Author: kindermind

Here’s a practice of visualising a circle of loving and kind human beings surrounding you. They can be people who know you, your family members, friends, colleagues, mentors, bosses who love or have been kind and supportive of you, or people whom inspire you by their kindness. Visualising that they’re sending you well wishes and likewise you are wishing them well. Choosing a well wishing phrase that’s powerful and meaningful to you. A meditation from Sharon Salzberg’s book Real Happiness.

Late Fragment, by Raymond Carver

And did you get what

you wanted from this life, even so?

I did.

And what did you want?

To call myself beloved,

to feel myself

beloved on the earth.

Guide: Noelle Lim

Image credit: Oleg Ivanov, Unsplash

It helps to nurture the positive parts of ourselves and make a point of paying attention to experiences that give us pleasure. Our automatic tendencies is to think of the worst case scenario, the unpleasant experiences. Sharon Salzburg in her book Real Happiness writes that it takes a conscious effort to include the positive. This is not intended to be phone positive nor to deny problems. The invitation is to pay attention to pleasant aspects of the day that we may easily overlook or ignore such as noticing a flower, a child’s hug, an acknowledgement from a pet. Then noticing the sensations of the emotion in the body, where and if there are any changing patterns. Also noticing what thoughts may be present as you bring to mind what’s pleasant and positive. Do you have a sense of feeling less confined or less stuck in automatic reactivity? Does the mind try to build stories around certain experiences? Maybe automatic negative thoughts tend to arise and may be hindering you from taking positive action.

A Birthday, by Christina Rossetti

My heart is like a singing bird
Whose nest is in a water’d shoot;
My heart is like an apple-tree
Whose boughs are bent with thickset fruit;

Guide: Noelle Lim

Image credit: Jae Park, Unsplash

In her book Real Happiness, Sharon Salzburg has a meditation around emotions. Starting with noting the tone of our thoughts or the feeling tone in the mind – does it feel calm? is it harsh? Noting it for example, “jealousy, jealousy”. Then location the emotion in the body, perhaps a knot in the stomach, the shoulders hunching up. Consciously resting in awareness, gently allowing emotions and feelings to be here as they are. Observe and not getting stuck in judging – “what am I feeling right now? What is its nature? Where am I experiencing it in my body?” Emotions come and go and the heart can infinitely heal if we allow it.

Poem from The Sun And Her Flowers, by Rupi Kaur

what is stronger 
than the human heart
which shatters over and over 
and still lives

Guide: Noelle Lim

Image credit: Ag Juwel, Unsplash

In her book Real Happiness, Sharon Salzburg writes Michelangelo was once asked how he would carve an elephant, and he replied “I would take a large piece of stone and take away everything that was not the elephant”. Cultivating attention is something like recognising what is not the elephant – letting go of what is not essential, not helpful. So we let go of what is distracting especially those that kill our wellbeing chewing on it. In daily life, it could mean saying no to what sucks up our energy with no helpful outcomes so that we can spend time on what will grow us.

Growth, Madison Greene

how could I love myself
and hate the memories that have molded me?
my roots are planted deep beneath the earth
but petal by petal I am growing
making peace with my past 
it hurts to stretch this much
but I have learned that I was made for more than just unraveling 
and look at how far I’ve come, at how much I’ve survived
I’ve learned to love my dark parts even if no one else will
I’ve learned how to walk fearlessly through the fires I face even if they burn me

Guide: Noelle Lim

Image credit: Priscilla du Preez, Unsplash

The practice of being intimate with oneself, our emotions and sensations, basically living, instead of residing in the head. Allowing each moment to unfold as it is. No need to judge, reason, and distract ourselves.

Self-Knowledge, by Kahlil Gibran (extract)

Say not, “I have found the truth,” but rather, “I have found a truth.”  
Say not, “I have found the path of the soul.” Say rather, “I have met the soul walking upon my path.”
For the soul walks upon all paths.
The soul walks not upon a line, neither does it grow like a reed.
The soul unfolds itself, like a lotus of countless petals.

Guide: Noelle Lim

Image credit: Paul Hanaoka, Unsplash

For the next few weeks, we will follow Sharon Salzberg’s book Real Happiness. So starting off with the classic meditation practice of deepening concentration by using the focus on the in and out breath. Whatever experiences that may arise, such as unpleasantness that may cause us to want to avoid, pleasantness that cause us to crave more, or neutral that we tend to ignore, we just let it be and return to the breath. The mind will wander to our to-do lists and storylines, we simply return to the breath.

Breathing (extract), by Thich Naht Hanh

Breathing in, I see myself as a flower.
I am the freshness
of a dewdrop.
Breathing out,
my eyes have become flowers.
Please look at me.
I am looking
with the eyes of love.

Breathing in, I have become space
without boundaries.
I have no plans left.
I have no luggage.
Breathing out, I am the moon
that is sailing through the sky of utmost emptiness.
I am freedom.

Guide: Noelle Lim

Image credit: Raoul Droog, Unsplash

In this practice, emotions become the object. In Pema Chodron’s book “How To Meditate”, she says when you’re meditating, notice when you’re hooked, when you’re triggered or activated. The first step is acknowledging emotion has arisen. Then dropping the story line (the judgments that appear in the mind) and lean in, connect in with spaciousness and opened to the emotion.

She calls this the pause practice, taking timeout for yourself. Completely toughing in to the emotion, without the story, leaning in to the quality and texture of the experience. How does sadness feel? How does the anger feel? Where is it in your body? She writes that emotion itself is a radical and very potent way of awakening.

We may tend to turn away from emotions due to the accompanying judgments and aversion. Here is an invitation to turn toward the emotions instead of keeping the unwelcome ones buried. Or else they’d continue to eat into us.

Evening, by Charles Simic

The snail gives off stillness.
The weed is blessed.
At the end of a long day
The man finds joy, the water peace.

Let all be simple. Let all stand still
Without a final direction.
That which brings you into the world
To take you away at death
Is one and the same;
The shadow long and pointy
Is its church.

At night some understand what the grass says.
The grass knows a word or two.
It is not much. It repeats the same word
Again and again, but not too loudly.

Guide: Noelle Lim

Image credit: Chris Abney, Unsplash

The mind’s function is to think. That is its nature, just like the body is to breathe, the heart to pump blood. Pema Chodron in her book “How To Meditate” writes that the motivation behind meditation (contrary to myths) is not to get rid of thoughts but to train the mind to reclaim its natural capacity to stay present and awake or wakeful. To remain steady. Rather than drifting off leaving us vulnerable to rumination.

One way to call yourself back is to label the activity and content as thinking, thinking. Judging, judging. And then returning to the breath.

Thanking a Monkey, by Kaveri Patel
(from An Invitation)

There’s a monkey in my mind
swinging on a trapeze,
reaching back to the past
or leaning into the future,
never standing still.

Sometimes I want to kill
that monkey, shoot it square
between the eyes so I won’t
have to think anymore
or feel the pain of worry.

But today I thanked her
and she jumped down
straight into my lap,
trapeze still swinging
as we sat still.

Guide: Noelle Lim

Image credit: Lucky Neko, Unsplash

Pema Chodron in her book “How To Meditate”, she writes about the importance of maintaining an atmosphere of unconditional friendliness or loving-kindness towards our practice. Instead of a somewhat aggressive meditation, filled with “I should’s”, the invitation is to discover who you are at your wisest, and who you are at your most confused. Meditation is intended to be a safe space to stay steadfastly with your sense of humanity and a wide range of emotions, sensations and impulses.

Pema writes, “unconditional friendliness is training being able to settle down with ourselves, just as we are, without labelling our experience as “good” or “bad”. We don’t need to become too dramatic or despairing about what we see in ourselves.” It’d be easier to come back to the present moment.

You could sit, and the mind is going wild or worried about something, yet you could still touch in to a settledness that you could feel with the mind, body and life. Being with the continuous succession of experiences in life, agreeable and disagreeable, with an open spirit, open heart and open mind, that’s what we are cultivating when we sit.

A Time To Talk, by Robert Frost

When a friend calls to me from the road

And slows his horse to a meaning walk,

I don’t stand still and look around

On all the hills I haven’t hoed,

And shout from where I am, What is it?

No, not as there is a time to talk.

I thrust my hoe in the mellow ground,

Blade-end up and five feet tall,

And plod: I go up to the stone wall

For a friendly visit.

Guide: Noelle Lim

Image credit: Loan, Unsplash

Scanning the body is one way to stay in the present moment. Here is a practice inspired by the Body Scan exercise in Pema Chodron’s book How To Meditate, and the poem below.

Meditations on Mindfulness, by Rachel E Watson

I meditate.

I scan my body,

noticing everything.

My left great toe, my right great toe,

my ankles and joints,

my parts great and small,

the sections that make me whole.

The winter in my heart,

the spring in my brain,

the fall in the pit of my stomach,

when I heard your life-changing news.

The summer I felt when last 

we were together.

In noticing myself, I’m here to observe,

not to judge or to blame.

But the factual truth about noticing,

is noticing won’t let me go.

In the rhythm of my breath,

the rise and fall of my chest,

I find new marching orders.

I reach inside and seize my plough,

ripping up those old, worn cow-paths

and seeding the ground 

with vibrant perennials.

A garden I sow

in the earth of my mind—

all because of this little thing

called noticing.

Guide: Noelle Lim

Image credit: Tracy Anderson, Unsplash

Often we live in our heads. Here is an invitation to step out and feel the body, using the body as an anchor whenever we are triggered or upset.

I am afraid to own a body, by Emily Dickinson

I am afraid to own a Body—
I am afraid to own a Soul—
Profound—precarious Property—
Possession, not optional—

Double Estate—entailed at pleasure
Upon an unsuspecting Heir—
Duke in a moment of Deathlessness
And God, for a Frontier.

Guide: Noelle Lim

Image credit: Lina Angelov, Unsplash