Learning Relaxation

Welcome. I am glad you are exploring this skill as it brought me numerous significant benefits. This session is about the benefits of this skill development in recognize, release, enjoy, my personal story and providing an overview of the course. Feel encouraged to share comments or questions at anytime!

This is a Teaser including most of the skills that you will develop throughout this course. It is meant to show you what will be possible and to inspire you. This practice is not meant for you to experience all steps - this is a skill. A skill requires practice to be developed. Enjoy.

Introduction of the skill in Physical Softening. The steps of Recognize, Release, Enjoy will be elaborated. What effort actually is as well as some general practice tips to facilitate our development in this skill.

Primary focus of this practice will be the Recognizing skill, while secondary focus will be on the release and enjoyment skill. We will learning to recognize effort underlying bodily tension by intentionally tensing and releasing tension. We will follow the steps of 1) Tensing 2) Recognize Tension 3) Recognize Excessive Effort Underlying Tension 4) Release Effort 5) Notice Relaxation 6) Notice Less Effort Underlying Tension 7) Enjoying Relaxation

Primary focus will be developing the skill of Releasing of Effort while secondary focus will be developing the skills of Recognize & Enjoy. Feel free to explore how you best release, let go, relax effort underlying tension.

This session introduces the function of the mind to become disenchanted or enchanted with experiences and habits. It is simply Perception Shift. Perceiving advantage or disadvantage. By perceiving the disadvantage in holding excessive effort while understanding the advantage of letting go the mind will facilitate and automate the behavior of letting go, relaxing, acceptance, contentment.

The Primary focus of this session will be on developing the skill in enjoying - so enjoying how nice it feels to let go, to relax. While at the same time the skills in recognize & release will be developed. An invitation to allow the body and mind to produce the enjoyment whenever they are ready, whenever the letting go is ripened.

This is an introduction to the complete physical softening practice of recognize release enjoy by taking advantage of the release on every out-breath. As this skills matures you will be able to naturally, effortlessly tune into every out-breath and access relaxation and enjoyment.

This is the complete physical softening practice taking advantage of the breath to help us relax. The breath is happening all the time, for free, effortlessly. By tuning into the releasing as the shoulders sink, the chest and belly deflate, we take advantage of that momentum and facilitate the releasing of effort within the rest of the body. It follows the same process of Recognize Release Enjoy, this time via the breath rather than tensing.

This session will elaborate on indicators for progress within the physical softening skill in order to help us understand if we are doing well or some tweaks would be good. Indicators for progress are the skill development in Recognize Tension & Excessive Effort, Release of Excessive Effort, Recognizing Relaxation & Relief of Excessive Effort, Perceiving the Disadvantage & Advantage, Attitude of Offering rather than Forcing and ability to bring it into our daily life. While some consequences of these skill-development of a reduction in physical restlessness and tension, an increase in physical relaxation, an increase in mental relaxation thanks to your body being more relaxed and a facilitation and automation of this relaxation, letting go process.

Practicing a microhit i.e, <10 minutes to facilitate using the physical softening skill in our daily life. A microhit can be a simple repetition of recognize release enjoy or multiple as is convenient for you in your situation.

This session introduces the mental softening skill. As you have now laid the foundation with physical softness, we have it easier now to develop the mental softening skill. Mental Softening is based on the same process of Recognize, Release, Enjoy. This time we recognize excessive effort within the mind such as discontentment, restlessness, thinking and introduce a mental softening breath i.e., slow and gentle exhalation through the nose while relaxing the area behind the eyes. This helps us release the effort within the mind.

We will start by developing our skill in recognizing thinking, the effort underlying, the tension manifesting due to it, then supporting the release of effort via a mental softening breath and enjoying the relief.

What are habits and how to change them? This session shares my understanding of habits as 1) a learned response that is not personal 2) Plasticity i.e., habits can be created, removed, weakened or strengthened 3) Fertility i.e., based on your enchantment and disenchantment towards letting go one facilitates or hinders calm or distress.

This practice will focus on recognizing how awareness focuses in on object via 'attention' and as we release the effort underlying that focusing in we access are more peripheral awareness, relaxed attention. This peripheral awareness is more of a relaxed knowing and receiving of experience that helps us being soft with whatever arises rather than attention being a more effortful habit of mind that might be based on discontentment i.e., the habit of wanting things to be a certain way. I invite you to play around experiencing life with softening your attention and see how it might be of benefit to you. If you don't have interest in this particular skill you are encouraged to skip this practice.

One of the beneficial key changes in my life was a shift in attitude towards life. It would be nice if we could simply wish how life would be and it would become like that. However acknowledging reality is our first step towards improving it. By acknowledging reality, then intentionally perceiving this as a opportunity, a gift to improve upon our situation, finding the enjoyment in it allows us to be naturally motivated by every moment to take advantage of it rather than being impatient, frustrated with it.

This might be the most beneficial practice of them all. Discontentment and contentment is a relationship towards our experience. Discontentment causes excessive effort to arise within body and mind. Contentment causes letting go of excessive effort to arise within body and mind. Discontentment causes awareness focusing in via attention, restless thinking, fear, anger, frustration and so forth. Contentment causes attention to relax, restful thoughts, safety, kindness, relaxation and calm. By softening our relationship towards our life, life becomes soft.

The indicators of progress in mental softening. Skill in recognizing mental activities, effort underlying and the physical manifestation in the area behind the eyes. Skill in releasing that effort. Skill in noticing the enjoyment of letting go and being able to enjoy it. Skill in accessing contentment via releasing the effort underlying the mental activity of discontentment. Disenchanting with excessive effort and enchanting with mental effort. As with any practice, the attitudes of perceiving opportunities rather than problems, enjoying practice, attitude of offering creative conditions rather than forcing things to be a certain way as well as being curious about the causal nature of our practice and life i.e., what happens if I soften into it - does it weaken or strengthen? Tangible results should be a gradual decrease in non-softness within mind and body, a gradual increase of softness within mind and body, an automation of the recognize release enjoyment skill and ultimately bringing it into our daily life.

This practice focuses on developing the skill of disenchantment and enchantment i.e., perceiving the disadvantage in excessive effort and the advantage in letting go of excessive effort. This will support letting go as well as automate the behavior of mind and body to let go rather than to hold unto.

This practice is including all steps of mental softening which are recognize release enjoy of thoughts, attention and discontentment. A nice opportunity to review and simply practice softening mentally.

This session introduces contentment and the practice of contentment. Contentment and Discontentment being a relationship towards our experience that causes our suffering or happiness. The more we resist i.e., be discontent with, the more we suffer. The more we are content, allow things to be, the happier we are, the less we suffer. It will take a while for our mind to get used to enjoying letting go, as it might be scary initially. Similarly kids sliding down a slide grab unto the rails to find temporary safety while hindering the enjoyment of freedom if letting go of the rails.

This practice focuses on developing the skill of enjoying letting go of discontentment. Gradually your mind will notice and warm up to how nice it feels to be content rather than this potentially initial dryness of contentment.

This session introduces the idea of progress via cycling through. Our body and mind cannot be forced to behave in a certain way. It would be nice to wish we could be happy now, even though our mind is stressed. However this is not my understanding of reality. At every moment we have opportunities we can take advantage of to support our body and mind towards deeper levels of letting go. If you notice you are physically restless, this means the foundation for mental relaxation is not there, but the foundation for physical relaxation is there. So we apply physical softening whenever there is physical restlessness. It is progressive. As we spiral through we access deeper and deeper softness and non-softness.

This practice is the complete version. Feel free to come back to this practice whenever needed. It includes the progression from physical restlessness to physical relaxation, mental restlessness to mental relaxation, discontentment towards contentment.

We will practice softening in the micro-hit version around 2 minutes time. This will facilitate bringing softening into your daily life at any situation you might desire. You can do so with one repetition of recognize release enjoy or multiple as you prefer as long as you want!

We apply the skills of softening towards suffering from Pain - physically or emotionally. We particularly look at three aspects of suffering: the manifestations of resistance such as worry, excessive tension, resistance itself i.e., pushing away or pulling towards you, and the feeling-tone itself of unpleasantness.

This session explains the relationship between softness and our experiences. Some weaken when coming in contact with softness, while some strengthen. We will explore this interesting and practical fact of our experience and take advantage of it by bringing softness towards all experience to allow the soft and wholesome to grow, and the non-soft and unwholesome to weaken.

This practice will apply the skill of softening and use it to weaken anything based on non-softness just as physical and mental restlessness. I invite you to become curious about the causality i.e., is it actually true that if I soften into any manifestations of suffering and stress that it weakens?

This session applies the softening skill towards increasing any positivity, wholesome, softness. We start by increasing physical relaxation, then mental relaxation before we apply it to anything with harmony in Softness.

This session will share the relationship between practice in daily life and formal practice, as well as how to actually practice in daily life while we forget and don't want to give up what we are doing.

The response practice is taking advantage of the mind not distinguishing between imagination and reality. When you watch a movie your mind response with emotions. In this practice, we take advantage of that fact and imagine situations in our daily life and apply our happiness skills towards them.

Congratulations. As I am writing this, I am sincerely glad for everyone who develops the skill in softening - independent of what depth. I hope you fall in love with how nice it feels to let go and that is enough. I am wishing you all the best.