See below for a streaming audio version of a guided mindfulness of breath awareness practice. This is also available here for download.

This is the initial practice to given to beginning students of mindfulness meditation to begin to build concentration, presence and stabilize the mind. For many this is a lifelong practice.

Enjoy!

In the swirl of stimuli and the 150 mph culture that we live in we often lose track of our body.  It takes both effort and intention to be in the present and one of the easiest ways to access this is through our physical body.  I like to check in with myself several times a day and ask myself this question:

Where are my feet?

I then feel deeply into my feet, feeling the sensations and or numbness that is there, hot/cold, tingly, etc.  Just noticing whatever is going on there.  What are they in contact with?  The floor? Am I sitting cross legged? What is that like?  You may find that it is difficult to be in your feet for more than a few seconds…just notice this and return to the feet. Feeling our body and making a relationship with it is one of the most profound types of mindfulness practice. I find that even doing this exercise for a few seconds increases my sense of presence, mindfulness, and increases grounding and relaxation.

This is an easy way to integrate some mindfulnes practice into your everyday life and give your mind and body a brief respite from the assault of stimulation.

Be well,

David

In our technological world there are some everyday opportunities to wake up. I am often on the computer or answering the phone to reply to or communicate with clients and colleagues and I try to use this time as an opportunity to wake up and practice some mindfulness.

I will set the intention to take 1-3 intentional breaths, just sensing and the breathing and feeling the body before answering the phone or checking the email. I hear the ring, I take a moment to center myself and breath and after I have completed my 1-3 breaths I answer (same thing works for email, after we hear the alert go off.) Often, this creates a more present and engaged communication as well, as i have taken some time to come into the present.

If you are anything like me, you receive multitudes of emails and phone calls, and this will give you plenty of time to practice coming back and touching your own experience before engaging in contact with another. Often we will forget to take our mindful breaths, and this is ok too…this is part of the practice. As we remember we come back and do the practice before each phone ring and email ping. Over and over again coming back to ourselves, our experience and from this more centered place reaching out to engage people and our world.

Waking up bit, by bit, patiently and gently. I find this makes for a kinder and gentler experience in our workday, as there is often so much aggression and rushing in our high speed technological society. Give it try.

Please enjoy the following streaming audio of a guided mindfulness and forgiveness exercise. This is part 2 of the practice I introduced a few days ago.

This practice will help you begin to unwind the chronic tension in the mind and body around unfinished business with a situation or memory in which you feel you have hurt someone else.

Please pick something of fairly low emotional intensity to work with at first (this is explained in more detail in the recording.) We want this to be a gentle compassionate process. This exercise has been a fruitful one for my clients and I hope it is helpful to you.

Please use your discretion when using any of the guided meditations/exercises I present here. If you ever feel overwhelmed or uncomfortable discontinue the exercise. The most effective way of working with this would be with the help or support of a qualified therapist. Keep in mind that forgiveness is a progressive process and you may not feel you can completely open to or arouse and kind of heartfelt quality of forgiveness during the exercise. Approach the person, situation, or memory with gentleness and take your time. Bit by bit, moment by moment, practice by practice we can learn to let go of our pain, resentment, rage, sadness, and other types of suffering. Regular practice is required to feel the full benefits of the exercise.

Therapists and healers please feel free to link this or distribute to your clients.

Find a quiet place where you will not be disturbed for the next 20 minutes or so and follow along with the audio.

This is also available streaming from my website, downloadable as an mp3, or you can subscribe to this as a podcast/feed from this page.

Please enjoy the following streaming audio of a guided mindfulness and forgiveness exercise. This practice will help you begin to unwind the chronic tension in the mind and body around unfinished business with a person you feel has hurt you. Please pick something of fairly low emotional intensity to work with at first (this is explained in more detail in the recording.) We want this to be a gentle compassionate process. This exercise has been a fruitful one for my clients and I hope it is helpful to you.

Please use your discretion when using any of the guided meditations/exercises I present here. If you ever feel overwhelmed or uncomfortable discontinue the exercise. The most effective way of working with this would be with the help or support of a qualified therapist. Keep in mind that forgiveness is a progressive process and you may not feel you can completely open to or arouse and kind of heartfelt quality of forgiveness during the exercise. Approach the person, situation, or memory with gentleness and take your time. Bit by bit, moment by moment, practice by practice we can learn to let go of our pain, resentment, rage, sadness, and other types of suffering. Regular practice is required to feel the full benefits of the exercise.

Therapists and healers please feel free to link this or distribute to your clients.

Find a quiet place where you will not be disturbed for the next 20 minutes or so and follow along with the audio.

This is also available streaming from my website, downloadable as an mp3, or you can subscribe to this as a podcast/feed from this page.

Note: This guided deep relaxation is now available for download as a podcast on the itunes store and as an mp3 file on this website.

Please enjoy the following streaming audio of a guided deep relaxation technique I’ve developed for my clients. This is a cross between a progressive relaxation and a mindfulness of body exercise. This will help you to become more familiar with your inner landscape, feel more connected to yourself and begin to build a reliable internal resource for relaxing more deeply. Regular practice is required to feel the full benefits of the exercise.

Therapists and healers please feel free to link this or distribute to your clients.

Find a quiet place where you will not be disturbed for the next 30 minutes or so and follow along with the audio.

A useful mindfulness of body exercise that helps us get a sense of our internal landscape and the physical and emotional sensations going on in this moment is the known as the body scan.

I often use this excercise as a way to take pause and get back in touch with myself in the present moment. It is a nice way to ground and center yourself. I also suggest it to clients as way to get grounding back after an upsetting or destabilizing event or situation.

We can do this by lying down or standing up.  I suppose any posture is ok for this exercise, but the lying down or standing up are the most conducive to feeling the whole body in my opinon.

We simply start at the crown of the head or the bottoms of the feet and slowly scan our attention (upward or downward depending on where you are starting).  We want to feel deeply into the body.  Feeling soft tissue, ligaments, and even bone. Noticing blood flow, tension or relaxation, areas of numbness int he body. Whatever is present in the body in that moment is what we notice.  We move sequentially, so if we were starting in the feet we would slowly move upwards: feet, lower legs, knees, upper legs, pelvic region, lower back, stomach, upper/mid back, chest shoulders, arms, hands, neck, face and head.  Spending a few moments in each area deepening and soaking awareness into whatever is present.

This can be a very quick practice perhaps finished in ten breaths, or we may linger for a few minutes or more in each body part.

Often, there are interruptions to our practice, or at least our formal practice.

Interruption, does not mean we have to throw away the whole practice, or castigate ourselves. It is an unhelpful habit to think that ‘I am a failure’, and to somehow feel negatively towards ourselves because our formal practice has fallen away. Of course if this thought comes up, we can choose to let it go, rather than indulge it and show some self-compassion. We can pick up again at any time, whether this means practice of mindfulness meditation on the cushion/chair, or ‘practice in life.’

At any moment we can pick up again our chosen practice and give it our wholehearted effort, even if it has been 3 days, a week, a month or 10 years since we last practiced. In the Buddhist tradition there is a concept of Merit. Merit is accumulated as we practice and does not diminish over time. Our ability to sit with ourselves and all of our experiences and the spiritual strength we have developed will still be there when we come back to our old or new friend, mindfulness meditation.

Fresh start is a particular and very useful technique taught to me by one of my teachers from the Tibetan Buddhist tradition. When we sit and things become chaotic, our thoughts are wild and out of control, our body hurts, we feel we are unable to attend to our breath for even a moment, we can just stop everything. As she would say ‘drop the whole project.’ Change your posture, relax, unfurl the legs, open the eyes look outward and just be. When we feel ready we can resume without any guilt, self-criticism and judgement. Using this technique is like hitting the reset button. We start all over again and only what is happening in the present is real, and that is what we choose to relate to.

Fresh start is a great perspective for life. At any moment we can just drop the whole project, letting go of fear, hatred, bored, excitement, worry, grief, guilty, anxiety, or any other experience. We don’t need to cling so tight. Just open the eyes and the senses, take in the outer world, your present experience and start again and again. Each moment arises and passes away.

Sometimes mindfulness meditation feels pleasurable, we enter into deep states of stillness or we encounter body sensations of peace and a sense of groundedness. Other times it feels very difficult, encountering anxiety, restlessness, sadness, frustration, anger/rage, or any other type of intense sensory experience that can be accompanied by compelling and painful thoughts. At these times we are essentially, as one of my teachers puts it, ‘punching the time card.’ We are doing our time on the cushion and trying the best we can stay with our object of meditation whether that might be the breath, mantra, body sensations, etc. It is important not to be too hard on yourself and to just do the practice. We may feel we will never have a ‘good meditation’ again. Usually this means a quiet or peaceful state. In my opinion the ‘good’ meditation is the one we do. The only ‘bad’ meditation is the one we don’t do. So it is important to persist here and attempt to stay with the object of the meditation and sit or practice (if you are doing an alternative practice) for the time we have committed to. Over time and with practice this difficulty will arise and pass away and we will be more familiar with our own experience. We may feel that nothing is happening as we practice and find ourselves swept up in thought or emotion/sensation. There is a very subtle process at work here that will allow us to become more concentrated and centered as we simply allow ourselves to sit engage with our experience with an unconditional attitude of acceptance. Don’t just take my word for it, check this out and ‘do your time’ on the cushion or with whatever practice you have chosen. Whether it is for 5, 10, 20, 45 minutes – stay with a regular practice over time and see what you notice….

Shinzen Young is offering introductory home-based Vipassana retreats through his website BasicMindfulness.com. These are retreats which you can do anywhere in the world as long as you have access to a phone with either a handsfree or speakerphone option. Previously, only those who had done a residential or non-residential in-person program with Shinzen could participate. He is now offering the intro program that will allow you to acquire the skills and languaging to do his other home-based retreat offerings. The next introductory series will be held in May. Check the web site linked above for details. I often participate in these home-based retreats myself and find them to be a good support for my daily practice. A listing of Shinzen’s residential and non-residential retreats can be found at Shinzen.org.

For those of you wishing to embark on the path of mindfulness meditation this is a good non-threatening way of receiving instruction from a wonderful teacher.