Mental Imagery As we know, experience is constantly changing, always new and therefore a little unpredictable. To to try to pin it down, the mind can conjure up a mental image or inner picture of experience in our imagination, e.g. of the breath or body, that we end up confusing with the experience itself. Confusing …
Perhaps the first major step of mindfulness practice is just to ‘feel’ our experience, to make direct contact with experience, without merely thinking about it. Although this might sound straightforward it really isn’t. Just ‘feeling’, being aware, or making direct contact with our experience puts us in a vulnerable position that can often be painful, …
Zooming in Cut through the narrative of an unpleasant experience by dropping into the felt sense of the body. Really zoom in on how the unpleasant experience is experienced in the body. Notice the raw, immediate physical sensations like tightness, warmth, pressure, heaviness, hardness, softness, tingling etc. Although most of us experience our lives from …
One of the most common questions meditators just starting out ask is: “How do I allow my experience just to be as it is, without meeting it with struggle or resistance, especially when it is unpleasant?” Here are two responses: 1. Compassion. Acknowledge that you are in pain, that you are finding it hard, and …
This article is an explanation and comparison of the two best (in our opinion) strategies for how to start and maintain a meditation practice. After reading this article we hope you will feel a little more confident and self-assured about getting started. The tantalising benefits! There is now a wealth of scientific literature documenting a …
Mindfulness practice is about ‘being aware’. But what is awareness? Understanding the nature and mechanics of awareness is one of the best tools in developing our practice… Read more
As meditators we don’t need to place great emphasis on the changing weather of the mind, sometimes it is delightful, sometimes it is less so, but showing up again and again we learn to trust the process, no matter the weather.… Read more
Often when we start meditating we think that during meditation there are some experiences we should be having and others that we should not be having… Read more
In our mindfulness practice, when we pay attention to our minds we see that we are constantly framing, interpreting and judging our experiences, events and other people in a certain light.