Items related to Guided Meditations: For Relaxation, Acceptance, and...
Mindfulness has been shown in clinical trials to be an effective way of reducing stress. It is a form of focused awareness that helps to prevent the runaway thinking that gives rise to physical and emotional hyper-arousal. The two meditations on this CD help us to develop this transformative quality of mindfulness, by means of which we practice acceptance of our present-moment experience in a non-judgmental way.
Although the meditations on this CD are Buddhist in origin, they can be practiced by people who follow any spiritual tradition or none at all.
"synopsis" may belong to another edition of this title.
From the Publisher:
Bodhipaksa's second CD of guided meditations follows on the heels of the highly successful "Guided Meditations: For Calmness, Awareness, and Love" (ISBN 0972441409), and offers the listener even more skills for reducing stress and developing greater wellbeing.
From the Inside Flap:
In the body scan he invites you to reconnect with the body, relaxing each muscle deeply, and gently bringing the mind back to the present moment when it wanders. The overall effect is of gentle acceptance, relaxation, and calmness.
During the second meditation he asks you to see troubling thoughts as a friend who has landed on your doorstep. You would not turn your friend away in order to avoid the discomfort of facing a difficult experience, and in fact you would invite your friend in so that you could comfort him or her. In this way Bodhipaksa invites you back into your own life, giving you an opportunity to heal through acceptance.
Bodhipaksa does not employ any new age music, gongs, bells or other sounds associated with many meditation CDs. Instead, he uses his very calm and soothing voice to lead you through the various meditations, allowing sufficient time in silence to act on each suggestion.
The two meditations on this CD help us to develop the quality of mindfulness. Mindfulness is much more than simply being aware. Mindfulness is a particular kind of awareness, where we stand back and purposefully observe our experience as it is happening. For example, we can note the presence of thoughts, or physical sensations of pain or pleasure, or emotions such as anger, desire, despondency, love, or happiness, and experience them, as it were, "from the outside". In this way, we are aware of the particular experiences we are having, but are not dominated by them.
Without mindfulness, our experiences tend to proliferate in an unhelpful way. So we may be anxious, and this leads to physical tension and thoughts such as "I know something bad is going to happen" or "No-one likes me". In turn, these thoughts lead to more anxiety, or to other emotions such as despondency or anger, because we tend to believe the stories we think when we are unmindful.
With mindfulness, however, there is much less proliferation. We note the presence of anxiety, perhaps even naming it. We observe the sensations connected to the emotion – things such as sweaty hands, a fast pulse, physical tension, and a knot in the stomach. We note how the mind generates the kinds of proliferating thoughts mentioned above, and in standing back from those thoughts we can recognize them for what they are; seeing them simply as thoughts, and not reality. We observe them in a nonjudgmental way – not seeing them as "wrong" or as a sign that "something is wrong with us" but noting them simply as experiences we happen to be having. We can then let go of those particular thought trains and return to the bare awareness of the sensations of anxiety. Because we are standing back from our experience in this way, the anxiety is less likely to proliferate. In fact it is quite probably that it will, in time, fade away, or that we'll discover some other emotion underlying the anxiety – perhaps a sense of hurt or self-doubt. These underlying emotions are often experiences that we've been reluctant to face and have repressed, and in sitting mindfully with our experience we learn to bring repressed emotions back into awareness.
Mindfulness also has the quality of acceptance. When we become mindful of an uncomfortable sensation or emotion, we don't push it away in order to try to get rid of it, nor do we cling to the hope that we'll experience something more pleasant instead. Rather, we let go of clinging and aversion as we notice them arising, and embrace the uncomfortable experience with an attitude of friendly curiosity. We welcome the experience into our experience as we would an old friend who has arrived on our doorstep in an unhappy frame of mind; inviting them inside and giving them our full attention. We can let go of any idea that we have to "fix" our experience by making things better. Instead, we can patiently sit with our unpleasant experiences and let them "unfold" in our awareness. We can learn to become comfortable with discomfort, noting with interest the qualities of our experiences; where they are located in the body, what size and texture they have, how they lead to the arising of thoughts and emotions, and how they change over time.
When we practice mindfulness in this way, standing back from our experience while at the same time noticing it with an attitude of friendly curiosity, we find that we become freer. We are learning to take responsibility more fully for our experience, and learning "the art of happiness."
"About this title" may belong to another edition of this title.
- PublisherWildmind Meditation Services Inc
- Publication date2004
- ISBN 10 0972441417
- ISBN 13 9780972441414
- BindingAudio CD
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