Empty Mind or Open Mind?

“The point of meditation is not to perfect yourself but to improve your capacity to love.”
– Jack Kornfield

“Familiarity leads to wisdom.” -Buddha

“The best way out is always through.” -Robert Frost

This is the first in a series called “Meditations on Meditation.” They are intended to help beginning and experienced meditators consider their intentions and motivations as they walk a mindful path.

When I began to meditate, I thought of it as a new tool to help me figure things out, to fix or eliminate whatever was bothering me. I had all of these questions, “Why am I feeling so frustrated?”, “What am I going to do with the rest of my life?”, “Am I past my prime?” I figured that as I became more focused, I would answer these questions and move on. I would literally meditate my worries away. But that’s not what happened. Thankfully, by sticking with it, I learned that this practice is not yet another self-improvement project but a way of living and thinking. The questions didn’t get answered but I was able to reflect on them without needing to figure them out.

This common graphic can easily be misunderstood as suggesting mindfulness is about blocking out everything that isn’t happening right in front of your eyes. As it turns out, our thoughts ARE in the present moment. Sure, we might ruminate on regrets of the past or opportunities in the future. That’s okay! What is most important is how we relate to them.

Should I “empty” my mind or be with what is?

Many beginning meditators come to Center For Self-Care feeling overwhelmed or at their wits’ end. Others have a basic familiarity and want to learn more. Either way, there are some common pitfalls that can make the benefits of meditation elusive. It is worth considering what the “point” of meditation is. In the early days, I’ll hear complaints like “I can’t stop thinking,” “This is just making me more frustrated,” or “I’m afraid I’m doing it wrong.” If you are thinking these thoughts, you are probably doing it right!

For me, the point of meditation is not to empty one’s mind or reach enlightenment, or even become more focused and productive. It’s about feeling what we are feeling while we are feeling it. It’s about being aware of what’s happening in this moment and relating to it with kindness. Ultimately, this allows us to respond thoughtfully instead of reacting habitually to whatever arises. The good news: relaxation, stillness, clarity and happiness are wonderful byproducts of intentional and consistent practice

Below, I’ve listed some of the motivations our clients have shared as they come to meditation. Take a look at the right column to consider a different way to approach these questions. Allow yourself to rest in these questions without needing to answer them or get them right.

If you’re hoping for this . . .	. . . try this out instead
I want to feel relaxed I want to empty my mind I want to figure it out I want to get it right I want to be happy	Can I pay curious attention? Can I let thoughts come?  Can I become intimate and familiar? Can I just put my body there?  Can I cultivate resilience?

This work takes practice. Consider three components of a vibrant mindfulness practice,

• Regular Meditation
  • Try 7 Mindful Minutes or Meditation Challenge or visit us on iTunes or Insight Timer
• Supportive Community
  • Join us every Monday at 7:15pm for Simply Meditation in Devon, PA
• Time for Intensive Exploration
  • We offer one-on-one training or try out our retreats including Meditations on a Meaningful Life: A Retreat about Aging and Change this April 17-19 near Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania

Give the Gift of Meditation For The New Year

Would you or your loved one like to …

… be more patient and relaxed?
… be less reactive and stressed?
… be more present and engaged?

Give the gift of Meditation this holiday season.

Marc Balcer, Josh Gansky and Center For Self-Care have been teaching mindfulness meditation with a special focus on men, middle age and the workplace for nearly a decade. We help people create space in their experience to respond thoughtfully instead of react habitually. Many see improvements in sleep, focus and relationships. 

Get started today with our Jumpstart Package, three customized 30-minute online or in-person meditation training sessions for just $150. Introductory 75-minute session for $125 and a 5-session Mindful Tools for Stress Management for $495 are also available.

These time-tested practices can help let go of:
• grudges
• the need to be right
• exhaustion as a status symbol
• unreasonable expectations

Visit tiny.cc/C4SC to purchase a package today.

Harnessing Your Energy

As we dive deeper into the holiday season, we often find our energy fluctuating wildly from an excited adrenaline rush to an overwhelmed exhaustion. This is a natural response to the increase in stimuli triggered by upcoming family gatherings, travel adventures and changes in routine. This post offers some nifty tools for harnessing your energy based on the work of my teacher Jonathan Foust and Body-Centered Inquiry.

It is no secret that our bodies were engineered for simpler yet far more dangerous times. 20,000 years ago, we needed some sort of system that sensed threat and immediately reacted. This kept us from being eaten by tigers and mauled by bears. This fight-or-flight response relied on the amygdala sensing danger and unleashing a waterfall of hormones including adrenaline and cortisone. The act of running or hiding from the tiger or the bear naturally dissipated these “stress chemicals” and we returned to a biological rest. Today, these physical threats are tucked away in zoos. But we still have the same biological response to stress. Cortisol explodes throughout our body. And then it gets stuck. Instead of running and burning off the stress chemicals, they get stuck inside. Over the long-term, chronic stressors increase our risk of high blood pressure, heart disease and diabetes. So we must find “artificial” methods to get that energy flowing. My favorite morning practice comes from Lee Holden,

Once we’ve got the energy flowing, it becomes easier to observe and listen to the body, finding its natural rhythm and energy. One of my favorite practices works great after movement and comes from Jonathan Foust, Slow Motion Energy,

As we listen to the body, there are three foundational messages to consider,

We hold our issues in our tissues

With the backup of cortisol in our system, our emotions find their way into that knotty stomach ache or stiff back. How do we resolve that?

Where the attention flows, the energy goes

When we focus our attention, we can redirect our energy, especially from unpleasant sensations to a more wholesome state.

The neurons that fire together, wire together

This is the basis of neuroplasticity and the promise of mindfulness. Intentional action can becomes hard-wired as a habit with continued practice. When it comes to energy, can we identify those things that give us energy and those things that drain our energy? Armed with this knowledge, we can choose those things that give us energy when we need it.

Click Above For a Handy Worksheet

It’s true that when I am bored and don’t know what to do, I have a tendency to reach for my phone and read political news. That drains the life out of me. Conversely, any time I jump on the bike and ride, make a call to a close friend or stop to read just 10 pages of a book, I become energized. Tasks that seemed impossible earlier seem more realistic or easier. So, how to remember to do those things that give us energy. We need reminders!

The guided practice below was introduced to me by Jonathan Foust and begins with some seated movement before inviting the meditator to make a list of those energy gainers and drainers and then ask yourself some questions. For Gainers, “What would I have to give up to do more of these things?” or for Drainers, “If I didn’t do this now, what would happen?” I encourage you to write down what you discover and place it prominently next to your computer screen, refrigerator or some other high traffic area. Then, when you are in doubt about what to do next, pick an energy gainer.

Try these out for yourself and let me know how it goes!

These Are A Few Of My Favorite Things, Part 1

Having just returned from our fall men’s meditation retreat, Getting Unstuck, I am inspired by the diligence, wisdom and compassion of this year’s participants. They made the teachings come alive by applying them to their own experiences. Over the coming days, I thought I’d share some of my “favorite things” from the retreat.

Movement

We used energizing movement to wake us up each morning before the crack of dawn. I use this “go to” movement exercise from Jonathan Foust almost every day before meditation.

We even made our own movement tribute video but I’m not exposing the video on an unsuspecting public,

Qi Kong instructor Lee Holden has some amazing courses and a handful of free resources that we brought to the weekend,

Making It RAIN

We brought the rain so hard, it turned in to snow and ice!

Tara Brach has popularized the practice of RAIN – Recognize, Allow, Investigate and Nourish. This four-step model helps us work with challenges and difficulty, cultivating a resource state to integrate whatever we face into our lived experience.

Seeing Deeply

Up next, a talk on the practice of clearing the space and identifying what is between you and feeling free/happy/good about yourself,

Loving Awareness

This year’s retreat included Movie Night for the first time. We watched the short documentary, Going Home, which features teacher Ram Dass as he confronts mortality and embraces the spirit of love. If you have Netflix, this is a must-watch.

Comfortable With Uncertainty

“I’ve been learning to meditate. I didn’t realize all you have to do is sit there with your eyes closed, and worry about everything.” – Joe Zimmerman

A traditional focused breathing meditation often includes the instructions “No need to try to change anything or make it a certain way. Instead, observe your experience unfold, returning again and again to the breath when you become distracted.” Aside from being easier said than done, practicing in this way builds the muscle of attention and discernment. It offers an invitation to sit with the uncertainty of each moment. Intrusive thoughts, strong emotions and sensations in the body call for your attention and you explore the choice to let them go or follow the story.

As Danna Faulds writes in her beautiful poem, Allow, “The only safety lies in letting it all in – the wild and the weak; fear, fantasies, failures and success.” Some themes emerge as one contemplates uncertainty,

• There is no end to uncertainty
• There are rich tools & technologies for working with uncertainty
• The task may not be to change one’s circumstances but instead to change one’s relationship with them in order to heal.

These present a challenge to the fixing mind. So often, we focus on probabilities and not possibilities, thus foreclosing options and ideas that might bring contentment or relief.

“Doubt is an uncomfortable condition, but certainty is a ridiculous one.” – Voltaire

The audio above comes from Everyday Mindfulness, a series of free workshops held in Fall 2019 at the Tredyffrin Library in Strafford. Join us for our final session, How To Cultivate Self-Compassion, on Wednesday, November 20 from 7 to 8:30pm.

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Our habit patterns tend to make our feeling of uncertainty worse. Whether we are procrastinators or perfectionists or even ignorers, these responses can reinforce our feeling of powerless in the midst of uncertainty as we amp up the pressure to control our experience.

One tool you might try comes from Tim Ferriss, author of The 4-Hour Workweek, who offers a strategy based on questions for accomplishing what we want to do. Too often, we set goals without clear plans for achieving them. We get blocked by obstacles or procrastinate. Ferriss turns the goal setting process on its head by offering Fear Setting.

Here are Tim’s questions when faced with a problem, issue, situation or upcoming decision:

Define → What’s the worst thing that could happen?
Prevent → What could you do to prevent this from happening?
Repair → What could you do to correct it if and when it happens?

What might the benefits of an attempt or a partial success be?

If I avoid this action or decision & decisions like it, what will my life look like in 6, 12, 36 months?

The point is not to masterfully and fully answer these questions but instead to see what arises. When I last undertook this exercise, I used an example of a business opportunity I’m pursuing. Asking “What’s the worst thing that could happen?” elicited the response, “It might not work” and “I could be embarrassed“. As I reflected on those worst cases, I felt a softening and a loosening because those weren’t actually all that bad when I investigated them. I did, however, consider the “repair” question to better plan for an adverse outcome and how I would respond.

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A final thought on uncertainty. Stepping out of our “story” and into our experience . . .

Bugs in a Bowl, by David Budbill

Han Shan, that great and crazy, wonder-filled Chinese poet of a thousand years ago, said:

We’re just like bugs in a bowl. All day going around never leaving their bowl.

I say, That’s right! Every day climbing up
the steep sides, sliding back.

Over and over again. Around and around.
Up and back down.

Sit in the bottom of the bowl, head in your hands,
cry, moan, feel sorry for yourself.

Or. Look around. See your fellow bugs.
Walk around.

Say, Hey, how you doin’?
Say, Nice bowl!

One last resource I recommend is Pema Chodron’s beautiful book, Comfortable With Uncertainty. Two chapters that particularly resonate with me are “Wisdom of No Escape” on page 7 and “Staying in the Middle” on page 47.

Self-Compassion Isn’t Selfish

What do you say to a friend that is struggling, failing or suffering? Most of us have great care and compassion when we encounter a loved one going through difficult times. We seek to listen, to comfort, to empathize and to help. We say things like, “I see how hard this is for you” or “You are doing the best that you can.” But what do you say to yourself when you are struggling? I am guessing it’s a bit different. You are not alone if you say something like “How could I be so stupid?” or “I am a disaster.”

Over the last few weeks, I’ve been teaching self-compassion, beginning each session with these two questions. It seems each group enjoys sharing their insights on how to support a friend. And then I offer the second question. Suddenly, body language shifts. Perhaps an audible “Uh-oh!” is declared as we together recognize that perhaps we need to flip the Golden Rule on its head. For all the care and compassion we offer to others, we usually reserve a healthy dose of judgment and criticism for ourselves. Do unto ourselves as we would do unto others. At least when it comes to compassion.

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Kristin Neff wrote the book on Self-Compassion. She attributes much of the self-flagellation we impose to cultural norms that suggest self-criticism is a great motivator. As if when we give ourself compassion, we’ll just give ourselves a free pass for every one of our transgressions and end up lazy and broke. Research suggests that the opposite is true and I agree based on my experience. When we practice self-compassion, we snap out of the illusion of perfectionism and are more willing to take risks. More willing to try knowing that we might fail and failing is okay. Neff identifies three components to self-compassion: Self-Kindness, Shared Experience and Mindfulness. Check it out below,

The next time you catch your self-critic beating up on you, try the Self-Compassion Break by Kristin Neff. Simply come to stillness and silently repeat the following phrases,

• This is a moment of suffering.
• Suffering is part of the human condition.
• May I be kind to myself in this moment.
• May I give myself the compassion I need right now.

I’ve provided some additional writings, talks and guided practices that will support you on your self-compassionate journey,

The Art Of Self-Compassion, A Personal Reflection

The Art of Self-Compassion, Meeting The Critic

Meditation for Beginners: Joy

“Sometimes your joy is the source of your smile, but sometimes your smile can be the source of your joy.” ― Thich Nhat Hanh

In the Buddhist tradition, there are four immeasurable qualities, four qualities of the awakened heart. They include compassion, lovingkindness, equanimity and joy. This post summarizes our final workshop this winter.

I think of myself as a compassion and kindness person, but joy, I’m not so sure it is for me. I feel happy and content, but joy feels a bit too active (and uncontrollable) for me. But joy can serve as both the input and the output of our practice as Thich Nhat Hanh describes above. I don’t have to feel it in any particular moment, but I’m always able to explore it.

As I prepared this week’s session, I gave myself time to intentionally practice joy. Joy is close cousins with gratitude so it seemed appropriate for the season. Beginning with gratitude can be an on-ramp to joy as we recognize the good things in our lives and the circumstances and people that brought them about. But it is important to specify what we mean by joy. The Pali/Sanskrit word Muditā means a certain kind of joy, an Appreciative or Empathetic Joy. One of my favorite meditations on joy comes from Brian Dean Williams and can be heard below.

Williams offers four phrases to silently repeat as we visualize someone we know who is doing really well right now:

May your happiness increase.
May your success continue to grow.
May you continue to create the conditions for peace and freedom in your life.
I see your success and I wish for it to grow. 

While meditating on joy can help settle the mind and make one feel more connected and happy, the most exciting quality to me is these empathetic qualities. Usually we think of empathy in terms of identifying and connecting with difficult emotions in others. But can it work the other way around? By finding joy in others, we can awaken the joy that lives in each of us. And there are many gates to joy including integrity, generosity, gratitude, trust, mindfulness and connection.

I’ve been practicing with an image of my son recently, who is doing really well. As I work through the practice, repeating phrases like “May you continue to create the conditions for peace and freedom in your life,” I open up a bit. I say to myself, “Wait, things are going pretty well for you as well.” Its okay to be joyful now.

How beautiful to think, “I know how you feel” when we see another person full of joy and delight! This activation carries the secret – that we hold the tools for joy inside of us. With presence, mindfulness, and of course practice, we can find joy and experience its benefits. This joy can be abundant and boundless, able to be experienced by others without limiting its effect. Jack Kornfield has a wonderful talk that you can enjoy below,

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Mindfulness practice can be boiled down to three things: catching yourself, being gentle and beginning again. We do this over and over, no matter how many times we become lost in thought or distracted by a feeling. In our workshops, we have practiced returning our attention and even naming our distraction. In the practice below, we use a physical smile to gently guide ourselves by to our breath, the focus of our observation. Try it out here:

Another nourishing practice is called coherent breathing. Turns out, they’ve even patented it (how can one patent breathing?) In this practice, you balance the rhythm of breathing, allow the breath to easily flow from inhale to exhale. At its simplest, you can simply count to 5 or 6 during each in breath and begin again, counting to 5 or 6 on the out breath. This practice can take us out of our reactive, fight or flight mode, by regulating the body and calming our emotions. Try it with this great guided practice from Jonathan Foust.

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What brings joy to your heart? Let us know what you think and visit us to learn more. I have written and spoken extensively about joy in these and other articles: Where Does Joy Come From and How Can I Get It?, More Time for Joy, and The Power of A Smile.

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A Mindful Pause:
Finding Refuge And Peace In A Busy Life
at Bryn Mawr College

Sunday, April 28

Bryn Mawr College

Half-Day and Full-Day retreat options

Join us for our for a retreat suitable for both first-time and longtime meditators. In our morning sessions, we will explore simplicity, patience, gratitude and joy with guided meditations, teachings and discussion. Then stay with us in the afternoon as we bring these teachings into practice through sensory activities, movement, partner work and real-life application.

Register here

Meditation For Beginners: Equanimity

We continued our Cultivating The Heart series with the topic of equanimity. Our work over these classes examines the Four Immeasurable Qualities of the Heart or the Brahmavihāras. The first two, compassion and lovingkindness,  are states that we can cultivate and incline our minds towards. But this isn’t to the exclusion of unpleasant qualities – the true practice of meditation is feeling what we are feeling while we are feeling it. When we are sad or grieving or frustrated or furious, it is helpful to be able to identify this so our words and actions reflect who we are and not the state that we are in.

This winter, Center For Self-Care, in conjunction with Balanced For Life Yoga Therapy, offers four stand-alone beginner’s meditation workshops in Wayne, Pennsylvania. The series is called “Cultivating The Heart.” Each week, two meditations are offered, one from the tradition of insight meditation and one from the tradition of mindfulness meditation. We’d love you to join us. But if you can’t, you can find resources and recordings to try this out yourself at home.

We opened with a simple practice, Twenty Breaths, for bringing mindfulness to whatever we are doing in the moment. This practice can help us reset in a busy day.

Equanimity is often thought of as a synonym for balance, or even peace. As it turns out, there are actually two Pali words that are usually translated as equanimity. The first, Upekkha reflects a “seeing with patience,” an awareness that includes some wisdom. Sounds a bit like mindfulness, no? The other word, Tatramajjhattata, literally means “to stand in the middle of all this.” The practice of equanimity is just as much about being with whatever is happening as about balancing it all out.

And thank goodness! The day of this evening workshop, I taught seven straight classes to 7th through 11th graders, coached two sports and stayed up too late the night before. But through it all, I could find brief periods to notice and allow my experience.

Equanimity reflects a fairness and even-mindedness of the mind/heart that can be cultivated with mindfulness and meditation. Releasing the effort to make things a certain way, we instead “become aware of the waves and rest seated in the midst of them.” Below are two practices you can try to arrive at this awareness:

Here are some books that I’ve found helpful in this exploration: The Five Invitations: Discovering What Death Can Teach Us About Living Fully by Frank Ostaseski and The Three Marriages: Reimagining Work, Self and Relationship by David Whyte. Among Ostaseski’s invitations are to “Find a place of rest in the midst of things” and “Welcome everything, push away nothing.” Whyte addresses the question of finding balance by reminding us that it isn’t just about “work/life” balance but is instead a delicate dance of our vocations, our relationships and our selves. When we try to compartmentalize things that aren’t going right, they infect the other arenas in life. Our task instead is to integrate these three marriages because they just can’t be separated.

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“When you look at a tree during a storm, you see that its branches and leaves are swaying back and forth violently in the strong wind. You have the impression that the tree will not be able to withstand the storm. Like the tree, you feel vulnerable. You can break at any time. But if you direct your attention down to the trunk of the tree, you see things differently. You see that the tree is solid and deeply rooted in the ground. If you focus your attention on the trunk of the tree, you realize that because the tree is firmly rooted in the soil, it cannot be blown away.” -Thich Nhat Hanh, Fear

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Equanimity is not about ignoring what’s happening or being indifferent to it. Jack Kornfield describes how we can appear serene by standing stoically and may even find a bit of peace or relief as we withdraw or seclude. Indifference, he adds, is based on fear, “True equanimity is not a withdrawal; it is a balanced engagement with all aspects of life. It is opening to the whole of life with composure and ease of mind, accepting the beautiful and terrifying nature of all things.”

One traditional meditation comes directly from Jack Kornfield’s book The Art of Forgiveness, Lovingkindness and Peace. Find Jack’s version here or listen below to cultivate the qualities of equanimity.

In this practice, we offer phrases that include

• May I be balanced and at peace.
• May I have true equanimity.
• May I learn to see the arising an passing of all things with equanimity and balance.
• May I bring compassion and equanimity to the events of the world.
• May I find balance and equanimity and peace amidst it all.

As we continue through the meditation, we bring loved ones, strangers, even difficult people to our imagination, offering these wishes to them as well. We do this with a deep self-compassion as we remember, Your happiness and suffering depend on your actions and not on my wishes for you.

The practice of meditation can lead us to an experience of equanimity. But it requires work. I think to the three refugees in Buddhist tradition: Buddha, Dharma, and Sangha. By practicing regularly with love (Buddha), learning and inquiring (Dharma) and gathering in community (Sangha), we can deepen and reinforce a practice that can be a lifelong companion.

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Join us on Thursday, March 14 at 6:30pm for our final session of Meditation for Beginners, Cultivating the Heart. Our focus with be Joy.

Want more? Register today for A Mindful Pause: Finding Refuge and Peace in a Busy Life on Sunday, April 28 at Bryn Mawr College. Choose from a morning or full-day option. This offering is by donation and is suitable to all levels of experience including brand-new beginners.

Meditation For Beginners: Loving-Kindness

“Repetition of simplicity leads to insight.” – David Nichtern

This winter, Center For Self-Care, in conjunction with Balanced For Life Yoga Therapy, offers four stand-alone beginner’s meditation workshops in Wayne, Pennsylvania. The series is called “Cultivating The Heart.” Each week, two meditations are offered, one from the tradition of insight meditation and one from the tradition of mindfulness meditation. We’d love you to join us. But if you can’t, you can find resources and recordings to try this out yourself at home.

We began our second session with a simple practice from Jonathan Foust called, “Moving From Thought to Sensation.” We spend so much of our days analyzing, judging and comparing. This important function kept our ancestors alive 20,000 years ago when they were being chased by wild animals. It also serves a critical role in advances in the field of science, technology and medicine. But sometimes, a different state of mind is called for. A state where we use our sense to arrive in the present moment.

Next, we explored the practice of loving-kindness. In practice, we bring images to mind and offer our wishes of kindness to an expanding circle of beings. We start simply, with ourselves and a being for whom our love and care comes easily. We continue with a benefactor, a neighbor, friend or a neutral person, before arriving at a person who may be more difficult, someone who has caused us challenge or suffering. Through this practice, we explore an opening of our heart. This practice is for you. The beings you bring to mind needn’t know you have offered these wishes. It may be that loving-kindness to others doesn’t come easily and in that case, you might offer it to yourself. Just like training a puppy, our task is to pause, reset and begin again. The traditional phrases are May you be happy. May you be healthy. May you be safe. May you live with ease but you may create your own phrases, just like I have in the Loving-kindness Practice below.

May you be seen. May you be comforted. May you be loved.

Loving-kindness takes practice. At first you might find it mechanical. Stay with it. It may transition to feeling a bit awkward and then to natural and organic!

As part of our beginner’s work, we bring compassion and loving-kindness because it isn’t easy. We will find our human system of judging and comparing jumps at the chance to keep you from pausing to open to a broader awareness. We described the practice of mindfulness as encompassing three steps:

Catch Yourself

Be Gentle

Begin Again

One way to support this is through a practice called “Name it to Tame It.” In this practice, we note or name what arises in our mind, whether it be a thought, memory, emotion or felt sensation. It can be as simple as saying, “Thinking, Thinking” and then returning to the anchor of our breath. If you’ve ever been upset and said aloud, “I’m just really frustrated right now!” you may have experienced a feeling of relief.

Author and Doctor Dan Siegel has shared research on the impact of naming our states on settling our mind. In this process, our emotional system, which senses threats for us and warns our body that something is amiss. But when we involve our thinking brain, the prefrontal cortex, we are able to soothe emotions through an integrated connection of neurons and synapses that send messages to our emotional system that the perceived threat is not quite so urgent and doesn’t require a reactive response. It is best to practice this in a quiet, calm space then use this practice to enter the world with an approach of thoughtful responses instead of habitual reactions.

Join us on Thursday, March 7 at 6:30pm for our next session of Meditation for Beginners, Cultivating the Heart. Our focus with be Joy.

Want more? Register today for A Mindful Pause: Finding Refuge and Peace in a Busy Life on Sunday, April 28 at Bryn Mawr College. Choose from a morning or full-day option. This offering is by donation and is suitable to all levels of experience including brand-new beginners.

The recording below is the full workshop from a previous Meditation for Beginners class,

“The practice is not about mastery. It is about trying.” – Ethan Nichtern (David’s son)

Cover art from the “Be Kind” series. Please support the artist, David Gerbstadt, by visiting his Facebook or GoFundMe page and getting some for yourself. 

Meditation For Beginners: Compassion

This winter, Center For Self-Care, in conjunction with Balanced For Life Yoga Therapy, offers four beginner’s meditation workshops in Wayne, Pennsylvania. The series is called “Cultivating The Heart.” The title recognizes the practice of mindfulness and meditation as a process. There is no sudden awakening or enlightenment. Instead, by gently tending the garden of our mind and heart, we set an intention that inclines us toward kindness and compassion. It just takes regular practice. We’d love you to join us. But if you can’t, you can find resources and recordings to try this out yourself at home.

Grant yourself a moment of peace,
and you will understand
how foolishly you have scurried about.

Learn to be silent,
and you will notice that
you have talked too much.

Be kind,
and you will realize that
your judgment of others was too severe.

-from The Tao of Wealth

We spend so much of our days analyzing, judging and comparing. This important function kept our ancestors alive 20,000 years ago when they were being chased by wild animals. It also serves a critical role in advances in the field of science, technology and medicine. But sometimes, a different state of mind is called for. A state where we use our sense to arrive in the present moment. That’s what meditation and mindfulness can offer.

The session was structured to engage our minds through brief talks, experiential practice and small-group discussion. These steps reinforce each other and deepen our understanding. Two disciplines we worked with were Mindfulness and Insight Meditation. In Mindfulness Meditation, we bring a non judging awareness to our experience using our senses and mind states as an anchor when we become distracted. Insight Meditation sits right next to Mindfulness, as it brings in the qualities of compassion and kindness.

At its simplest, meditation is a practice of returning. We find ourselves lost in thought, distracted by sounds or memories or just simply carried away. I offered the following aspirations for a practice of meditation and a practice of living:

Catch Yourself

Be Gentle

Begin Again

Try the focused breathing practice below to get a sense of it. Just like training a puppy, our task is to pause, reset and begin again.

Meditation a simple practice but it sure isn’t easy. It’s radical because our evolutionary biology is based on avoiding pain and seeking pleasure instead of allowing our experience to unfold. Our culture reinforces that by emphasizing comfort and convenience over actually feeling what we are feeling when we are feeling it.

Just as we go to the gym to build physical strength, we practice in meditation to build mental strength. And it ain’t easy. It’s basically “failing practice,” right? We intentionally sit and allow ourselves to become distracted so that we can practice returning. So it will require one more thing: compassion. Without compassion, we may turn this work into a grim duty, a mechanical act that mimics all the other things we are trying to perfect about our life despite the utter impossibility of arriving at that state.

We worked with a traditional compassion practice that you can try out yourself. In this practice, we combine an image, a wish and repeated phrases to soften and open our heart to a deep compassion for ourselves and others. As we repeat these phrases silently, we slowly expand the circle of our care to include others, even all beings.

Join us on Thursday, February 28 at 6:30pm for our next session of Meditation for Beginners, Cultivating the Heart. Our focus with be Lovingkindness.

Want more? Register today for A Mindful Pause: Finding Refuge and Peace in a Busy Life on Sunday, April 28 at Bryn Mawr College. Choose from a morning or full-day option. This offering is by donation and is suitable to all levels of experience including brand-new beginners.

The recording below is the full workshop from a previous Meditation for Beginners class,