Mindfulness Practice: Developing Focus Attention

Mindful breathing developing focus attention, Mindful listening

The truth is that the moment we begin to cultivate the practice of mindfulness, we are immediately confronted by the reality of attention. our lives are driven by endless distractions. When we find the time to sit quietly with eyes closed, bringing our attention to the sensations of breathing–we also find our attention is often quite scattered, our minds start wandering and can be hard to pin down,

The key here is to pay attention to our in & out breath, with the attitude of acceptance, kindness, and curiosity. When our mind wanders and we notice, those are the moments of mindful awareness, congratulate ourselves that we noticed and kindly bring our attention back to the breath and the body.

Now Let’s Practice together:

Please go to your Mindful posture, sit with your back straight relaxed yet alert, like tree reaching for the sun.

Your eyes can be closed or open with a soft gaze

Take a few deep breaths and breathe out thoroughly

Allow your attention to be aware of your in & out breath

When you breathe in say to yourself: I am aware of my in breath

When you breathe out say silently to yourself: I am aware of my out-breath, when your mind wanders notice it, be aware of it, then in your out breath let go of any sensations or feelings experiencing in the body and mind

If you feel you are losing focus, find your anchor, find your anchor word, and breathing in, and breathing out

Once you get distracted and your attention swept away from your breath, just notice it, this is the moment of awareness, kindly bring your attention back to your breath and the sensations of the body.

Now I like you to take a few deep breaths and bring your attention to your ears, and listen carefully to the sounds in your environment, the sound inside the room you sit, sounds of your breath, and the sound outside for a few moments listen mindfully …, listen to all the sounds around you.

Then bring your attention back to your breathing, come back to this moment, come back to center…, and when you are ready open your eyes.

Thank you, Gita

Emotional Empathy VS Compassionate Empathy

Let’s start first by defining empathy:

Empathy is, at its simplest, awareness of the feelings and emotions of other people. It is a key element of Emotional Intelligence, the connection between self and others, because it is how we as individuals understand what others are experiencing as if we were feeling it ourselves.

It is the capacity to tune in to experience with a warm, caring and genuine interest that allows us to understand the felt- experience. It is the ability to connect with other’s feelings at the moment and understand deeply what they are going through.

With emotional empathy, you feel the pain and suffering of the other person and will be involved in their stories ……, so you use your energy which will drain you gradually then you won’t be able to help the other person/ persons and hold space for them without attachment.

You actually feel other person’s emotions with attachment, you become emotionally involved in the situation. This is the type of response that can lead to caregiver’s burnout, which we want to prevent and be aware of it in order to replace it with compassionate empathy.

With compassionate empathy, you feel concern about other’s suffering, without being attached to their story, like hearing and observing with awareness and a desire to help the person in need. You will hold space for them to open up and release the mental and emotional pains they experience at the moment.

In order to be able to have compassionate empathy instead of an emotional one, you need to learn mindfulness and practice it regularly to build up the capacity to hold space. To feel concern about anyone’s suffering without attachment. When you observe and understand your own feelings every single day for a few minutes or more without judgement & biases,  with kindness & curiosity, you will be able to listen deeply and understand other people’s feelings without judgement and attachment.

Finally, I suggest to all service professionals to practice mindfulness regularly and learn how to build up the space they need for themselves to express their compassion without being attached to one’s story and prevent burnout and compassionate fatigue.

Love & Blessing,

Gita

Mini-Meditation Series: Self-Compassion

Self – Compassion practice:

Sit on a chair or cushion with your back straight & relaxed

Let your bodies be still,

Let your eyes closed, or leave them open gaze down

Take a few deep breaths in and breathe out gently

Relax your body, clear your mind

On your next breath bring your attention to your heart centre

Put your hand on your heart centre

Feel the sensations for a moment

And repeat these phrases after me in your mind:

May I be healthy and strong

May I be happy

May I be peaceful

May I love myself just as I am

May I hold myself in compassion

May I be well

May my mind and body be in balance & centred

Reflect on the feelings arise here for a moment…

Then bring your attention to your breathing, come back to this moment

And slowly open your eyes and go on with your daily activities

Love & blessing

Gita

Open Field of Awareness (Six minutes guided meditation)

Open field of awareness meditation:

Let your bodies be still,

Let your eyes close, or gaze softly

Settling into its posture,

bring your awareness to how the body is feeling at this moment, just come home to the body. Body is really a concept you are hearing its sensations, temperature, tightness and so on…, connect to the sensations of the body

Just allowing yourself to settle back, and sit comfortably

If you feel sensation in your body, just softening your face, your eyes, your shoulders…

The sensations are simply come and go

In the space, we call awareness

Nothing to do, nothing to have, just bodily sensations arising and passing

Just like a twinkling star on the open sky

The sensations simply being known by awareness

How is it feel to be aware, to know you know

Nothing to do, nowhere to go, just be in the moment

Be present and aware, be here, now

Now I like to invite you to notice your thoughts and emotions

Any thoughts or emotions come to your mind, simply notice them, name them, let them be, and let them pass from the blue sky of your mind

Then simply come back to your breath, come back to this moment

Nothing to do, nothing to have, nothing to be

Just these mental sensations, bodily sensations coming and going

Like the twinkling star in the open sky

Is it possible to simply rest in the field of awareness, rest in knowing?

Just notice what is it like to know that you are aware, is it possible to rest in this spacious mindfulness?

Awareness that can hold sounds, thoughts and sensations

You don’t need to accomplish anything right now, just be in the moment….

Then on your next breath, kindly bring your attention back to your breathing, come back to this moment, come back to centre, and slowly open your eyes…., and finish this mindfulness practice session, and go on with your daily activities

Thank you

Gita

Mini-Meditation Series: Forgivness

Mini-meditation series:

Forgiveness:

Sit on a chair or a cushion with your back straight & relaxed

Let your bodies be still,

Let your eyes closed, or leave them open gaze down look at the floor beneath you

Take a few deep breaths in and breathe out gently

Relax your body, clear your mind

Then on your next breath bring your attention to your heart centre

Put your hand on your heart, the area around your chest

Feel the sensations for a moment

Then on your next breath simply start to forgive yourself for any wrongdoings or any self-judgments you have had about yourself. Any strong feelings or actions, anything you have done which you think it was inappropriate, and silently say these phrases after me:

May I forgive myself for any harm that I have caused myself intentionally or unintentionally.
May I forgive myself for any strong feelings I have had towards people whom I know or don’t know, strong emotions like Jealousy, hatred, shame, anger, judgment, and so on.
Take a moment to notice where in your body you feel these emotions, the sensations maybe, be aware of them for a moment, kindly let them go….,  and forgive yourself thoroughly.

Then bring your attention back to your breathing, come back to this moment

Come back to centre, and gently open your eyes and go on with your daily activities

Love & blessing

Gita

Mini-Meditation Series: Practice Grounding

Mini-meditation series:

Practice grounding:

Sit on a chair or a cushion with your back straight & relaxed

Let your bodies be still,

Let your eyes closed, or leave them open gaze down

Take a few deep breaths in, and breathe out gently.

Relax your body, Clear your mind

Now take a deep breath and bring your attention to the touch points of your body

Your hands resting on your lab, your feet touching the floor

Ground yourself to the sense of gravity, your body’s weight…, and stay with the feelings arise here for a moment

Take a few deep breaths here, and let go of any emotions or bodily sensations experiencing at the moment…., breath them out and let them go….

Then slowly come back to centre, to your breath, to this moment…., gently open your eyes and go on with your daily activities!

Love & Blessing

Gita

Hand Model of the Brain by Dr. Dan Siegel

In this great video, Dr Dan Siegel explains how the integration between different parts of the brain work and how mindfulness meditation practices can help this integration to regulate our thoughts and behaviours. he explains how you can change the structure of the brain by knowing how the brain structured.

He illustrates what is the job of our prefrontal cortex and other parts of our brains, and how PFC integrates with the other parts of the body and what is the outcome of this integration!

He says: “ Prefrontal Cortex integrates Cortex, Limbic area, Brainstem, body and even the social world together. Now when you do a practice lets say like we have wheel of awareness  practice as a form of mindfulness meditation or any kind of mindfulness reflective practices you are integrating  your whole  system, when you are not integrated it can become chaotic and rigid, it is like flipping your lid, so instead of living in harmony within yourself, and harmony and in connection to others, you are literally becoming chaotic with an outburst or rigidly withdrawn “

Mini-Meditation Series: Body Scan

Sit on a chair or cushion with your back straight & relaxed

Let your bodies be still

Let your eyes closed or leave them open gaze down

Take a few deep breaths in and breathe out gently

Relax your body, clear your mind

Take a deep breath in and breathe out any emotions, feelings or sensations experiencing at this moment…

Take another deep breath in, bring your attention to your forehead, your eyes, your mouth, your cheek, and your chin, feel the sensations there, and in your our breath, breathe out any tensions or any emotions experiencing at the moment and let your face become relaxed

Take another breath in and bring your attention to the middle body, your heart, lung, intestine, kidney, liver, In your out breath, breathe out any sensations experiencing there, relax and let go

Take another breath, and this time brings your attention to your lower body, your ties, knees, legs and toes. In your out breath, breathe out any sensations experiencing there relax and let go

Finally take a deep breath in bring all the air inside your entire body, and in your out breath, breathe out any feelings of tension, stress, pain or discomfort of the body and mind……, breathe them all out and let them go,

Then come back to centre, to this moment and go on with your daily activities, energized and relaxed!

Love and blessing

Gita

Mind Fitness: How Meditation Boost Your Focus Resilience and Brain | Daniel Goleman

Mindfulness Meditation is the exercise for your brain. As I always tell my students If you follow through and practice mindfulness meditation every single day… pretty soon you’ll see results. You will notice how your reactivity reduced, how your focus & attention increased, and how you can respond to any situation wisely, instead of react blindly!

In this video Psychologist and science journalist, Daniel Goleman talks about the difference between altered state and altered trait, and how mindfulness meditation practices can boost your brain:

“Altered states refers to a mode of consciousness or awareness that takes us out of our ordinary everyday sense of the world, sense of ourselves. We can enter altered states when we get intensely focused on something—deep concentration will bring you into an altered state, sometimes people like to talk how athletes get “into the zone” or they “get into flow”, those are everyday altered states, but they come from being intensely focused on some activity or in the moment itself. And of course, altered states can come from drugs or from being in an unusual physiological state. A fever can bring on an altered state. And of course, the ‘60s and ‘70s saw a huge upsurge of people interested in exploring altered states through psychedelics. So altered states are temporary conditions, and when whatever it was that brought on the special state of awareness leaves, then the state fades. So if you get into a flow state rock climbing, when you come down from the mountain, it’s gone—or whatever may have caused it: your temperature might have gone up, and put you into maybe not a pleasant altered state, but still an altered state. The temperature goes down, it’s gone.

Altered traits, on the other hand, are lasting changes or transformations of being, and they come classically through having cultivated an altered state through meditation, which then has a consequence for how you are day-to-day—and that’s different than how you were before you tried the meditation. And what we find in our research, as we say in the book Altered Traits, is that the more you meditate, the more lifetime hours you put into it, the stronger the lasting traits become.When we surveyed more than 6000 peer-reviewed articles published to date on meditation we used very strict rigorous methodological standards and we whittled them down to about 60, so maybe one percent of all those articles were really well done. And they document very strongly that altered traits are lasting consequences of regular meditation and it’s not that it’s the altered states that’s the point. If you look at the classic traditions from which meditation comes to us in the West, all of them talk about the quality of being, the person you’ve become. And we see it in the data in many ways. We see it in cognitive changes, we see in behavioural changes and most importantly we see it in neurological changes the neuroscience of meditation is really getting stronger and stronger. It’s pretty spectacular and it shows that brain function and perhaps even structure in the long-term meditators becomes different and becomes different in ways that are actually predicted in classic meditation texts. “

Contact us today to book your free online meditation session: info@meditationforallages.com

Mini-Meditation Series: Gratitude & Appreciation, Gratefulness

Mini-meditation series:

Gratitude & appreciation, Gratefulness:

Let your bodies be still,

Let your eyes closed, or leave them open gaze down

Take a few deep breaths in and breathe out gently

Relax your body, clear your mind

On your next breath bring into your mind a few things that you are grateful for at this moment;

Your children, your partner, your profession, your health, the place you live, a hug from a friend, the sun on your face, some one’s smile,…, and so on

Notice how you feel, stay with the feeling arise here and reflect on them for a few more breaths

Then bring your attention to your breathing, come back to this moment

And slowly open your eyes and go on with your daily activities, happier and more content!

Try finding three things each day that you feel grateful for

Love & blessing,

Gita