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Glimpse Practice: Dynamic Stillness with Effortless Mi...
Deliberate mindfulness instructions often begin with physical posture, concentrating on how to place your body in order to sit physically still, with your back straight. In this effortless mindfulness variation, we will focus on stillness at the subtler levels of experience to feel a different kind of dynamic stillness that can include movement.
GLIMPSE The Four Postures of Dynamic Stillness
1. Find a way to sit comfortably. Take a few deep breaths and relax, as if you have just finished a day’s work. Become aware of your body and breath as if they are in your awareness. Become aware of the space around you, the feeling of contacting what you are sitting on, the feeling of your body, and the motion of breath happening by itself.
2. Notice your whole body breathing. Notice that breath is happening by itself. And now notice that awareness is also happening by itself. Notice how awareness is spacious like the sky, already aware from outside and within your breathing body.
3. Begin to feel the first stillness of your body sitting. What is it like to be sitting on the earth with the feeling of gravity and stillness? Nothing to do and nowhere to go . . . just now. Rest your body in this one place with the stillness like a mountain.
4. Now be aware of the second stillness of space. Feel the movement of your breath. Notice the stillness of space in the pause between breaths. Feel the space in the room and between objects. Rest into the space within the moving atoms in your body. Feel the space and stillness in which everything arises and passes like clouds and birds in the sky-like space within and all around.
5. Become aware of the third stillness of water. Feel the deep knowing that your body is mostly water. Feel the depth of water inside and all around. Breathe in and feel that the ocean of water is deep and still within, even while there are waves of movement and flow.
6. Now feel the fourth stillness of awareness. Feel how that which is aware does not come and go, while everything else changes. Rest as this timeless awareness, which is what all the other stillness and movement are made of. Rest deeper than sleep as the awareness that is wide awake. Find that which is already resting without any effort to rest. Rest as the invisible awake awareness that is here now arising as space, stillness, energies, and forms.
This is an excerpt from The Way of Effortless Mindfulness: A Revolutionary Guide for Living an Awakened Life by Loch Kelly.
Loch Kelly, MDiv, LCSW, is a leader in the field of meditation and psychotherapy. He is author of the award-winning Shift into Freedom and founder of the Open-Hearted Awareness Institute. Loch is an emerging voice in modernizing meditation, social engagement, and collaborating with neuroscientists. For more, visit lochkelly.org.
Buy your copy of The Way of Effortless Mindfulness at your favorite bookseller!
Sounds True | Amazon | Barnes & Noble | Indiebound
Ruth King: Mindful of Race
Ruth King is an Insight Meditation teacher, life coach, diversity consultant, and the author of Healing Rage: Women Making Inner Peace Possible. She is publishing her new book, Mindful of Race: Transforming Racism from the Inside Out, in collaboration with Sounds True. In this episode of Insights at the Edge, Tami Simon speaks with Ruth about the personal experiences that led to writing Mindful of Race and why the heart can be “a mass weapon of healing.” They talk about the different ways we can interpret current racial narratives and why it takes honest self-examination to discover how one has benefited from a racist system. Ruth explains how mindfulness can open us up to having difficult conversations around racism, colonialism, and other forms of systemic oppression. Finally, Tami and Ruth discuss how “life is not personal, permanent, or perfect” and the necessity of cultivating compassion in all walks of life. (74 minutes)
What Is Awake Awareness?
You might be asking: If awake awareness as the source of effortless mindfulness is already here, why haven’t I discovered it yet? This is a good question. One reason we don’t discover it is that we don’t have awake awareness on most of our Western psychological maps. Many people who have longed and strived to be free of suffering have missed awake awareness, not because they lacked desire or commitment but because they didn’t know what to look for or where to look.
The Shangpa Kagyu tradition of Tibetan Buddhism gives four insightful reasons we don’t naturally discover awake awareness, which I find quite helpful:
1. Awake awareness is so close that you can’t see it.
2. Awake awareness is so subtle that you can’t understand it.
3. Awake awareness is so simple that you can’t believe it.
4. Awake awareness is so good that you can’t accept it.
GLIMPSE: Awake Awareness Knows Without Using Thought or Attention
In this glimpse, instead of focusing on what we are aware of, we will have awareness be aware of itself. This may be something that has never crossed your mind. In learning about using awareness, instead of attention, we will look back to the source of mind, awake awareness, and then focus from here. Instead of following the flashlight of attention out to the movie screen of experience, we see if we can feel awareness directly. We have learned to experience life as a subject looking at objects, even internal objects like thoughts and emotions. One helpful practice of deliberate mindfulness is called “mental noting.” In the mental noting practice, our mindful witness becomes more precise by labeling thoughts, feelings, and sensations as they arise. In this mindful glimpse, we will let go of labeling and instead learn to trust the intelligence of awake
awareness. Now we will have awareness feel what awareness is like when it is both the subject and the object. It will be helpful to have this invisible, contentless awareness know itself as we separate the awareness-based knowing from thought-based knowing.
1. To begin, simply close your eyes while allowing your awareness to remain open. Feel your breath moving within your body. Feel your whole body from within while noticing your breathing happening by itself for three breaths. Be easy and comfortable. Relax while remaining alert.
2. Take a moment to see what is here now. Notice how your body is feeling. Is it uncomfortable, comfortable, agitated, relaxed, tired, or neutral? Just be aware of your body without trying to change it. Just be aware of it as it is.
3. Now simply notice what is aware of these feelings and sensations. Feel the awareness in which these sensations are happening. Rather than being aware of sensations, feel the awareness that is aware. Notice that the awareness is not tired, is not in pain, is not agitated or anxious. Feel how this awareness is with your body.
4. Now notice the activity of your mind and thoughts. Just be aware of whether your thoughts are agitated, calm, tired, emotional, anxious, or neutral. Without changing anything at all, allow your mind and thoughts to be as they are.
5. Now notice the space in which thoughts are moving. Be interested in the awareness instead of the thoughts. Shift to notice not just the content but the context. Feel the awareness that is aware. Notice how awareness allows your mind to be as it is without changing anything.
6. Begin to notice that awake awareness is alert, clear, and nonjudgmental. Feel the awareness that is not tired, anxious, or in pain. Notice that awake awareness is all around and inherent within your body and within your mind. Instead of being identified with the states of your body or mind or trying to accept or change them, simply become interested in what is aware.
7. What is awareness like that is already accepting of things as they are—right here and now? Notice the awareness of the next sound you hear. Does awareness have a location or size? What is it like to be aware of experiences from this pain-free, spacious awareness?
8. Now simply rest as the awareness that is aware of your thoughts and sensations. Hang out as awareness without going up to thought to know or down to sleep to rest. Be the awareness that welcomes your sensations and thoughts. Ask yourself: Am I aware of this spacious awareness? Or, What’s it like when I’m aware from this spacious awareness, which is welcoming thoughts, feelings, and sensations? Notice that the awareness is aware from all around and from within—spacious and pervasive.
9. Just let go of focusing on any one thing. Be aware of everything without labeling. Feel that your awareness is no longer knowing from thought. Feel what it is like to be aware from awareness, which includes your thoughts and sensations from head to toe.
10. Simply let be and remain uncontracted and undistracted, welcoming without effort.
This is an excerpt from The Way of Effortless Mindfulness: A Revolutionary Guide for Living an Awakened Life by Loch Kelly.
Loch Kelly, MDiv, LCSW, is a leader in the field of meditation and psychotherapy. He is author of the award-winning Shift into Freedom and founder of the Open-Hearted Awareness Institute. Loch is an emerging voice in modernizing meditation, social engagement, and collaborating with neuroscientists. For more, visit lochkelly.org.
Buy your copy of The Way of Effortless Mindfulness at your favorite bookseller!
Sounds True | Amazon | Barnes & Noble | Indiebound
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Mindfulness and the Brain – with Jack Kornfield ...
Mindful awareness creates scientifically recognized enhancements in psychology, mental functions, and in our interpersonal relationships. But how can we integrate this information into our personal or professional lives? In the Mindfulness and the Brain online course, Jack Kornfield, PhD, and Dan Siegel, MD, offer theoretical and experiential teachings on the power of inner transformation and the cultivation of a wise and loving heart. With thoughtful dialogue and practical tools, this interactive professional development training offers therapists, healers, educators, parents, meditation practitioners—and anyone else interested in developing a healthy mind—an intriguing exploration of what it means for us and our world to be able to shift our awareness.
Complete with memorable anecdotes and real-life stories that illustrate key concepts, Mindfulness and the Brain offers a comprehensive training with specific learning objectives including: utilizing mindful practice to help reduce suffering and promote resilience; how a “resonance circuit” enables an individual to attune to oneself and others; and incorporating intrapersonal attunement to catalyze mental, interpersonal, and psychological well-being. Via weekly video downloads, you’ll receive more than seven hours of progressive insights and teachings from these renowned experts as well as seven different practices and exercises on audio to use in your personal or professional life. To deepen your learning, two live interactive Q&A sessions will be offered with Jack Kornfield and Dan Siegel.
From thorough explanations of scientific findings and down-to-earth Buddhist perspectives to moments of stillness and laughter, Mindfulness and the Brain invites you to discover a more integrated and connected way of knowing and developing a wise and loving heart.
Ayelet Waldman: Exploring Microdosing
Ayelet Waldman is a former federal public defender, current adjunct professor at UC Berkeley Law School, and a bestselling author. Her books include Love and Treasure, Daughter’s Keeper, and A Really Good Day: How Microdosing Made a Mega Difference in My Mood, My Marriage, and My Life. In this episode of Insights at the Edge, Tami Simon speaks with Ayelet about the practice of microdosing with small quantities of psychedelic drugs in order to treat mental health conditions. Ayelet shares her own story of microdosing with LSD and how it helped her climb out of a pit of suicidal depression. Tami and Ayelet discuss the legal limitations on microdosing, the difficulty of researching the effects of psychedelics, and the possible future of the war on drugs. Finally, they talk about the many clinical applications of MDMA, including a surprising application for couples therapy. (59 minutes)
Tami’s Takeaway: Research! Research! Research! If we are to understand how to effectively microdose with LSD and other psychoactive substances, we need open minds and quality research to guide our way. Let’s move beyond any preformed biases we might have (pro or con) and pursue research that will give us the data, proper protocols, and safeguards we need.
The Remedy We Are Excited To Try in the New Year: Flow...
What are flower essences?
The goals of flower essence therapy include: ease in accessing higher vibratory states like joy and gratitude; enhanced mind-body-spirit balance, presence, acceptance of emotions and integration of difficult vibratory states; encouraging flow states like creativity; manifesting; supporting balance; expanding awareness of self and the Universe, ancestral connection and healing; and helping us to be of greater service to ourselves, others, and the Earth.
Flower essences work by way of the following:
- synchronicities—helping us connect seemingly unrelated or previously unseen opportunities or happenings
- indirect occurrences—positively affecting different environments and interpersonal dynamics
- insights—supporting mental, emotional, physical, and/or astral awakening; new ideas, solutions, or information may present
- physical changes—bringing up new sensations, shifts in organ/system functioning or in symptoms
- emotional responses—bringing up new feelings or memories; stabilizing or releasing them
- expression—inspiring artistic, verbal, and kinesthetic expression
- dreamtime—bringing about new or recurring dreams, insights, and subconscious resolution
- invoking intention—the more time and space you can offer, the more likely you’ll be able to feel flower essences. For example, taking them with a light meditation, a visualization, while doing yoga or some other kind of bodywork or prayer
How to Select a Flower Essence
Flower essences can be purchased from a quality producer, or you can make your own. Here, I will discuss how to select and apply ready-made flower essence remedies. You can learn how to wildcraft your own flower essences with me in this video.
When you’re starting out with flower essences, it can be overwhelming—so many producers and so many essences! I like to encourage people to remember that it’s your relationship with the plant that is the most important thing in selection. Your relationship with the remedy is the co-creation with that plant. The more you work with flowers, the more you will be able to feel and trust this part of the process.
The following are some ways to begin exploring flower essences:
- Depending on what issue(s) you’d like to address, begin by taking one to three essences that resonate with you. Many producers offer sets of remedies that have a particular focus. You may want to purchase a set to experiment with, such as the FES’s Range of Light, Delta Gardens’ Protection Set, Alaskan Essences, or the Bach Essences.
- Consider flower essences that invite presence, relaxation, protection, and grounding.
- If you want to study the essences more carefully, consider making flashcards or purchasing the flower cards (Alaskan Essences, FES, and Bach make sets).
- If you’re curious to learn more about how a plant might connect with your ancestry, consider doing some research on how it was used historically.
- Perhaps there’s a flower you’re curious about, or have seen in nature. Ask this plant if it would like to work with you.
Here are five basic ways to select a flower essence:
- Intuitively: A flower essence might come to you by way of revealing itself in nature, or appearing in a dream.
- By dowsing: Using a tool of resonance, such a pendulum, to test for essences.
- Through muscle testing: A simple way to muscle test is to make a ring with the index finger and thumb of your nondominant hand. If you would like to test for a yes for an essence, say the name of the plant and flick the circle with your dominant hand. If the circle holds, that’s a yes. If it breaks open, that is a no.
- By consulting reference literature: Books, repertories, or flower affirmation cards.
- Through blind testing: By drawing a card or randomly selecting an essence from a set. This method works well with children.
Any of these methods can be integrated into your ritual. Before making remedies for other people, it’s a good idea to spend some time with the flower essences yourself. The flowers will have much to share with you. Also, the more experience you have with the essences yourself, the better you will understand how the essences will work for others.
This is an excerpt from The Bloom Book: A Flower Essence Guide to Cosmic Balance by Heidi Smith.
Heidi Smith, MA, RH (AHG), is a psychosomatic therapist, registered herbalist, and flower essence practitioner. Within her private practice, Moon & Bloom, Heidi works collaboratively with her clients to empower greater balance, actualization, and soul-level healing within themselves. She is passionate about engaging both the spiritual and scientific dimensions of the plant kingdom, and sees plant medicine and ritual as radical ways to promote individual, collective, and planetary healing. She lives in Brooklyn, New York, with her partner and two cats. For more, visit moonandbloom.com.
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