Getting Swept Away (from meditation) and Coming Back Again

Can Meditation Practice Affect How We View Our World? A Series of Articles Part Four – Getting Swept Away and Coming Back Again Meditation is about getting used to not being distracted. Or, to put it another way, meditation is about being in the state of non-distraction and getting used to that state. When we begin the practice of meditation, we can become pretty disheartened to learn that our mind is everywhere else but on the object of our meditation. Even after years of working with these methods, there are times when instead of meditating, I find myself caught up [...]

2015-01-20T15:10:48-07:00By |Meditation|4 Comments
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How to Meditate: Viewing Your Thoughts from a Distance

Can Meditation Practice Affect How We View Our World? A Series of Articles Part Three – Viewing Your Thoughts from a Distance In this series, “Can Meditation Practice Affect How We View Our World?” we've discussed how emotions may not be due to what "causes" our reaction. What this means is that when an emotion or thought to arise within our mind, for example a desire for something or an angry thought about something that is said, we catch ourselves and realize that whatever triggered the arising is not its cause. Viewed this way, we can begin to change our [...]

2014-09-08T10:55:02-06:00By |Meditation|3 Comments
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Anchoring the Awareness of Emotions in the Breath While Meditating

Can Awareness and Meditation Practice Affect How We View Our World? A Series of Articles Part Two – Anchoring the Awareness of Emotions in the Breath When confronted with strong emotions or sensations, there are many options for awareness and what we can do and how we'll deal with whatever arises. Because strong emotions are so powerful in their ability to distract us from the present, plummeting us into a space of unconscious patterns, we need to have tools to bring our mind into a state of (relative) ease, where we won’t react to the circumstance, and then react to [...]

2012-12-06T19:31:25-07:00By |Meditation|13 Comments
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The Object of Our Emotion is Not its Cause

Can Meditation Practice Affect How We View Our World? A Series of Articles Part One - The Object of Our Emotion is Not its Cause A funny thing happened on the way to the office today. Okay, it wasn't really funny, and my office these days is The Laughing Goat Coffeehouse. While getting ready to prepare for the day, my wife made a request of me that seemed, to my sleep-deprived mind, unreasonable. Reasonable or not, whether the haze of sleep loss or the actual request was the trigger, the emotions that arose within my mind were ones of frustration [...]

2013-12-16T13:31:24-07:00By |Meditation|0 Comments
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Are Thoughts the Mind, or Just a Product of it?

In the book “Zen and the Brain,” author James Austin, MD, writes: “Meditators discover a surprising fact when they finally arrive at moments of “no-thought”: they do not have to think to be conscious. For consciousness starts with being aware. The awareness has a receptive flavor, its normal landscape is not a level plateau. Instead, it rises and falls as a series of peaks and valleys.”[i] (To read an interview done with Dr. Austin by MIT Press, check out this link:  http://mitpress.mit.edu/books/auszp/austin/interview.html) As we work with our mind and begin to develop insight into its dynamics, we’ll come to realize—even [...]

2013-11-08T16:12:34-07:00By |Meditation|2 Comments
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Using Thoughts During Meditation as the Object of Meditation

Meditation Can Be Using Your Thoughts as the Object of Your Meditation For many of us, when we begin to meditate, instead of sinking into a blissful space of quietude and relaxation, we find the exact opposite. We encounter a torrent of thoughts, distractions, and just about anything else that we wouldn't want to be thinking when we're supposed to be taming our mind. But, isn't meditation supposed to free us from our thoughts? That's what I assumed when I first began meditating. After all, I'd seen enough photos of robed figures seated, motionless, in peaceful settings, undisturbed by the [...]

2015-01-20T15:19:36-07:00By |Meditation|4 Comments
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Mindfulness, Meditation, Compassion and Nursing – The Perfect Fit!!

I'm stuck in Washington at Dulles Airport, “G” Terminal with several hundred other souls crammed into the boarding area. Outside, flashes of lightning illuminate the cloud-darkened sky; the loud thunder-clap strikes come alarmingly close to this small, overcrowded weigh-station. As we watch the Departure Boards, one flight after another posts “CANCELED,” and a tide of anxious and angry passengers washes over the customer service desk, employees frightened for their well-being. How appropriate it is then that I am on my way back from teaching a class on mindfulness and meditation to a group of health-care practitioners in Seattle. What a [...]

2014-09-08T23:33:54-06:00By |Nursing|6 Comments
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