Breathing meditation (Jack Kornfield)

Welcome to practice of mindfulness.

In this program, we will be introduced to 6 guided meditations designed to give you
a �directic�??? experience of mindfulness and its many benefits. Mindfulness is
genuinely defined as a specific way to pay attention to your experiences in present
moment with open, spacious and non-judgemental awareness.

when we�re mindful, we are in a mediate contact with our experiences, with heart
and mind open, and just more available to our lives and to those around us.

We have chosen 6 guided practices by respected authors, psychotherapists, and

meditation teachers. Each of which offers a specific flavor of mindfulness and
unique pathway into the immediacy of the present moment.

We begin our program with Jack Kornfield, author of meditation for beginners with
the guided practice of breath awareness.

Having found a posture that stable and comfortable, again with your eyes either
gently closed or relaxed and slightly open but not looking around. Begin to pay
attention to your body, allowing it to relax, and noticing the sensations that are
here as you pay attention.

If you notice any obvious areas of tightness, you can soften them, let the eyes and
face be soft. The shoulders drop. The hands rest easily. Let the belly be soft and
the breath natural.
Let yourself just rest for a moment, being aware of what you notice here as you
feel your body, as you rest on the earth.

As you sit quietly, you notice their different thoughts and feelings and sounds
that arise and pass including these words.

Let the sounds and thoughts arise and pass easily like waves in the ocean. Let your
mind and heart be soft, be open, and at peace.

Notice the waves that they come and go and simply be present with the feelings and
the experiences that pass each moment as you sit.

In this space of a kind and relaxed attention, now let your soft become aware of a
fact of your breathing in the midst of the thoughts, the sounds and feelings that
come and go.

You can sense your life-breath, you can sense the feeling or the sensation of this
rhythm of breath that might be coolness in the nose, tingling the back of the
throat or you might feel the breath as a movement of the chest or a rise and fall
of the belly.

Let the breath has the natural rhythm and as you feel it, rest your tension in the
breathing, sense the breath carefully, focusing on the breath as our beginning. It
is the way of connecting the mind, and heart and body together here in the present.

If it is helpful to you, you can take one or two deeper breaths, and feel what
place in your body; the breath is the most apparent to you.

And even if the breath is quite soft, see if you can let your attention become
careful and notice the coolness, the tingling, the movement, the vibration, the
expansion of the belly.
Notice whatever you can of the breath and rest your attention in it.

As you feel each breath, let there be a sense of relaxation, both a present, sort
of alertness, and at the same time in ease, a resting in a sensation of breath.

After several breaths, you will probably notice that your mind wanders; after
several breaths, often a wave of thought, or a feeling, or sound will come and
carry you.

As soon as you notice this wave, you can acknowledge it very simply. There've been
thinking, imagining, or sound, and release it, let it go when you notice it.

Coming back gently and directly to feel the breath again.

After a few breaths, the wave of thought or sound may again carry your mind off;
the mind will wander as soon as you notice, gently let it go and return back to
feel the next breath when you can. No judgement, no valuation, it is like training
a puppy, stay. You put your mind on the breath and if your breath is like the
puppy, the mind wanders away. You pick puppy back up and put it down, stay, be
gently. It is no need to beat the puppy, no need to judge yourself. This is a
gently training of learning to com back and be here, one breath after another, to
center yourself in the breathing.

Each time the heart wanders or distracted, bring it back to the breath quite
gently, over and over again, learning just to relax, and be awake and present here.

If you have difficulty feeling the breath, you can take one hand and place your
palm on your belly so that you feel the movement of the belly and the flat palm of
your hand. Resting your palm there, you can feel the natural rhythm as the breath
opens and expands.

Let your hand and belly together then become the focus of breathing for this time.
The life-breath, the universal breath can calm us and center us, return back to it,
again and again.

Now we'll end the meditation with this soft ringing of the bells.

Let your eyes open, bring your attention back to the room here.

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Meditation for relaxation (Shinzen Young)

We continue with pioneer meditation teacher, Shinzen Young, author for science of
enlightenment with the guided mindfulness practice for relaxation

Now, we are going to focus on your relaxation skills, and willingness to breath

slightly different way,

bring your awareness to the right half of your body

notice your breath-in the side of up your shoulder lowerrise it up and as you
breathi n the rib cage settle

produce relaxation quality, arms and over whole half of your body so each out
breath cause the right side too settled

in a tangible way,
Now, focus o your left half in order to same thing happen them rise on inner left
setltling the

in more relaxed mode, and relax the on each out-breath.

Now bring awareness to front, notice the torso, pulling the jaw down, relaxing, the
whole front half on each out-breath

and spread in the whole front of your body, perhaps affect the arms legs

Now, bring awareness the back of your torso, notice the spine extend as you breath,
as your breath out, spine settle down, shoulder come down in the back.

and affect half of your body on each out-breath

Now bring your awareness to your torso, right left and front and back. Notice

let all sides settled, right left in front behind, let it spread up relaxing your
whole face and down, relaxing your belly and legs. So with

There are relaxing in all 6 directions

you can pause and then resume. Now

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Mindfulness Meditation - The neuroscience of change by kelly mcgonical

creator, out of default mode

Now we will explore, and take a break from the default mode. Try to escape from

Don't be hard on yourself, simply

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Meditation on Compassion
cofounder of
with meditation
compassion and opening your heart

this is a reflection

Just be relax

being relaxed difficult r anger greed, jealousy, fear and knows it hownervously
how you are asshamed of it, preventing it from arising.

do you consider you bad or wrong for the feeling. or see what happens to translate
that senseof wrong anger

is a painful state. IT is a state of suffering. see that happens through the

relationship to your feeling as you make the translation.

takes emotion see it feeling your body the anger the fear the jealousy now holding
some compassion

Observing the sensation chest nature of your compassion holding it, surrounding it
The pain is there and the compassion is there. That is the effect terribly wrong
effect
now imagine someone you know with the same emotion; anger fear greed. emotion as
bad, wrong, terrible, horrible. and what is happens to respond to pain and sorrow
or something

you reflect on the fact that you cant control didn't invite them, condition they
arise. greed jealousy and soone. define by them, act from them but actually prevent
from arising. This is just a nature thing for ourselves and nature.

We can commit yourself to see hold compasionto ourself and to let go. we can commit
tyourself to remembering to someone to badly

A painful state, and we can have compassion for them. Even as you may take a strong
action, to try tochange situation to protect yourself or someone else. it can't be
a recognition of the pain it too are in.

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Pause for a presence

A program continues with Dr. Tara Brach, clinical psychologist and bestselling
author of the audio learning series meditation and psycho-therapy.

On this guided practice, we learn how to pause in our daily lives, ground yourself
and start fresh in midst of any difficult situation.

A natural entry into your presence is through your body and senses.

you can do this short meditation at any time that you have a bit of quiet and
privacy.

Underplays to sit confortably and then just close your eyes.

You might start by simply connecting with your intention to come home to presence.
Let your attitude be friendly. Relax, curious.

Begin by taking 3 conscious breaths. Let the inhale belong in deep, filling the
lungs and then exhale slowly, sensing or let it go of any tension in your body or
mind

Again inhaling deeply, filling the lungs... and slow conscious exhale, let it go,
let it go.

once more, nice full inbreath.

Holding your breath for a moment once you are full, just feel the holding the
stretch of the chest and gently outbreath. Let it go, let it go

and letting the breath resume its natural rhythm and invite your awareness in your
body by gently scaning, noticing any places at tension, uptightness.
See if it is possible to bring a soft attention to those areas of holding.

See if you can just allow them to relax and open naturally.

It's helpful to relax to face consciously, to soften the eye, let the jaw be easy,
slightly open and you might feel what calls the half-smile of the Buddha at the
lips.

You might even feel the inside of not smiling a bit.

Letting the scan continue down, pay particular attention to the shoulders, see if
you can feel them from the inside-out

You might sense a kind of dissolving ice to water, a melting, and then water to
gas. Let it go.

Filling the arms, the inside-out, sensing the volume, the space inside the arms,
the aliveness there

And then soften your hands, letting them rest in an easy and effortless way, soften
and feel them from the inside-out. Tingling the vibrating

Sitting in a way that your chest can be open, your belly can be relaxed, softening
the belly, letting this next breath be received in a softening belly, this breath,
and then this one, and again.

Continue to scan down the body, during the hips, buttocks, the legs

Relaxing any muscles that are tight

Feeling down until the feet so that you can feel the feet from the inside-out,
knowing the aliveness there, tingling, vibrating

Now invite your awareness to feel the whole body. Can you imagine your physical
form as a field of sensations?

Can you feel the movement and quality of sensations? tingling, vibrating, heat or
cool, hard or soft, tight or flowing.

Take a few moments to bring your full attention to the dance of the sensations.

Now let your awareness open out to the space around you.

Can you imagine receiving the symphony of sound? Letting sound wash through you.

Can you listen to the changing play of sounds, not just with your ears but with
your whole awareness.

Take a few moments to bring an open attention, receptivity to listening to sounds.

Keeping your eyes close. Let your awareness also receive the play of image and
light at the eyelids. Right, notice the flickering of light and dark certain
shapes, shadows, a figure of life.

Take a few moments to attend to seeing.

Feeling your breath and sensing the space around you, being receptive to any sense
that might be in the air, discover what it is like to smell and receive the odor
presence in the surrounding area.
Now let all your senses be wide open, your body and mind relaxed and receptive,
allow life to flow freely through you. Wide open listening to and feeling your
moment-to-moment experience.

Notice the changing flow of sounds, sensations, aliveness and also the background
of presence that it's here. Let yourself appreciate this awake inner space of
presence.

Can you imagine as you complete this meditation, bringing an alert, open awareness
to whatever you are doing next?

This meditation, a pause for presence, can be done for just a few moments, a quick
scan of senses that first longs as you like.

As you move to the day, pause periodically and briefly reawaking your senses in
this way, primarily listening to sounds and feeling bodily sensations.

With practice, you become increasingly at home, and natural presence and pausing
and coming right here in the present moment.

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Finally, our program concludes with Dr. Jon Kabat Zinn, founder and director of the
stress reduction clinic of University Of Massachusetts Medical Center and
bestselling author of mindfulness for beginners.

Here Dr. Kabat Zinn guides us through what he calls the healing lake of meditation
to relieve anxiety and stress, helping us to contact a place of deep relaxation
within that is available at any time.

We'd like to end this program with meditation that you might due at the end of the
day or can be done at any other time elsewhere and one that involves lying down
meditation. So making yourself comfortable lying down on your bed or on floor or
wherever you can be comfortable.

maybe putting a pillow of some sort under your knees, allowing your eyes to close
and your body to just melt into the floor or the bed and allowing your attention to
gently come into the body and to the flowing of the breath and experiencing the
sense of the body as a whole simply lying here extended, breathing.

And when you feel ready, picture in your mind's eye the image of the lake, perhaps
the lake that you know well and frequent tour one that you've seen in photograph or
imaginary lake of that matter.

And just bringing that vividly focused in your mind's eye. Noticing how it's an
extended body of water held in a depression in the earth's surface, and perhaps fed
by a spring or a stream and if you watch and observe the lake carefully, you'll
notice that it's always changing and yet it's also always itself. It changes as the
sun moves across the sky, the light that's reflected it on the water in different
ways. It changes depending on the weather, sometimes on very calm days the surface
might be like glass and reflect virtually everything, a great precision that comes
by, clouds, birds??

The tree that might surround the lake. The sun as it makes it a journey across the
sky, and for that matter, the moon and the stars at night, so the time when the
lake is, extremely reflective and contains, in a certain way, everything that comes
by all over it.

And in different periods of time, the surface might be choppy, or royal and
sometimes quite pronounced the waves in which time the light might sparkle off the
wave in different ways like new year of jewel and of course it changes through
seasons in the winter depending its location it might actually be frozen over, at
least on the surface.

So through day and night, though the seasons, and though the years, the lake's
constantly changing but always this it's on a center nature.

to become our body becomes the lake itself. and we also feels he as we lie here

sometimes highly reflective, sometimes choppy, getting in touch with the sense of
the entirety of the lake, the foam, body of water not only on the surface but down
below.

And as we're lying here