Introduction to Mindfulness & Guided Mindfulness Meditation

Introduction to mindfulness and mindfulness meditation, followed by a guided meditation.

Transcript

Well,

Welcome.

My name is Susan Stabile and I direct the university's Office of Spirituality.

And I've been asked today to do an introduction to mindfulness meditation and to lead us in some meditation.

So let me just ask,

How many have had some experience with mindfulness meditation before?

Okay,

A few.

So that's great.

Before we talk about mindfulness meditation,

Meditation,

It's helpful to understand what we mean when we talk about mindfulness.

And I think the simplest way to foster an understanding of that is to share a description of an everyday activity that was written by Thich Nhat Hanh,

A wonderful poet and Zen master who's written a number of tremendous books.

And this excerpt that I want to read to you comes from his book,

The Miracle of Mindfulness.

And here's what he writes.

While washing the dishes,

One should only be washing the dishes,

Which means that while washing the dishes,

One should be completely aware of the fact that one is washing the dishes.

At first glance,

That might seem a little silly.

Why put so much stress on a simple thing?

But that's precisely the point.

The fact that I am standing there and washing these bowls is a wondrous reality.

I'm being completely myself,

Following my breath,

Conscious of my presence and conscious of my thoughts and actions.

There is no way I can be tossed around mindlessly like a battle slapped here and there on the waves.

And he goes on in this discussion to describe this as washing the dishes to wash the dishes,

Washing the dishes to wash the dishes.

And he adds,

If while washing dishes,

We think only of the cup of tea that awaits us,

Thus hurrying to get the dishes out of the way as if they were a nuisance,

Then we are not washing the dishes to wash the dishes.

What's more,

We are not alive during the time we are washing the dishes.

In fact,

We are completely incapable of realizing the miracle of life while standing at the sink.

If we can't wash the dishes,

The chances are we won't be able to drink our tea either.

While drinking the cup of tea,

We will only be thinking of other things,

Barely aware of the cup in our hands.

Thus,

We are sucked away into the future and we are incapable of actually living one minute of life.

And the reality is that most of us do not wash the dishes to wash the dishes.

And we don't drink our tea to drink our tea.

And we don't walk from class to class to walk from class to class.

Instead,

Far more often,

Our body is doing one thing and our mind is doing something else.

I wash the dishes and I think about what I'm going to do afterwards.

I walk from one building to another,

Barely conscious of my surroundings.

And I'm guessing I'm not the only one that's had the experience of driving on a highway and becoming so lost in my thoughts that all of a sudden I realize I have no idea what exit I'm even at.

That's the opposite of mindfulness.

And we generally lack mindfulness.

And I think it's not just that we don't live mindfully,

But in fact,

We celebrate that.

What do we tout?

We tout our ability to multitask.

We consider it a great badge that we can do three or four things at once.

But by definition,

If I am engaged in multiple activities at the same time,

Then I am not doing any of them fully.

And I want to say that again because I think it's so contrary to our current way of thinking.

The reality is that if I am engaged in multiple activities at the same time,

I am not fully doing any one of those activities.

And even when we are not trying to multitask,

We're often in two places at once.

Buddhists sometimes describe our minds as being like little monkeys flying all over the place.

I sit down to read my chemistry homework and within a paragraph I'm thinking about what I'm going to have for dinner later in the cafeteria.

You're sitting here listening to me and at least one of you in this room,

I'm sure,

Is thinking about something else right now.

You sit down and have a conversation with someone and half of your mind is on the conversation and you're reliving something that happened a week ago.

And it goes on and on and on.

And if you know,

I'm sure,

By the experience where you're thinking of one thing and then all of a sudden you find yourself on a movie you saw when you were six years old and you're like,

What is the train of insane thoughts that got me there?

In contrast,

Living mindfully,

To use a phrase that Richard Rohr uses,

Means to live in the naked now.

To live in the sacrament of the present moment.

And doing that allows us to actually experience our experiences,

To fully experience what we are experiencing at any given time.

And the reality and the reason that Rohr calls of the naked now is because the reality is that the only moment that exists is this present moment.

The future hasn't happened yet,

The past is already gone,

The only reality is this present moment.

And so if you're not in that present reality,

You're not living in truth.

So mindfulness refers to being fully aware,

Fully present to what I am experiencing.

So Richard Rohr speaks of bare awareness.

Or in terms of Thich Nhat Hanh's example,

Washing the dishes to wash the dishes.

So if mindfulness is a state of awareness of what is,

Of being fully present to our experience,

Then mindfulness meditation or any mindfulness practice is simply a practice to promote,

To encourage that awareness.

And there are many,

Many practices that help develop a state of mindfulness.

Yoga is one.

Some other Chinese practices like Qui Gong or others.

And the one that we're focusing on here,

The one on which there's been a lot of talk about and the one on which there's been a lot of literature written is on mindfulness meditation.

And because I am mentioning the literature on it,

Let me say this.

My personal interest in mindfulness and in other forms of meditation is as a form of spiritual development.

I'm now a Christian who engages in a lot of meditation.

I spent 20 years of my adult life practicing Buddhism.

And so for me,

Meditation practices were part and parcel and are part and parcel of spiritual growth.

And many of the practices that come under the label of mindfulness practices come out of the Buddhist tradition.

One of the sutras of the Buddha,

The sutra of mindfulness I pulled out last night says,

When walking,

The practitioner must be conscious that he is walking.

When sitting,

The practitioner must be conscious that he is sitting.

When lying down,

The practitioner must be conscious that he is lying down.

No matter what position one's body is in,

The practitioner must be conscious of that position.

Practicing thus,

The practitioner lives in direct and constant mindfulness of the body.

So for the Buddha,

The purpose of this kind of meditation was to dispel ignorance,

To grow in wisdom.

From a Christian perspective,

I think Richard Rohr is right when he talks about living in the naked now.

The subtitle of his book,

The Naked Now,

Is Seeing as the Mystics See.

And so I think he's right from a Christian perspective.

We're talking about a way of awareness that is designed to help us develop a greater awareness of God's practice.

But the meditation,

I'm sorry,

The research and the literature about mindfulness really tends to be less about the spiritual activities but then about other benefits of mindfulness,

Which is why even if you're not interested in the spiritual stuff,

This is a great practice.

There are studies for example,

Multiple studies,

That show that mindfulness meditation tremendously reduces stress in subjects.

And in fact,

Berti is in the midst of putting together some of our own research here at St.

Thomas.

And we've seen that in our own student body here,

That we have 60% of our student body practicing some mindfulness and almost half of those are a significant effect on lowering their stress,

On helping them deal with stressful situations.

Mindfulness meditation has been found to boost memory.

It's been found to improve ability to focus attention,

To suppress jaydreaming,

Leading leads to great cognitive flexibility.

And boy,

If you're interested in any of this research,

Just type Google mindfulness research and you'll get way more stuff than you ever want to read.

And as I said,

All those things are good things to be sure and so whatever your particular motivation is in practice,

Whether it's spiritual or whether it's more secular,

It's a valuable practice.

But having mentioned those two,

The spiritual and secular,

I just,

I do want to at least make the point that there are some,

Particularly Buddhist practitioners that have a certain resentment of what they consider the kind of appropriation of what is for them a spiritual practice by Westerners who have kind of turned this into a multimillion dollar industry.

And so there's a certain amount of discord that probably you don't need to worry about in your own practice,

But if you did any research on this,

You would see this reflected.

In any event,

You can use the meditation for whatever purposes you like.

There are many methods of mindfulness meditation,

Some of which work better in long retreat settings than in,

You know,

Kind of casual practice.

I once did an almost four month retreat in Thailand that literally was nothing but alternating periods of sitting and walking meditation for an almost four month period.

That's going to obviously give different kinds of results than practicing 10 or 15 minutes a day or practicing two or three times a week,

But it's good to have some exposure.

So we'll practice one form of sitting,

A sitting mindfulness meditation today and then after that I'll talk a little bit about walking meditation and share with you some short mindfulness practices from Thich Nhat Hanh.

So first let me describe the method and then we will practice it.

And let me start by saying something about posture.

It's fine to sit in a cushion on the floor,

It's fine to sit in a chair.

If you're like Birdie,

You like to lie down,

But Birdie is one of the few people I know that can actually lie down and meditate without falling asleep.

It's generally not a posture that I recommend.

If you use a cushion,

I tend to like something that raises my butt a little bit above my knees,

But sitting the way you are on the floor is fine.

You know,

As I said,

We have those wooden things over there.

Some people actually like that kind of posture where their knees are underneath them.

The most important issue is to have a posture that is a stable posture that you can keep because if you're doing a lot of moving around,

It's just distracting.

And I say that because I spent a lot of time living in Asia and Westerners would come to these Buddhist temples and think,

Okay,

I have to sit in a full lotus position because that's like the real authentic position.

And the truth is most of our bodies don't really go easily.

Some of you,

You're a lot younger than I am.

Your body's made,

But most of our bodies don't easily go into a full lotus.

So there's really no value in controlling yourself in a position that's completely uncomfortable that you have to move every 45 seconds.

So to get in some position that's comfortable.

And the idea is to sit straight enough in a position so that your breathing is not impaired.

And so if you're slouching back or slouching forward,

You don't have a clear airway.

And so it's sometimes described to imagine as though there were,

Like imagine like that you were a marionette and there was a string coming up with your head so that it's a nice upright posture where you can sit easily.

People often sit with their hands just down on their thighs,

But whatever is a comfortable position,

Up or down.

Eyes open or eyes closed again is a personal choice.

For many people,

Eyes closed,

Particularly if they're new to meditation practice,

Leads to drowsiness.

Some people find eyes open to be very distracting.

So if your eyes are open,

It's generally a good idea to have your eyes kind of pointed down about eight inches or so in front of you so that you're not paying attention to everything else going around in the room.

And so,

You know,

We begin by just sitting in that posture,

Getting used to that posture,

And then to,

And I'm going to lead us through this,

To focus on our breathing.

And when I talk about focus on the breathing,

And for some of you who have done practice before,

You may have a preference.

Some people when they're focusing on the breath like to focus on the breath coming in and out of their nostrils.

For myself,

I haven't done a lot of apasana meditation.

For me,

I find it more natural to focus on the rising and falling of my abdomen,

So the breath coming in and coming out.

And what I would say is in any single meditation period,

Pick one and stick with it.

Don't be flopping back and forth.

But it doesn't really matter.

The question is what comes comfortable.

And in the beginning,

All we're really doing is trying to keep our focus on the breath coming in and the breath coming out.

And you'd be amazed at how hard that is.

Because as soon as we start to meditate,

Our mind tries to pull us in 20 different directions.

And the instruction is simple.

Whatever you experience,

Make a mental note of it and go back to the breath.

And so if I'm sitting here focusing on my breath and a thought arises,

I note in my head thinking and go back to my breath.

If I'm sitting here and I'm conscious of the heat,

I just note feeling.

If it's the sound of that heating,

The HVAC system,

Just note hearing,

Go back to the breath.

One of the reasons that we note just thinking,

Hearing,

Seeing,

Smelling,

And not hearing HVAC or not pain in my knee is that we don't want to draw more attention to it.

So all we want to do is simply note the distraction and let it go.

Note the distraction and let it go.

And return to the breath.

And then after some period of time,

Once we're comfortable with that,

We start to add an additional object of our concentration.

And in the Vipassana meditation I did,

The object that we add is our sitting posture or our hands.

And I'm going to say the hands is easier because the posture is a much more subtle thing to notice.

So I might notice rising of my abdomen,

Falling of my abdomen,

The feeling of my hands together.

And again,

Just feeling,

Not whatever.

And then as you practice more and more,

You start to notice feelings,

Thoughts,

Emotions,

And the like.

But to just keep,

At this beginning stage,

Keep coming back to the breath.

How long should you practice?

If you were in a retreat setting,

You might start with 20 minutes,

Work your way up to 30.

When I was doing this four-month retreat,

I was alternating hour and a half periods of sitting and walking.

But that's not where you want to start.

If you've never meditated before,

It's say 15 or 20 minutes.

I think what we're going to do here is we're going to start with a 15-minute period,

Address any questions,

And then if we have time after I describe these other things,

We can do another period.

But since a lot of people did not raise their hand for ever doing this,

I think maybe we'll keep it to no more than 20 minutes with that.

So why don't we start by getting ourselves comfortable.

Take a position,

As I say,

That you think you can hold.

Yeah,

If you want to stretch your legs out first since you've been sitting,

Take a minute to just wiggle or whatever you need to do to get yourself settled.

And decide if you're sitting with your eyes open or closed.

And begin by just sitting in this posture in this environment.

Just notice where you are.

If your attention wanders,

Just gently bring it back to your breath.

Now rest your attention lightly on your breath,

Feeling it as it comes in as your body and goes out.

You're not trying to manipulate or change your breathing,

But to just be aware of it.

As your thoughts arise,

Simply note them and return to your breath.

It's helpful to mentally note the breathing activities.

So as you inhale,

Simply note in.

As you exhale,

Out.

As you sit,

You may notice that your breathing slows a little and so there's a space between one exhalation and the next inhalation.

And in that space,

Simply note your hand touching your knees.

And simply note touching.

So I'm noting in,

Out,

And touch.

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And then return to the breath.

And then return to the breath.

And then return to the breath.

And then return to the breath.

Now you can pretend I rang a gong to bring the meditation to a close.

That would be nice.

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Reviews

Thank you. An easeful introduction with useful, clarifying references .

Very helpful thankyou ''namasté' 🕉☯