Tag: wednesdaypause

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Appreciation / Gratitude

Using appreciation or gratitude of the smallest thing, from the moment right now to the things that went well today, helps us stay present and less anxious about the future.

Count Your Blessings, William Henry Dawson

It’s strange but true that common things,
     Like sunshine, rain and snow,
The happy little bird that sings,
     The fragrant flowers that grow;
The meals with which we’re blessed each day,
     The sweet sleep of the night,
The friends who ever with us stay,
     The shadows and the light,
The tender care of mother dear,
     The kiss of loving wife,
The baby prattle that we hear –    
     The best things in our life –
Are not loved by us half so well
     As things that seem more rare.
For instance some old, broken bell,
     Or stone picked up somewhere;
An ancient coin with unknown date,
     An arrow head of stone,
Or piece of broken armor plate
     Worn by some one unknown.
Exclusive ownership we crave,
     No matter what the prize –
True from the cradle to the grave,
     Of foolish and of wise.
Oh, selfish mortal, don’t you know
     ’Twould better be, by far,
If you would train your love to grow
     Among the things that are
Just common to your daily life?
     You’ve blessings by the score,
Then why engage in constant strife
     For more, and more, and more?

Guide: Noelle Lim

Image credit: Nils, Unsplash

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Core Meditation – Breathing

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

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Breathing With The Emotion

When a strong feeling comes up, it will often be accompanied by a strong habitual pattern, writes Pema Chodron in her book How To Meditate. The pattern may be justification, defence, a story of avoidance or pleasure. The invitation is to wake up from this habitual pattern to dissolve the hold emotions have over us. It is done by breathing with the emotion, not labelling it as bad or good. So go to our experience and feel it directly with the breath rather than launching into a conceptual strategy of avoidance or reaction. If you just go to the breath without experiencing the emotion as well, this can be repressing emotions. So choosing not to act out by speaking, acting or dong. Neither choosing not to repress. We are simply watching and breathing with the emotion.

Breathe, by Timothy

My breath is my anchor
I return there for peace
Uninvited emotions
Yet together they meet
A chest wide disruption
An intensifying beat
Until a grateful exhale
Kicks them out on the street

Guide: Noelle Lim

Image credit: Tuqa Nabi, Unsplash

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Becoming Intimate With Emotions

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

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The Monkey Mind

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

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Unconditional Friendliness

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

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Keep Coming Back

One essential ingredient in meditation is the attitude we bring to the practice. The word “attitude” could trigger some discomfort if we’ve heard it often, something our parents and bosses say to us, go fix your attitude. In the context of mindfulness meditation, attitude is something kind and gentle.

In this practice, the attitude we invite is one of keep coming back, inspired by a chapter in Pema Chodron’s book “How to Meditate”. Keep coming back to say the breath or a part of the body whenever the mind drifts off, usually down a rabbit hole of habitual thoughts, such as self-blame or blaming others or our circumstances. While it appears perfectly justifiable and valid to do so, we have to ask if this is helpful to our wellbeing and in breaking out of our suffering or finding a solution to our woes. So keep coming back is an invitation to disrupt our habitual thinking process and come back to the present moment, so that we could start to see situations with a fresh perspective, with unlimited possibilities, and with joy and equanimity.

In the arc of your mallet, by Rumi (extract)

Don’t go anywhere without me.
Let nothing happen in the sky apart from me,
or on the ground, in this world or that world,
without my being in its happening.
Vision, see nothing I don’t see.
Language, say nothing.
The way the night knows itself with the moon,
be that with me. Be the rose
nearest to the thorn that I am.

Guide: Noelle Lim

Image credit: Anton Lochov, Unsplash

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Practice Of Letting Go

Adapted from Pema Chodron’s book “How To Meditate”, this is a practice of letting go using the breath. Starting with knowing, acknowledging you are breathing, then transitioning to feeling the sensations of breathing in and out, following the flow, just watching. Not needing to rush, nor breathe in any particular way. And if you have difficulties with breathing or with any prior breathing practices, as best as you can, just watching the breath. It may come across easy, gentle or may be unpleasant. As you are still sitting up, you are fine. As best as you can, staying with the practice, and allowing with care and kindness.

By focusing on the breath as the object of the meditation, noticing how impermanent each breath is. Coming, going, every changing, always flowing. As you are on it, developing the mind, training to mind to stay in present to the impermanence of things like thoughts, emotions, sights and sounds and physical sensations. Whenever the attention floats away, gently guiding it back to the breath.

Excerpt from Mary Oliver’s poem from In Blackwood Waters

To live in this world
you must be able
to do three things:
to love what is mortal;
to hold it

against your bones knowing
your own life depends on it;
and, when the time comes to let it go,
to let it go.

Guide: Noelle Lim

Image credit: Alexander London, Unsplash

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I Scan The Body

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

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Touching In With The Present Moment

Will be referring to Pema Chodron’s book How to Meditate as a guide for Wednesday Pause mindfulness meditations in the next few months.

Here we start by stabilising the mind by settling, allowing yourself to be completely as you are, a sense of being here and what you are bringing along, touching in with the present moment as it is, not needing to cancel out any thoughts, feelings or sensations, or adding justifications and reasoning. What is here is what it is. Nothing more, nothing less. Pema writes that the only thing you can measure your meditation against is the question: “Was I present or not?” Even if the mind drifted off, you are noticing and recognising that, you are being present or a sense of awareness of what is happening.

You are there, by Erica Jong

You are there.
You have always been
there.
Even when you thought
you were climbing
you had already arrived.
Even when you were
breathing hard,
you were at rest.
Even then it was clear
you were there.

Not in our nature
to know what
is journey and what
arrival.
Even if we knew
we would not admit.
Even if we lived
we would think
we were just
germinating.

To live is to be
uncertain.
Certainty comes
at the end.

Guide: Noelle Lim

Image credit: Humberto Arellano, Unsplash

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Body Sensations

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

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Mental Stamina

Reading this book Don’t Quit Your Day Job by Aliza Knox, I learn to see resilience as a form of mental stamina. Not so nice things can happen to us. How we respond to them can further shape outcomes. So practicing mindfulness, staying in the present moment, instead of living in the past or future, is a way to cultivate mental stamina. Of course, it does not mean we should stop planning or reflect on possible future outcomes. Staying in the present moment is an invitation to find balance between the here and now and not getting obsessed about the past or being fixated about the future and getting upset when things do not go our way.

Nature has a way of teaching us how to accept the bad and good, as written by William Wordsworth in his poetry A Character.

I marvel how Nature could ever find space 
For so many strange contrasts in one human face: 
There’s thought and no thought, and there’s paleness and bloom 
And bustle and sluggishness, pleasure and gloom. 

There’s weakness, and strength both redundant and vain; 
Such strength as, if ever affliction and pain 
Could pierce through a temper that’s soft to disease, 
Would be rational peace—a philosopher’s ease. 

There’s indifference, alike when he fails or succeeds, 
And attention full ten times as much as there needs; 
Pride where there’s no envy, there’s so much of joy; 
And mildness, and spirit both forward and coy. 

There’s freedom, and sometimes a diffident stare 
Of shame scarcely seeming to know that she’s there, 
There’s virtue, the title it surely may claim, 
Yet wants heaven knows what to be worthy the name. 

This picture from nature may seem to depart, 
Yet the Man would at once run away with your heart; 
And I for five centuries right gladly would be 
Such an odd such a kind happy creature as he.

Guide: Noelle Lim

Image credit: Biel Morro, Unsplash

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Experiencing

Too often the mind glosses through moments, hurries towards the next item on the to-do list, or chooses to zone out, distracts itself by binging on movies. Here is an invitation to respond differently by pausing and experiencing each moment as it is – training the mind in steadiness.

Experiencing, Steven Cowling

Let me take the time to notice
    the breathing of a sleeping cat,
    the sun reflecting from a crow’s back,
    the sparkles in a field of snow.

Let me feel the pen glide across the page
    and listen to the scratching
    of the nib against the paper.

Let me savor the simple pleasures in
    sipping a cup of tea or
    reading a well-turned phrase.

May I never let the rush of daily life
    trap me in my mind where
    I cannot see the wonders
    in the world around me.

Guide: Noelle Lim

Image credit: Amy Chen, Unsplash

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Patience As A Virtue

The practice of patience is slowing down by breathing slowly, then noticing our breathing and pausing, Each time an impulse arises to do something, to say something, slow down using the breathe, breath and pause before acting. We’re less likely to be reactive.

Patience, by Jewel

they say its a key
but I don’t need to unlock it
when I’ve seen
what’s behind them

it doesn’t prevent it
but rather demotivates
me 

Yet I sustain
my hope
and wonder.

I push on
until I set off
and I do so 
with as much knowledge
in my head 
as I have power
in my legs.

Guide: Noelle Lim

Image credit: Tuqa Nabi, Unsplash

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She Let Go

On International Women’s Day, we take special care to celebrate women. As women, we celebrate our humanity and let go the need to be perfect, to trust that we do not need to be everything everywhere all at once. This is the essence of today’s practice.

She Let Go, Safire Rose (extract)

She just let go.

No one was around when it happened.

There was no applause or congratulations.

No one thanked her or praised her.

No one noticed a thing.

Like a leaf falling from a tree, she just let go.

There was no effort.

There was no struggle.

It wasn’t good and it wasn’t bad.

It was what it was, and it is just that.

In the space of letting go, she let it all be.

A small smile came over her face.

A light breeze blew through her.

And the sun and the moon shone forevermore…

Guide: Noelle Lim

Image credit: Maria Lupan, Unsplash

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Watching Boredom

We tend to drop out of meditating when it is perceived to be boring, and question the need for it. This is an opportunity to use boredom as the object of our meditation, to watch it, and practice the skill of being with unwelcome situations while steadying our cravings, reactions and impulses.

Bored Poem, Margaret Atwood (extract)

Why do I remember it as sunnier 
all the time then, although it more often 
rained, and more birdsong? 
I could hardly wait to get 
the hell out of there to 
anywhere else. Perhaps though 
boredom is happier. It is for dogs or 
groundhogs. Now I wouldn’t be bored. 
Now I would know too much. 
Now I would know.

Guide: Noelle Lim

Image credit: Scott Serhat Duygun, Unsplash

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Let Me Be At Ease

This practice is about cultivating easing ourselves into whatever emotions that arise whenever things do not go our way or when something upsets us. Ensuring we are not overly gripped by our feelings and say or do something that will cause us or others harm.

I’ll be okay, by Leeann Rose

A cool breeze , makes me feel free

A cup of coffee or tea , is soothing to me ..

A lit candle burning, puts me at ease ..

A walk around the block, the children laughing makes me smile.

A cruel world, they know nothing about ..

I’m still

Living in the moments,

trying to figure it all out

Some days are harder than most ..

I find strength within..

I know I’ll be okay ..

Never forgetting to breathe.

One day at a time.

Guide: Noelle Lim

Image credit: Aleksandar Cvetanovic, Unsplash

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Compassion

When we try to practice compassion towards someone who tends to trigger strong negative emotions within us, we may get stuck and end up ruminating and feeling conflicted in the process. This is a practice of compassion without needing to think, justify or force any particular feelings by accepting whatever that arises as they are.

Hope, by Emily Dickinson

Hope is the thing with feathers –

That perches in the soul –

And sings the tune without the words –

And never stops – at all –

I’ve heard it in the chillest land –

And on the strangest Sea –

Yet – never – in Extremity,

It asked a crumb – of me.

Guide: Noelle Lim

Image credit: Jacek Poblocki, Unsplash

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Not Taking Ourselves Too Seriously

We’re vulnerable to triggers if we take ourselves and whatever experiences that arise too seriously ie when we’re attached to our selves or sense of self. Of course, we have to be discerning about our boundaries. Here is a practice of merely observing, and not taking everything that arises so seriously to learn to let go.

Beautiful World, written by Isabelle Thye

It is sad that sometimes people focus on what is lacking instead of what is thriving. We can never diminish differences, but love, life, and gratitude are living things that could grow bigger and bigger.

Sometimes I fell into this trap and felt miserable too.

It’s okay that not everyone sees what you see, don’t take yourself too seriously. I’ll remind myself when I come back to my senses.

My life means something when I can write like this.

While I am here, the world is too beautiful to not enjoy it.

Guide: Noelle Lim

Image credit: Uriel Soberanes, Unsplash

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Managing Cravings, Desires, Hungers

It is humanly to crave for recognition, praise, love to avoid being abandoned, and that is why there is unhappiness. Even if we get what we want, the mind will be grasping for the next thing. It’s never satisfied!

Cravings manifest in thoughts (“I must do this”), feelings (anxiety, frustration), body sensations (tightness), impulses to do something such as eat, binge on Netflix, smoke or engage in extreme or compulsive behaviour. The invitation is to practice RAIN – Recognize, Anchor, Investigate, Nourish.

Recognize – we start by recognising what thoughts, feelings, body sensations and impulses are here, and not judging ourselves and needing to act on the cravings especially those unhelpful ones as that would only keep us locked in the cycle of unhappiness.

Anchor – Then we tame the wild mind by anchoring or directing the attention to the breath or a body part say the feet.

Investigate – After the meditation, we reflect on four questions about cravings as mentioned in the recording. It is crucial that we achieve some sense of stability before contemplating on these questions.

Nourish – Throughout the practice, we send kindness toward ourselves and others to nourish the being.

Above The Silence, Line Gauthier

i listen for the sound of you
as the sun parades across the sky
i listen for the sound of you
when the moon outshines the stars

i reach out there in the beyond
and crave to hear the velvet of your voice
it soothes me to the core 
and calms the chaos of my mind

Guide: Noelle Lim

Image credit: Fuu J, Unsplash