated expression of kind thoughts. Karen Drucker, in her song Gentle with Myself, expresses this form of loving kindness when she sings, I will be easy on myself, I will be kinder with my heart.

Wet loving kindness

“Wet loving kindness”, in contrast to the previous approach, focuses on feelings rather than thoughts. Thus it involves a systemic approach whereby we extend feelings of loving kindness towards people closest to us and then to others from those we love to those we may ignore or actually resent. Reflection on resentment that we carry towards another person could be a useful prelude to this meditation to free us up to express understanding and kindness towards the person we resent. Diana suggests a series of expressions that could be used as part of this wet loving kindness practice, such as:

May you be safe and protected

May you experience peace and contentment

May you feel strong and healthy

May you experience ease and equanimity.

Diana suggests that you substitute your own expression of kind feelings as you work from envisaging the people you love to others who may present a challenge to you. She provides some ways of expressing kindness to others by way of example, not as a prescription.

Radiating loving kindness

The idea here is to radiate kindness beyond ourselves to the broader world. In the guided meditation on radiating kindness, Diana begins with asking us to envisage a glow or sense of warmth emanating from our heart. Initially, we can envisage it extending within our room – to the left, right, below and above. As we capture the essence of this approach, we can expand our vision to envisaging our heart’s glow/warmth filling our house (and household) and extending to our immediate neighbourhood and beyond. I found it useful in this radiating kindness practice, to envisage wrapping people in Ukraine with warmth, care and kindness, embracing Ukrainian refugees as well.

Diana suggests that you can radiate kindness to areas of conflict, disease, natural disaster (e.g. floods, fire or hurricanes) or alternatively to individuals or groups who may be in need of kindness and thoughtfulness. For example, I focused too on extending warmth and kindness to the relatives of the Australian soldier, known as “Ninja” who died fighting as a volunteer for Ukraine in the current war. “Heart-focused breathing™” promoted in the online Heart Science Course could be a useful prelude to the radiating kindness practice as it helps us to recognise and appreciate the energy field that emanates from our heart.

Reflection

I have previously written about barriers to expressing loving kindness, including self-absorption, disconnection from the outside world, distorted view of “love” and inability to recognise that compassion requires external expression, even in the form of loving kindness meditation. An additional barrier can be the inability to understand and value the intelligence and energy of the heart which has been demonstrated in research and documented in the Science of the Heart (free book).

As we grow in mindfulness through different loving kindness practices, we can become more open to the needs of others, better able to express gratitude and appreciation, more willing to take compassionate action, and more ready to accept things as they are for us.

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Image by Elias from Pixabay

By Ron Passfield – Copyright (Creative Commons license, Attribution–Non Commercial–No Derivatives)

Disclosure: If you purchase a product through this site, I may earn a commission which will help to pay for the site, the associated Meetup group, and the resources to support the blog.

Ways to Manage Ourself During Difficult Times

The Mindful Awareness Research Center (MARC) at UCLA offers weekly guided meditation podcasts on a wide range of topics and issues. In one of the recent meditation podcasts Diana Winston, Director of Mindfulness Education at MARC focused on “Practices in Difficult Times” – providing several mindfulness practices designed to help us achieve calmness, manage our challenging emotions and express compassion to ourselves and to others who are suffering.

Diana highlighted the fact that challenging events such as the mass shootings in America and the war in Ukraine can generate “emotional inflammation” in us – we can feel strong emotions of anger, grief, rage or sadness. We might feel overwhelmed by others’ inconceivable pain and loss and our own emotional response. We might be confused and continually ask ourselves, “Why the children?”, “Why Ukraine?” or “When will this emotional and physical devastation stop?”

Diana draws on mindfulness practices to help us deal with these challenging times and the emotions they elicit in us. She reminds us that mindfulness involves placing our attention fully on the present moment while being open and curious and accepting what is in our present internal and external reality.

Three mindfulness practices for difficult times

The three mindfulness practices offered by Diana are described, in turn, in the following discussion:

Calming Practices: Here we are encouraged to tap into the body’s own capacity to generate calm and ease. The primary aim is to achieve groundedness in a way that is conducive to our present needs. We could start by taking a couple of deep breaths and releasing them slowly to let go of the tension within us. There is the option to find a place of ease in our body and focus in on it, e.g., our arms beside our body, our relaxed legs or our fingers joined and pulsating with energy. Diana particularly stressed the power of “feeling the support of the earth” through our feet on the floor or the ground. Our breath with its natural rhythm can provide a basis for experiencing calm and ease (unless, of course, focusing on our breath acts as a trauma stimulus). If attention to our breath is calming, there are many ways to access a relaxed state through mindful breathing practices. We could adopt “micro-practices” such as the 4-7-8 breathing practice often used in yoga, the breathing in time practices (using our breath as a musical instrument) or we could pay attention to the internal physical sensations of our breathing – e.g., the rising and falling of our abdomen or the feeling of air moving in and out of our nose. Diana suggests another alternative is to pay full attention to the sounds in the room or what is being generated externally (especially if we are in a natural setting with the sounds of birds, waves, or wind). Sound can also be used as a calming mindfulness practice as we listen to and sing mantra meditations provided by people like Lulu & Mischka (such as their Rainbow Light song as part of their peaceful Horizon album).
Holding strong emotions: Normally, people tend to suppress challenging emotions, deny them, or deflect their attention from them by numbing themselves with some form of addictive behaviour such as drinking excessive alcohol, overeating, taking illegal drugs or over-spending while shopping compulsively. Mindfulness experts and psychologists remind us that we need to face up to our emotions or they will cause disruptions in our lives through some form of mental and/or physical illness. Diana encourages us in this guided meditation to pay attention to our challenging emotions and observe how they are manifesting in our body, e.g. tightness in the chest, pain in the arms or neck, headaches, overall stiffness or fibromyalgia (non-specific whole-body pain). Holding on to these strong emotions enables us to deal with them directly and use the healing power of our mind and body to dissipate them. If we experience overwhelm while confronting our strong emotions, we can return to our meditation anchor which could be our breath, external sounds, bodily sensations or music.
Compassion practice: Diana explains that compassion practice in this context involves ourselves as well as others who may be experiencing suffering and loss. She encourages us to treat ourselves with kindness and compassion as we struggle to deal with our challenging emotions and our misguided attempts to ignore them or numb them. She suggests, then, that we extend loving kindness to others in the world who are experiencing pain, devastation, grief and anger. Diana offers a possible expression of compassion for others in the form of a statement of desire, “May you be freed from pain and suffering and find contentment and ease”.

Reflection

We have a deep well of ease in our bodies that we can access at any time, if only we can let go of our damaging thoughts. As we grow in mindfulness through calming practices, facing our challenging emotions and practising compassion towards ourselves and others, we can gain the insight, courage and capacity to manage ourselves during difficult times. Mindfulness enables us to achieve emotional regulation, self-awareness and the creative drive to be the best we can be. Challenging emotions, left unchecked or ignored, can undermine our endeavours at home or at work.

Over time we can develop a regular mindfulness practice that suits our make-up and that we can undertake on a daily basis (e.g., Tai Chi, mantra meditations, chanting or yoga). This core mindfulness practice can be supplemented by micro-practices that we engage in throughout the day (e.g., when washing our hands, during waiting times, or when boiling the jug). The compound effect of these core and micro-practices is a calm state of mind, enhanced patience and conscious presence.

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By Ron Passfield – Copyright (Creative Commons license, Attribution–Non Commercial–No Derivatives)

Disclosure: If you purchase a product through this site, I may earn a commission which will help to pay for the site, the associated Meetup group, and the resources to support the blog.

Natural Awareness through Nature

Natural awareness is often contrasted with meditation focused on numbers, the breath, sounds or particular sensations or feelings. Natural awareness is not goal-focused – it is more about being aware of awareness itself, noticing that you are noticing. So much of what we do in life is goal-focused – natural awareness provides a desirable shift that can lead to less stress, more openness and a greater sense of calm. Rachelle Calvert encourages us to take our mindfulness practice outside so that we can feel more connected to the world around us and not be totally absorbed in having to “try” or “do”. She draws on research results that demonstrate that “practicing mindfulness in nature”, leads to many benefits including improved heart health, concentration, relaxation and stress reduction. Mark Coleman reminds us that a natural outcome of being mindful in nature is a sense of gratitude as well as wonder and awe inspired by nature’s beauty and resilience.

By developing natural awareness in nature through observation and listening, we can become more grounded, experience tranquility and begin to notice minute aspects of our natural environment that we have previously overlooked. Diana Winston in her book, The Little Book of Being, identifies practices we can use to develop natural awareness and offers what she calls “markers” to test whether or not we have experienced “natural awareness”. These include feelings of timelessness and ease; noticing that you are noticing; completely aware with all your senses open to your environment; and a restful mind that is open to what is passing by.

An experience of natural awareness

I was recently strolling along the Mooloolaba Beach Boardwalk noticing the people passing by – couples of all ages out for a walk, men and women pushing prams, individuals leading dogs on a leash and the perennial runners, both individuals and groups. Occasionally, a bush turkey would cross my path on its way to greener pastures. While being aware of these movements, I was totally unaware of the vegetation beside the Boardwalk. Once I realised this lack of awareness, I began to scan the vegetation either side of the path. I became aware of tiny wildflowers partially hidden amongst the trees and grasses, trees twisted sideways turning towards the sun and all different kinds of leaves (broad and large, thin and small). This cultivated, natural awareness enabled me to broaden the horizon of my awareness and instilled a greater sense of calm as I walked mindfully along the Boardwalk.

Diana Winston offers an exercise to experience what she calls, “the spectrum of awareness” – moving from a very narrow focus to a more panoramic, natural awareness view. She uses fish in an aquarium for this exercise, moving from focus on a single plant, to movement of an individual fish and, finally, to a panoramic view taking in the fish, the aquarium and the surrounding environment. As she observes as part of this exercise, natural awareness includes noticing our own bodily sensations and feelings in the present moment as we are experiencing the world around us with openness and curiosity.

Reflection

We can develop natural awareness through our everyday activities if we adopt a mindset that involves consciously noticing what we are doing and seeing, as well as what we are experiencing internally. Diana Winston suggests that we can develop natural awareness even when doing the dishes; when we expertly handle a distraction while meditating; when consciously avoid foods that lead to inflammation or when we monitor how we spend our time.

Focused meditation helps to develop natural awareness as we become increasing able to concentrate and pay attention with openness and curiosity. As we grow in mindfulness through developing our capacity for natural awareness and engaging in formal meditation, we can experience a greater sense of tranquility, freedom from anxiety and a more complete alignment of our words and actions with our values and life purpose.

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By Ron Passfield – Copyright (Creative Commons license, Attribution–Non Commercial–No Derivatives)

Disclosure: If you purchase a product through this site, I may earn a commission which will help to pay for the site, the associated Meetup group, and the resources to support the blog.

Anxiety Management with Mindfulness

Diana Winston offers a mindfulness meditation podcast, Working with Anxiety, as one of the weekly meditations conducted by the Mindful Awareness Research Center (MARC), UCLA. As Director of Mindfulness Education for MARC, Diana frequently leads these weekly meditations. She stresses that mindfulness enables us to be more fully in the present moment and to accept what is in our life (including anxiety) with curiosity and openness.

Diana maintains that mindfulness helps us to work effectively with anxiety because it, (1) enables us to be present in the moment, rather than absorbed in the past or the future; (2) facilitates reframing of our experience, and (3) provides a place of rest and ease from the turbulence and waves of daily life. As Diana asserts, anxiety is part and parcel of daily life, given the human condition and the uncertainty of the world around us today. The world situation with the global pandemic and devastating conflict between Russia and Ukraine add to anxiety-producing situations we experience on the home and local front. In consequence, there is an increase in mental health issues along with restricted resources to deal with explosive demand.

Guided meditation for working with anxiety

Diana’s approach is consistent with trauma-sensitive mindfulness in that she allows a choice of posture, meditation anchor and overall focus. She encourages us to find a posture that is comfortable with eyes closed or open (ideally, looking down). At the beginning of the meditation, she has us focus on something that gives us a sense of being grounded and supported by something of strength, e.g. our feet on the ground/floor or back against the chair. It is important to tap into something that enables us to slow our minds and calm our feelings

Diana then suggests that we focus on our breath as a neutral experience of the present moment. For some people, breath may not be a neutral aspect and could in fact trigger a trauma response. So, she offers an alternative focus such as sounds in the environment, the room tone or rhythm in some music. Whatever we choose as an anchor, we can return to it whenever we notice our thoughts distracting us and leading to anxiety-producing images, recollections or anticipations.

The next stage of the guided meditation involves focus on some source of anxiety and exploring the bodily sensations associated with it. Diana suggests that if we are new to meditation we should focus on a minor source of anxiety rather than a major issue. Whatever our focal anxiety source, the idea is to notice what is happening in our body, e.g. tightness around our neck and shoulders, quickening or unevenness of our breath or pain in our back. By bringing our consciousness to these bodily sensations, we can work to release the tension involved and restore some level of equanimity.

Diana suggests that at any stage we could use imagery as a way to achieve an anchor that gives us strength and/or a sense of peace. The image could be of a tall mountain withstanding the buffeting of strong winds and rain or a still lake reflecting surrounding trees and supporting the smooth gliding of swans or ducks. Imagery can take us out of our anxiety-producing imagination and transport us to a place of strength and/or peace.

In the final stage of the meditation, Diana encourages us to offer ourselves loving-kindness, acknowledging that we are only human after all and that the world is anxiety-producing. She urges us to extend positive thoughts towards ourselves, rather then beat ourselves up for our fragility. We could focus on times when we have demonstrated resilience to overcome difficulties, extended compassionate action to those in need or expressed gratitude for all that we have.

Reflection

There are many tools to help us work with, and manage, anxiety. These include chanting and/or mantra meditations such as the calming mantra produced by Lulu & Mischka, Stillness in Motion – Sailing and Singing with whales. As we grow in mindfulness through meditation, chanting, mantras or other mindfulness practices, we can learn to be more fully present in the moment, to manage our anxiety-producing thoughts, regulate our emotions and find the peace and ease that lie within.

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By Ron Passfield – Copyright (Creative Commons license, Attribution–Non Commercial–No Derivatives)

Disclosure: If you purchase a product through this site, I may earn a commission which will help to pay for the site, the associated Meetup group, and the resources to support the blog.

Under the influence of Thich Nhat Hanh

In a prelude to a guided meditation podcast, Remembering Thich Nhat Hanh, Diana Winston spoke with reverence about the life of Thich Nhat Hanh and his global influence. Nhat Hanh, who died aged ninety-five in Vietnam on January 22 2022, was a Zen Master, peace activist, poet and author of over 100 books focused mainly on mindfulness and peace. He established multiple Buddhist communities around the world and is considered the “Father of Western mindfulness”. He exerted a global influence throughout his teaching life conducting numerous retreats and speaking with influencers such as the World Bank, Google and the U.S. Congress.

During the Vietnam war Nhat Hanh introduced the concept of “Engaged Buddhism” and led Buddhist monks in actions designed to help people of Vietnam who were suffering from the drastic effects of the extended conflict and regular bombing. He argued that mindfulness increases our capacity to “see” but that this insight needs to be translated into compassionate action. Nhat Hanh established the Plum Village in France, the largest Buddhist community in the world and an international practice center for followers of his mindfulness approach. The influence of Thich Nhat Hanh is so pervasive that it is not possible to do its credit in this short blog post. However, his teachings and meditations are readily accessible via Plum Village videos on YouTube and his full life history on the Plum Village website.

Guided meditation

Diana Winston, at the outset of her podcast meditation, acknowledged the profound influence that Nhat Hanh had over her mindfulness practice and that of numerous other mindfulness teachers and practitioners around the world. She stressed Nhat Hanh’s influence over the practice of bringing mindfulness into everyday life and emphasised the benefits of mindfulness meditation in terms of stress reduction, overcoming anxiety and depression, managing pain, improving mood and developing a positive mindset and emotions.

After suggesting a comfortable, focused posture, Diana begins the meditation with the encouragement to take a couple of deep breaths, recalling the words of Nhat Hanh “Breathing in, I calm the breath; breathing out, I smile”. She reminds us to identify any points of tension in our body and to soften those points to release the tension.

Next Diana asks us to focus on our breath – the process of breathing, whether the awareness is through the movement of air through our nose or the undulations of our chest or abdomen. This is a passive observation, not trying to control the breath, but following it as it happens naturally in our body.

She then suggests that we focus on the sounds that surround us – again passively, allowing the sounds to reach us without attempting interpretation or evaluation (in terms of pleasant or unpleasant).

Diana maintains that it is only natural for thoughts and feelings to intrude and distract us from our chosen focus. However, she recommends that we use our breath or sounds as our anchor to bring us back to our focus. An alternative is to focus on bodily sensations such as those of our feet on the ground or our fingers touching each other causing tingling, warmth or a sensation of flow. I like to use fingers touching as my anchor and I find that when I am waiting for something (e.g. a traffic light) I can touch my fingers and immediately drop into a breath consciousness that is calming.

Diana observes that there are times when strong feelings will emerge, depending on what is going on in our lives at the time. She suggests that we face these feelings and allow them to manifest without staying absorbed in them. I noted that at one point in the meditation, I experienced a profound sense of sadness precipitated by the distressing events in Ukraine. I was able to stay with the sadness for a time and then restore the focus on my anchor, the sensations in my joined fingers. The period of ten minutes silence at the end of the meditation podcast enabled me to deepen my focus.

Reflection

In her meditation podcast, Diana recalls Thich Nhat Hanh’s comments about death and dying. In his video podcast on the topic, Where do we go when we die?, Nhat Hanh reminds us that cells in our body are dying all the time and new cells are being born – so, death and birth are part of every moment of our life. He maintains that the disintegration of our body at death does not mean we cease to exist. In his view, our words and actions continue to influence others – so, after we die, we continue in all the people who have come under our influence (or will come under our influence in the future). He indicated that when he died he would continue in the lives of many thousands of people through the books he has written, the videos he has created and the podcasts that live on after him.

Sounds True provides a video of Nhat Hanh, the artist, as he engages in calligraphy as a form of mindfulness, using the in-breath and out-breath. In one calligraphy, he likens the continuation of our lives in different forms to a cloud that never dies.

Diana states that the global mindfulness movement represents in many ways the continuation of the life of Nhat Hanh. She asks us, “How are you going to enable the continuation of Nhat Hanh’s life in your own life?”. As we grow in mindfulness, we are continuing the life and tradition of Nhat Hanh and gaining access to the benefits of mindfulness including calmness, emotion regulation, insight, resilience and the courage to take compassionate action.

Thich Nhat Hahn made a hugely significant contribution to the global mindfulness movement and world peace (he was nominated by Martin Luther King for the Nobel Peace Prize). Nhat Hanh left us a huge store of resources to enable us to plumb the depths of his teachings and his indomitable spirit, and to continue his life’s work to create a “beloved community”. In all his life, throughout the challenges of suffering, grief and disappointment, he “practised a lot of breathing, coming back to himself”. Mindful breathing provided his grounding during all phases of his life, especially in the face of violence against the Vietnamese people, his followers and social workers.

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Image by Karl Egger from Pixabay

By Ron Passfield – Copyright (Creative Commons license, Attribution–Non Commercial–No Derivatives)

Disclosure: If you purchase a product through this site, I may earn a commission which will help to pay for the site, the associated Meetup group, and the resources to support the blog.

Reflecting on Our Past Year and Planning Our Future

Allyson Pimentel, meditation teacher with UCLA’s mindfulness education and research center, offered a guided meditation podcast on the theme, Mindfulness and End of Year Reflections, as part of the weekly meditation podcasts conducted in collaboration with the Hammer Museum. In the podcast, Allyson drew on the work of Amanda Gorman, appointed the first US National Youth Poet Laureate in 2017.

Amanda also wrote and delivered the Presidential inauguration poem, The Hill We Climb, for the inauguration of President Joe Biden. In her poem, Amanda encourages us to acknowledge the past – the pains, divisions and the victories over challenges. At the same time, she exhorts us to see the light in our past difficulties – despite the grief, hurt and tiredness – and to recognize the growth, the hope and persistence we displayed. In looking to the future, Amanda encourages us to “rebuild, reconcile and recover” and reminds us that “to put our future first, we must first put our differences aside”.

In the introduction to her guided meditation, Allyson draws on Amanda’s latest book of poems, Call Us What We Carry, to inspire reflection and forward planning. In particular, she focuses on the poem, What We Carry, which in Allyson’s words “captures the essence of mindfulness”. The poem grounds us in the dampness of the earth and reminds us that even what is grimy, mired and marred can be a gift and a source of wonder (a perspective we experienced as children sitting on the ground or the grass or playing on the river’s edge). Amanda reassures us that even if we are not clear about “what we have left behind”, we are enough “for what we have left” in our life.

Guided meditation as an end of year reflection

At the outset, Allyson encourages us to become grounded in the present moment – being conscious of whatever we bring to the meditation including our aches and pains, reticence or excitement, readiness or unease. She acknowledges at the outset that there are times when stability of presence and its associated calm and quietness are not readily accessible – but still encourages us to try to relax and focus.

The next stage of the guided meditation involves focusing on the sounds both within us and around us. Within us, it could be the sound of our outbreath, ringing in our ears, or the rumbling of a hungry stomach or upset microbiome. The sounds surrounding us could be traffic noise, birds singing, the rustling of trees, the cough of a family member, music from our neighbour or footsteps on the stairs to our meditation place. Allyson encourages us to tune into the sounds without interpretation or any effort to control or edit them.

Next, we are encouraged to place an upturned palm on our lap – symbolic of openness to all that we have experienced in the past year. Allyson draws on the words of Amanda’s poem to suggest that our palms are “open but unemptied”. We can focus on the past year with its achievements, challenges and set-backs – looking clearly at the things we have done that we are proud of and those we wished we hadn’t been engaged in. We are challenged to look at both our successes and failures, our compassion towards others as well as our unkind words and actions.

As we reflect over our past words and actions, Allyson encourages us to turn our palm downwards on our lap and draw on the warmth and reassurance of our body. This is symbolic of receiving self-love and kindness towards ourself as well as forgiveness. We can tune into the bodily sensations flowing from this sensory experience of acceptance and support.

Finally, Allyson encourages us to think about “how we wish to walk into tomorrow” – to decide how we are going to turn up in the world. This decision can be informed by what we were dissatisfied in relation to our words and actions in the past.

Reflection

At the outset of the podcast, Alyson reminds us that mindfulness and the Hammer Museum have a common goal “to bring the light of awareness” to every aspect of our lives, including our experiences of art, poetry, music, disillusionment, joy, relationships, inspiration and wonder. She expresses the hope that as we grow in mindfulness through meditation and reflection, we can live with more justice, a sense of openness and spaciousness, and a feeling of being strongly grounded and in control of our emotions, however difficult.

Amanda Gorman offers both enlightenment and hope and the firm belief that we can rise to the occasion of positively shaping the future for the generations to come – a future that is not built on division but on our connectedness and interdependence. Diana Winston encourages us to bring intention to our New Year resolution, while Leo Babauta suggests that focusing on a single resolve, such as daily mindfulness practice, can have flow-on effects to many facets of our lives.

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Image by Sasin Tipchai from Pixabay

By Ron Passfield – Copyright (Creative Commons license, Attribution–Non Commercial–No Derivatives)

Disclosure: If you purchase a product through this site, I may earn a commission which will help to pay for the site, the associated Meetup group, and the resources to support the blog.

Developing Natural Awareness through Observation and Listening

On New Year’s day, I was sitting on my deck at home and immediately thought about Diana Winston’s discussion of natural awareness. All I wanted to do was sit there, observe and listen. It was as if I was being transported into a different world where nature was supreme and everything else faded in the distance.

As I looked out from the deck I could see the waters of Moreton Bay in the distance through a gap in the trees that afforded a glimpse of the bay and the island not far from the shore. It was one of those days when the sun was warm, the sky was blue and there was an eerie stillness in the air. The trees glistened with drops of water after many days of rain. There was a clarity about the view and a coolness in the air despite the summer weather beginning to warm up.

I could hear the birds in the foreground and background – Doves cooing persistently, Butcherbirds stretching their necks to break into song and raucous Rainbow Lorikeets breaking the silence with their fast flapping wings as they sped by screeching. The air was suddenly filled with loud sounds as a Kookaburra landed nearby to let out its laughing call.

I began to observe more closely my pot plants on the table, cupboard and floor of the deck. I was able to notice new growth with emerging leaves and buds, the thickening of stems and the increasing individuality of the plants as they matured in their pots and took in the air and sunlight. Some succulents had very shiny leaves, others were tall and imposing, while a small group hung over their pots and extended their reach to the floor. Another variegated plant that was previously close to death now displayed its bright colours and scalloped edges in a new location on the deck that afforded lots of air, light and access to light rain.

The sky was a bright blue with light, passing clouds moving slowly and forming unusual shapes. The many birds that surrounded me seemed to rejoice in the clear skies, the gentle breeze and the brightening sunlight.

Reflection

I am reminded of Costa Georgiadis exhortation in his book, Costa’s World: Gardening for the SOIL, the SOUL and the SUBURBS, that we should become more mindful of our immediate environment as we move through it and around it, often totally unaware of its beauty, variety and earthiness and its ability to make us grounded. Deepak Chopra reminds us of the healing power of “earthing” – consciously grounding ourselves by walking barefoot on the earth or grass.

Diana, in her book The Little Book of Being, also offers ways to develop natural awareness and encourages us to monitor our sensations throughout the day, engage in deep listening and avoid unnecessary aggravation either of our emotions or our microbiome (through the ingestion of inflammatory foods).

As we develop natural awareness and grow in mindfulness through meditation and conscious observation and listening, we can achieve a sense of tranquility, gratitude and peace amid what is increasingly a turbulent world. Our own backyard can be where we earth and become grounded.

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Image by Perez Vöcking from Pixabay

By Ron Passfield – Copyright (Creative Commons license, Attribution–Non Commercial–No Derivatives)

Disclosure: If you purchase a product through this site, I may earn a commission which will help to pay for the site, the associated Meetup group, and the resources to support the blog.

Integrating Gratitude with Loving Kindness Meditation

Diana Winston, Director of Mindfulness Education at the Mindful Awareness Research Center (MARC) UCLA offered a guided meditation podcast integrating gratitude and loving kindness. Her guided meditation, Extending Loving Kindness & Gratitude Practice, is designed to use the energy and warmth of gratitude practice to extend our loving kindness beyond ourselves to others in our life to whom we are truly grateful.

Diana’s meditation is one of the weekly meditation podcasts offered by MARC with a view to helping participants grow in self-awareness, develop emotion regulation and attain an overall sense of wellbeing and ease. The approach of the MARC meditations is to enable us to focus fully on “present moment experience” while adopting an open and curious perspective and accepting “what is”.

Guided meditation incorporating gratitude and loving kindness

At the outset, Diana encourages us to adopt a comfortable position, whether sitting on a chair, lying down or adopting a cross-legged siting posture. She makes the valid point that is difficult to extend loving kindness to others when we are not physically comfortable. She suggests that we begin with a few deep breaths to ease some of the tension in our bodies and to ground us in the moment. Associated with this is the encouragement to be with what is – to acknowledge and accept our mental state, our feelings of reluctance or enthusiasm for the meditation or our agitation about something external to the present moment.

The anchor for this meditation is initially focusing on something that we are really grateful for – whatever that might be in the physical, intellectual, emotional, relational or financial realms of our lives. Because so many of my friends and family lack physical mobility at the moment (owing to illness and/or aging), I focused with gratitude and appreciation on my ability to walk, run on a tennis court, and play tennis well. I began to appreciate that I had been coached in tennis very well at an early age and that I now had a range of tennis strokes and strategies that I can use to really enjoy my social tennis. I thought of how much playing tennis had become a positive, grounding part of my life through fixtures, competitions and social tennis groups (both intimate and broad).

The next phase of the meditation focuses on someone in our life we really appreciate – a partner, child, friend, colleague, mentor or anyone else who is a positive influence in our life and a source of joy. I focused on my life partner of forty years and expressed appreciation for her sustained love, kindness and warmth; her intellectual and problem-solving capacity; her generosity towards others in need; her courage and resilience in the face of difficult situations; her willingness and ability to listen for understanding; and her desire and ability to be a very strong support for our two adult children.

Diana encourages us to allow the feelings of gratitude to flow through our body – to capture the embodiment of our appreciation in the moment. These feelings can then energise our desire to express loving kindness towards our chosen person. The loving kindness can be expressed in many ways but often includes a desire for the person to be protected and to be safe from harm of all kinds (both internal and external); to realise a state of happiness and contentment; to achieve improved physical and mental health; and to experience a deep and abiding send of ease (a rare occurrence in these challenging times).

As we extend loving kindness to the person we have been focusing on, we can begin to imagine this loving kindness being reciprocated – we can envisage ourselves as the recipient of loving kindness being extending to us. We might mentally revisit a recent experience where the person has shown love and warmth towards us (e.g. by placing their arms around us, holding hands or offering a hug of appreciation or empathy). Again ,we can focus on our embodiment of these reciprocated feelings – how do they make us feel in our body in the present moment? What is that the other person sees in us and what else should we be grateful for?

Diana asks us to think of another person to whom we are grateful and begin to identify what it is about them that we are grateful for. It may be that they nurtured us in a time of challenge, came to our rescue when we were in need, or became the person to offer “a shoulder to cry on” when we were suffering and/or experiencing grief. At this stage of the meditation, I thought of my colleague of 15 years. I expressed appreciation for her wisdom and calmness; her flexibility and understanding; her courage and willingness to meet challenges head on; her work ethic and persistence; her active commitment to fairness and equity; her genuine care and concern for our clients; and her kindness and generosity to anyone in need (often at great personal expense).

The reflection made me realise how lucky I am to have such a colleague and to know that in any situation we encounter I can rely on her for her considered and apt response. Diana suggests that after this experience of appreciation and gratitude, we again express loving kindness towards them in our own words as befit the individual involved.

The final stage of this guided meditation is to focus on people who might be suffering – experiencing chronic illness or fatigue, addiction, the COVID19 virus, or the extreme challenges of war/refugee experience. We can extend loving kindness to our chosen group of people – wishing that their suffering be alleviated; that amidst the pain they can have moments of peace; that they are able to meet their challenges with acceptance, resilience and courage; and that they are eventually free from their suffering so that they can experience wellness and ease.

Reflection

There will be times when we cannot feel loving kindness – particularly to those who have hurt us or whose words and actions are continually challenging. In these situations, instead of indulging in self-denigrating thoughts and feelings, we can extend loving kindness to ourselves.

We can also explore an internal form of compassionate curiosity – whereby we envisage what traumas a person with an addiction has experienced in their lives and what might be the messages they are giving themselves about their “worth”. Gabor Maté explains this approach in his book, In the Realm of Hungry Ghosts: Close Encounters with Addiction.

As we grow in mindfulness, through gratitude and loving kindness mediation, we can begin to appreciate the many people and things we take for granted in our lives, grow in kindness towards others and ourself, and move beyond a self-referential and self-centred world to engage in compassionate action. Loving kindness meditation helps us to appreciate what is good in others as well as in ourselves.

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Image by John Hain from Pixabay

By Ron Passfield – Copyright (Creative Commons license, Attribution–Non Commercial–No Derivatives)

Disclosure: If you purchase a product through this site, I may earn a commission which will help to pay for the site, the associated Meetup group, and the resources to support the blog.