Category Archives: Presence

Body Mindfulness – Your Everyday Active State

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“Mindfulness in Action – This is something to be practiced throughout the day, rather than just for 10 minutes.”

Leah Weiss – Stanford University’s Compassion Cultivation Program

Mindfulness in action. This is a good term. When you do a mindfulness meditation practice regularly, eventually what begins to happen, is that the inner focus you have while your eyes are closed transfers to your waking active state and for longer and longer periods, before the day and your intellect take over once again.

The ultimate aim of meditation is to have that inner calm connected aware state throughout your day. No matter what you are doing – doing it, in a mindful present state is much more productive and enriching than rushing through and/or over thinking everything.

It is not very enjoyable to live the moment in a rushed over thinking state. It is probably why people are doing whatever it is quickly, in order to get to that state that they long for, all the while missing it, in this present moment now.

As I emphasis in every mindfulness class – you are already perfect inside. That perfection, still, alive, loving, free self is already there within you. Closing our eyes and focusing within for long periods, help to get glimpses of this and helps to have those glimpses shine throughout your day in your daily actions.

How far ahead are you playing out your day?

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On describing why he meditates, AFL Football player Zak Jones recently replied..

“I started very slow, but then it became before every game to clear my head and try not play out the game before it began.

For me it was enjoying this for what it is. There’s going to be highs and lows and if you’re worrying about what’s going to happen you’re not enjoying it.”

This leads to a great point that meditation helps reduce worry. How far ahead are you thinking throughout the day? Your body only needs to deal with this moment right now.

Anything more than this is extra stress that is not necessary. Future worry creates stress on your body that affects the quality of your present moment action right now. It also adds extra stress on your body, (which is responding like it is real.)

So how far ahead are you playing out your day right now in your head, while doing what you need to do in this moment? Bring all your thoughts right back to just this moment right now, reading this. These words right now. Nothing more.

If you manage to bring yourself back to this moment and just reading these words right now, you will find there is more enjoyment, doing just this moment. There is also more peace and quiet in your head because you don’t need to be thinking and worrying about the future right now.

When it’s actually time to plan your day, then that’s when you deliberately do it. Any other time, is just added body stress and wasted energy.

Mindfulness meditation helps to bring your mind and body back operating more from this present moment.

Getting Present through your Body

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“As a path to mindfulness, body awareness offers a natural route. This is because, at its core, mindfulness is about living with greater presence, which is a natural state for our bodies, which are moving in the here and now. It is only our thoughts that can drift off into the past or the future.”

(Noa Belling, The Mindful Body, 2018)

Mindfulness is about being fully aware of what is happening in this very moment. As Noa says, the body is one of the best vehicles for doing this. When you look or feel into your body you are noticing what is happening right now in this moment. Your body will also show and feel the history you haven’t let go of from the past, but it will do all that right now in this moment.

If you can observe your body without judgment, analysis or a story, and just feel what’s there right now this moment, you will deepen your capacity to free the load of the past and the worry about the future. This reality check with your body as it is now can help to break the old cycles and programs in your mind that are at the cause of much stress, strain, disease and malfunction.

So what are you noticing in your body right now?

Stop reading right now and just feel down and in – for say 30 seconds or more.

(Pause)……..

What are you noticing in your body now? Feel and tell the truth to yourself……..

Face a bit of what’s there…….

Accept it right now…….

Be with it – right now…….

And watch what happens. What moves by itself?

Keep breathing and allow more of the repair of your body and mind.

Releasing the Past, by Coming into the Present

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“If we know how to touch the present deeply, we can touch the past, and even transform it.”
(Thich Nhat Hanh, How To Fight, 2017)

The present moment is all that is ever real. What you are reading now is all that is real in this moment. What just happened or is about to happen in your life, isn’t real. The plans of the future and the memories of the past are just thought form imprints in your brain. They are not real. Your body responds as if they are real if you recall them. And if you recall them too often you can create anxiety that isn’t real either.

A daily body mindfulness practice helps you to stay more in the present moment. To not live as if past memories, and future made up memories, are real.

Learn to spend more time in the present rather than your memories. All of life is happening in this present moment. It can’t happen anywhere else.

And as you stay with the present moment awareness of your body, the past unfinished material will reveal itself. What you haven’t let go of will surface and it will feel as if it is happening now, and it is. Everything is either happening now or not at all. It may have started in the past, but you feel it now in the present moment.

So just staying with something difficult from the past, and staying in the present moment as you feel it, helps it to release and diminish in intensity. The trapped emotional charge (trauma) has a chance to let go and flow out.

This way, past old stresses and traumas can heal, complete and release in the light of the present moment. And your thinking mind doesn’t need to do anything. It doesn’t have to work it all out. All it needs to do is stay present deeply, in your body, right now.

Does it make sense that being more present releases the past? If you are habitually living from your past/future memories, it doesn’t make sense at all. Your thinking mind thinks the past actually still exists, that it is real. It isn’t. It is long gone, its just history now. A memory.
Only this moment exists. Ever.
And it is always this moment. Forever.
Well, how can it always be this moment you may ask?
And I’d like to ask you the best question of all.

IS IT NOW?

And the answer is…..Yes.
Ask this question at different times in the day, in the middle of the night, ask it whenever you want, the answer will always be the same, YES.
Ask it a trillion times over the next fifty years and the answer will still be the same, forever constant. YES.
So it follows that it is now forever.
It is this moment, forever.
And it is this moment that you ever need to be in….. Forever.

The Five Checks to do Every Morning

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Starting your day with a body mindfulness connection makes a huge difference to how well your day flows and how productive you are. The core questions to ask, and areas to check each morning are (in order of importance):

How grounded am I?
That is how well are you earthed to the ground. How solid do your feet feel below you when you get out of bed and start your day?

How centered am I?
Do you feel your center of gravity in, or just under, your belly button? Or is the centre of gravity in your head, where a lot of people have it? Which leads to the next question…

How embodied am I?
That is, how fully in your body do you feel? Are you residing in all of it, or just in parts? Are there parts that feel numb or hollow? Are there parts you don’t feel or can’t feel into? Do you feel a disconnect from the neck down? that is, does your head feel separate from your body?

How connected am I to the present moment?
How much of your awareness is operating in reality right now? How much are you aware of your present moment surroundings, without past and future thought forms and memories interfering?

They are probably the top four questions to ask automatically when you wake up each morning, the top four checks. Once they are handled, you can ask the next question…

How connected am I to the Universe?
Once you are in your body, then check how connected your awareness is to the outside world around you. Your sense of connection to the spirit of all people and living things. This plugs your intuition into the flow of the world.

Do all of the above each morning and you are in for a very productive and fulfilling day!

Connecting Deeper and Lowering Suicide Rates

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I was alarmed by the figures of youth suicide reported in the paper in Melbourne today. 3,128 (aged 15-44) died by suicide in a single year. This is almost three times the amount of deaths from car accidents each year. Every day, there are about 8 suicides and 180 attempts. So that means that there are 68,620 suicide attempts each year. That is a lot of pain and angst that people have within them which they do not know how to resolve and heal in a healthy way.

Such pain points to a massive disconnect within themselves and with those around them. This leads to a lot of trapped emotion in the body. If this build up isn’t released in a healthy way, the pain can reach levels where the only way out logically seems to be to kill oneself.

What’s also concerning is that many times, families and work colleagues do not see it coming. So what can you do?
Internally – a mindfulness practice is critical to connect you within yourself to create an outlet for this trapped emotional pain.
Externally – making more meaningful connections with your loved ones is critical. Don’t always assume they are okay just because they are not saying anything. One way to facilitate this is to ask people you care about meaningful questions and ask them often.

I’ll give some examples here but what is important to note is the state you are in when you ask them. You slow down, become mindful, connect within yourself first, and then ask the questions slowly, with a lot of care and then wait, giving the person a lot of time and space to answer. The person must feel safe to go a little deeper than normal. Going deeper requires more time otherwise you’ll just get a shallow response.

Questions:
What’s been on your mind that you think would be difficult to talk about?
What makes you sad about yourself? Sad about the world?
What do you wish you were able to do better, if it were possible?
What makes you angry about yourself? About the world?
When was the last time you got scared or a big fright?
What scares you about yourself? About the world?

Body Mindfulness – Healing Everything in the Here and Now

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After a long pause, this blog is back again. I haven’t gone away, the educational process has continued but the information has been published in other ways, mainly through my email newsletter subscriptions and now a bit more through Facebook. But now it is back here again here to offer more ongoing support and material to help you in your goals and life.

I have written a lot about mindfulness over the years and this is because of my weekly Mindfulness class which I run here in Melbourne at the Shambhala Centre, now it its seventh year running. Much of the blog information on mindfulness here on this page came from my Mindfulness newsletter. And resuming again today this will be no exception.

I love what learning body mindfulness and practicing regularly can do for people. Note that there is a big difference between just doing Mindfulness and, doing BODY Mindfulness. My expertise is in the body psychotherapies and that is all body mindfulness.

The more you practice body mindfulness the more the following paragraphs will begin to make sense.

The beauty of working with body mindfulness is it’s continual focus on your present moment sensations and feelings in your body now. If you want to work on any issue from past, present or future, if you think of it for a moment…it is always happening in your body NOW in this moment. Eckhart Tolle puts it well “Only the present can free you of the past”.

Anything you want resolved within you, focusing on your present moment body sensations that are here right NOW, is the big key.Why? Because it is always happening in your body right now. Anything unresolved that you haven’t let go of in the past, your body is still being affected by it now, in this moment, right now. In reality there is no past or future, It is all present now.

So as often as possible, come back to the here and now in your body.

“Attention is essential, but not to the past as past” (Tolle)
Your present moment experience in your body will reveal what ‘past’ stress is in your body right now. So face the here and now in your body and you heal the past (and future) simultaneously. The more you live in your mind/intellect, the more the above paragraphs will not make sense. Because you will be convinced that the past and future are real.  But they actually are not. They are just thought forms in your head. Memories.

Confused a little? Your intellect might be 🙂 because it is the creator of past and future thought forms and memories. But they are not now and never will be.

Are you living your life your way?

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“If you keep your attention in the body as much as possible, you will be anchored in the Now. You wont lose yourself in the external world and you won’t lose yourself in your mind. Thoughts and emotions, fears and desires, may still be there to some extent, but they wont take you over.” ( Eckhart Tolle – Page 117 The Power of NOW)

There are many benefits to Mindfulness body-based work. This is another major benefit. It gives you some separation from the demands of other people and organisations.

You begin to lose yourself if you take on too much of what other people tell you you should be doing, to succeed or to live. This also happens when you forget what feels right for you and you decide to follow the trend or herd. ‘They’ must know better because so many are living that way.

With mindfulness work, you come into your body field more. You begin to realise that you are a separate valid and important person and you can think for yourself. And only you really know what’s best for you. Even if it goes against the current norm. I loved it when my neighbour some years ago thought that I was ”weird” in how I ran my life. I loved hearing that because it confirmed I wasn’t living like the herd majority do. I was living my unique way.

An original. Free and alive.

Are you living your life your way? Or have you bought someone else’s plan entirely? Someone else’s plan is someone else’s plan! If it doesn’t include yours, then it’s not yours. That’s obvious to say, but unless you go within and contact yourself more, and therefore your body more, you will be all too easily swayed to following someone else’s plan, losing part of yourself to the external world. We are social creatures and need each other to survive well. But without deep contact within yourself first, you cannot be a clear and productive individual within your social and work groups.

I encourage you to live your way. That’s the best way 🙂

Enter The Quiet that is already there

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In my research travels I came across a quote recently that is worth noting here.

“Meditation is not a way of making your mind quiet. It is a way of entering into the quiet that is already there – buried under 50,000 thoughts the average person thinks every day”.
Deepak Chopra

This is very true in my experience. Underneath you are already whole, complete and perfect as a being. It’s all there, buried under years of built up traumas, negative experiences, well meaning parents, misdirection, unconscious friends and relatives etc.

Mindfulness meditation work redirects you to develop better habits with what’s most important – the real you. The free, alive, healthy, embodied you. And it is all there within you. The gold is sitting there inside. But you have to go in to free it.

The Self Healing Mindfulness Meditation classes I regularly run aim for just that, to build the time you spend where it really counts – within your inner body. Accessing more of who you really are, clearing out more of the old outdated unfinished patterns and emotions and giving more freedom to your cells to do the work they know how to do, but can’t because your thinking mind gets in the way.
That quote by Deepak is a nice reminder of who you really are. The more reminders we have each day, the easier it is to change old outdated habits we have been brought up with.

Talking about reminders, Eckhart Tolle is coming to Melbourne Australia November 18th this year. For a one evening talk. I highly recommend attending! Tickets through Ticketmaster.

What do you give Space for?

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What do you give Space for?
You know what you give money for and what you give your time for but, what do you give space for?
What is in your life that you stop, relax and open up to just being with?

This question will point you towards how mindfully and embodied you live your life.

How much time in a day or week do you spend where you can feel space around you and within you? This is different from down moments where you are exhausted, sleeping, smoking, eating or busy ‘relaxing’ watching TV. Although with watching TV, clients will often say that they just zone out and don’t really watch. If you do this, what you are actually doing is meditating with the noisy TV in the background. Why not just switch it off and meditate properly and give your mind and body a real proper deeper rest?

If there is no space in your life, it will feel like your life is rocketing by, without feeling like you are accomplishing much of what you really want. You can even begin to feel like a slave to others.

The more space that you allow – the more fuller, wiser, healthier, less-stressed, freer and fulfilling you will feel and be. Time then begins to slow down to what it really is….

…just this present moment.