Written by John - read about him here.
Welcome to Open Air
Today, I’ll be introducing you to the practice that I am inviting you to make part of your schedule for the next five-weeks. Each week we’ll continue to develop our view of the practice and I’ll ask you to get curious about different aspects of your experience.
I'll be expanding on and re-iterating this essay on Wednesday at 6pm BST, here.
The practice I am introducing today is Mindfulness Meditation. Whether you have practiced a form of mindfulness meditation before or are a complete beginner, you are invited to read, listen, and practice with curiosity and freshness.
I should also mention up front that although this practice can be helpful for your mental health, it isn’t meant to be a replacement for the work of other professionals and so I hope you’ll seek out doctors, therapists, priests, rabbis, swamis, lamas, nuns or whatever else, as needed. You know yourself best, look after yourself.
Mindfulness Meditation
Mindfulness meditation has been practiced for over 2500 years. It has it’s roots in the Buddhist tradition and is the foundational practice of Buddhism, whilst also being validated by modern neuroscience. In particular, it can have a positive outcomes for people suffering from stress, anxiety, and depression, as well as being positively correlated with cognitive flexibility and attentional capacities.
Importantly, the practice invites us to be with our own experience, and for that reason is now widely considered to be secular - no particular beliefs are required on our part in order to practice.
For our purposes, Mindfulness can be defined as learning to bring your attention to the present moment, and seeing what arises without judgement or bias.
The Benefits
The benefits of mindfulness meditation are said to be strength, stability, and clarity. People also often report that it makes them ‘less reactive’.
We can also think of mindfulness meditation practice as the cultivation of three qualities that we already have but are perhaps ripened with practice. These three qualities are gentleness, precision, and letting go. We will be exploring these three qualities in particular in more detail as we move through the series.
For me, it was anxiety that led me to practice meditation.
It was most obvious to me in social situations, where I would imagine others seeing me in a bad light, or feel horribly embarrassed by the way I had acted when it’s likely the people I was with experienced no significant impact at all. When I first began to meditate, I just wanted a break from these thoughts, and it was my experience that in certain moments, I could relax into the simple experience of the body breathing and achieve some rest. However, what I have really found is that my experience to anxiety at both a body-sensation level, and as thought has changed. I experience more space to allow for things to arise and pass away. That means when anxiety arises, I’m much less likely to get carried away, and can respond from a place of openness with compassion for myself and others. There are still some situations that lead to anxiety, and this is an instinct that can save my life - but it is now much more often the case that I can respond with confidence and balance. For instance, I found myself in the Himalayas without a working phone when COVID-19 shut down the country in 2020. A previous version of me would have freaked out. I didn’t, and could help others around me who were overwhelmed.
Hopefully it’s clear that there is evidence in modern literature, my experience, and the experience of others, that there is benefit in a regular mindfulness meditation practice.
If not, I invite you to stick around and stay curious.
Introducing the Practice of Mindfulness Meditation
The practice as it will be presented here might be slightly different from how you have practiced mindfulness meditation in the past, but remains as simple as these three steps:
Take your seat
Place your attention on the breath
Whenever you notice the mind has wandered, label thoughts as thinking and gently return your attention to the breath.
You can refer to these three steps if you ever need a refresher of what the practice is.
I will now go into the details of how this series is inviting you to practice mindfulness meditation:
Taking your Seat
When it comes to taking your seat, you have three choices: on a chair, cross-legged on a cushion, or kneeling with a meditation bench. All three of these postures are equally valid.
In whichever method of sitting you choose, it’s important to find a posture that is comfortable for you. We want to sit upright, but not uptight. Allow ease into the posture whilst also choosing to support your own back away from any external support like the back of a chair if possible. It can help to bring yourself to the edge of your seat. Take some time to settle in to your seat, moving around to find equilibrium.
If sat on a chair or cushion, our knees may not be naturally below or equal to the level of our hips, if that is the case, in order to give ourselves a feeling of greater stability and support our backs, it can be useful to use an extra towel or cushion to put underneath you to bring your hips higher and to a level that supports this.
Whilst sat in a chair, the feet can rest gently with the soles in contact with the ground.
If sat on a cushion we can allow the knees to make contact with the ground if that is possible, as if setting up a tripod with the two knees and one butt as your supports. One foot can rest in front of the other in a Burmese style, or you can sit in what is called half or full lotus.
If using a meditation bench, the knees are naturally in contact with the ground and the back can also often find a naturally upright posture.
In any case, allow your back to be straight and strong whilst allowing your front to be soft and open. This might mean bringing a slight lift to elongate the spine towards the sky, rolling the shoulders back slightly, and bringing the head into alignment with the rest of your back.
The hands can rest gently, palms-down, on the knees or thighs, wherever they land naturally.
We allow the eyes to remain open. With the eyes open, we can softly lower an open gaze towards the ground, four to six feet in front of you. You might also tuck the chin slightly to support this. We sometimes call the type of open gaze as ‘seeing without looking.’
The jaw can remain slack, releasing any tensing in the muscles of the face, as well as releasing any other areas of obvious and unnecessary tension in the body.
This posture as described is meant to support a sense of wakefulness and dignity, whilst also being relaxed. It is meant to support awareness as opposed to any kind of trance state.
Place your attention on the breath
The breath should be allowed to be natural, without any attempt to control or manipulate. You may find the breath is most easily felt in a particular part of the body, perhaps where it enters the nostrils, or with the rise or fall of the chest or belly. Stay with whichever is most easily felt for you. We’re not attempting to place 100% of our attention on the breath with intense concentration, instead one can play with the idea of simply being aware of the breath amongst the play of other parts of our experience. Some teachers suggest to aim for around 25% of our attention to be with the breath.
The breath is chosen as the object of our meditation because it is a natural bridge between the body and mind. The felt sensations of breathing are also readily available to us and we can simply be with those, aware of the movement of breath. Some people find it particularly distressing to be with the breath as an object of meditation because of past experiences or a medical condition. If that is the case, please get in contact with me or another teacher to see if we can find a suitable alternative.
Simply put, we place our attention on the breath and be with the natural sensations of the body breathing.
Whenever you notice the mind has wandered, label thoughts as thinking and gently return your attention to the breath.
It is inevitable for most, if not all of us, that the mind will wander. The brain secretes thoughts like the mouth secretes saliva. This is completely okay. Our aim is not to silence the mind of all thoughts. We do not have to go around playing whack-a-mole with our thoughts.
We can be gentle and kind with ourselves. When you notice your mind has wandered into thought and lost the breath, gently note ‘thinking’, and return your attention to the breath. You’ll be with the breath for some amount of time and then you may notice your mind has wandered again. That’s okay. Begin again.
This is the practice.
Now what?
On Wednesday August 21st at 6pm BST, the first talk of the series will air on YouTube to re-iterate and elaborate on what is written here. Afterwards there will be a live session on Zoom in which we will practice together and have time for questions and discussion.
In order to see for yourself what benefits might come of a regular mindfulness meditation practice for you, I encourage you to schedule time everyday to sit and meditate. I sit in the morning, but you can practice at anytime throughout the day. If possible, sit for 20 minutes per day. If you miss a day, be gentle with yourself and start again. This is a practice, and I have found the benefits compound with consistency. Unfortunately I can’t transfer them to you, you have to find out for yourself. You can do it.
Links to Other Scheduled Content
Watch the accompanying recorded talk here:
Join the live session (on Wednesday 21 Aug at 6:30pm BST) here: https://us06web.zoom.us/j/82361423484
Sign-up for emails here: https://www.spacetobe.xyz/higher
