The Loving Awareness Meditation Course: Recent Episodes
Robert Mitchell
Hi, welcome to my podcast channels. I am Robert Mitchell. I teach meditation and mindfulness in London, England. I am the Founder of Bromley Mindfulness and the Author of The Meditation Course, an online course consisting of regular live streamed meditation classes.
After our meditation and nature connection retreat at the weekend, I thought it was a good idea to run a class on the meditations that we did in nature.
Connection in nature is all about allowing natural environment into an our experience. All the sensations and smells and sounds become part of the totality of the experience of the present moment, which is what mindfulness is.
To experience this, we need to learn to open our awareness to our environment.
In this class, I teach a process of incrementally opening our awareness.
Although this is I'm an important part of nature connection, it's an important part of experience in life rather than existing in a sensory bubble on autopilot which is what our culture teaches us to do.
To join our four live group-guided online meditation classes each week, click here:
https://meditationcourse.live
To attend our retreat, click here:
https://bromleymindfulness.org.uk/day-retreat
Hi everyone,Today's meditation class explored the link between our natural connection to other people and to nature that works so well for our ancestors, but breaks down in modern societies with millions of people. Unfortunately, I know the audio quality was poor and so I have cleaned it up and made it available as a podcast and on the meditation course website which is at https://meditationcourse.live
In this week's class on my online meditation course, we explored observation meditations. We explored how our perceptions, influenced by our cultural backgrounds and culture, add layers to our experiences, much like augmented reality. The class explained how we can be aware of our cultural filter while practicing meditation and experiencing mindfulness. Through examples like walking meditation and the metaphor of augmented reality, we learned to distinguish between observation of our reality and observation influenced by personal and cultural filters. This insightful session is part of my continuous effort to offer practical and imclusive and accessible practical guided meditation, helping you integrate mindfulness into everyday life.
My Online Meditation Course is here: The Meditation Course
- Introduction to Observation Meditations: Today, we'll focus on observation meditations. This means we'll pay attention to our current experience, whether that's the present moment or thoughts about the past.
- The Fundamental Act of Observation: Today, we're focusing on meditations that involve observing, especially our current experiences. Observation is key. For example, when counting breaths, we're both observing the breaths and we can also be aware that we're observing them.
- Seeing is Not Just Seeing: It's not just the observing that matters, but also being aware that you're observing. There's a difference between just observing and being aware that we're the observer.
- Walking Meditation and Mindfulness Practice: For example, during a walking meditation, which I shared on my social media yesterday, I will focus on my breathing while noticing other things around me and bring my focus back whenever my mind wanders.
- Training Witness Consciousness: Meditation is about training ourselves to realise when we are distracted. This awareness then enables us to choose to focus on the present or on something else which may be a higher priority.
- Witnessing Reality: When observing, such as observing our breath, we become a silent witness. Looking inwards to try to perceive this witness is part of the practice. This is the heart of self-enquiry.
- Augmented Reality as a Metaphor: Augmented reality, like seeing a digital dragon in a room through an app, can help explain how we add layers of perception to our experiences. The Dragon isn't real. Our culture has put it there. The value we see in things (such as brands) is no more real than the dragon but we can perceive it.
- Integrating Reality with Perception: By using augmented reality as an example, we can understand how our perception adds to what we see, like seeing a dragon in a room through a mobile.
- Cultural Filters in Perception: Our cultural background adds meaning to what we see, similar to how augmented reality adds digital images to our view.
- Mindfulness and Cultural Filters: Mindfulness involves being aware of our perception without the added layers of our cultural or personal biases but also allows us to see those biases.
- Sensitivity Through Observation: By observing our experience consciously (mindfulness), we become more sensitive to our emotional and mental responses to different situations. We aren't trying to find silver bullet solutions to these social distortions, but just noticing them happening. This is enough.
- Meditation and Cultural Perceptions: Meditation doesn't stop us from seeing things through our cultural lens, but it makes us more aware of our emotional responses to these perceptions.
- Mindfulness and Awareness: Mindfulness is about noticing our present experiences without judgment and understanding the difference between just observing and observing with our personal and cultural biases.
Welcome to The Meditation Course podcast. Today, we return to the essential topic of mindfulness, unravelling its meaning and importance and how to embrace it in our fast-paced world.Mindfulness may defy precise description, yet it's best understood through direct experience. By simply observing time's passage or the sound of a bell, we begin to engage with the mindful state of being. This state, often sought at great expense at retreats or vacations, is a natural human trait that our ancestors and animals still embrace without effort.Mindfulness isn't complicated—it's the undistracted experience of the present moment. However, modern lifestyles filled with economic and social pressures have trained us out of this innate ability. We live caught in a continuum of past, present, and future thoughts, many of which are driven by subconscious impulses that we mistakenly believe we can consciously control.Nevertheless, true mindfulness grants us choice, allowing us to step out of these automated narratives and make informed decisions in the present, where life unfolds. Advertisers and marketers exploit our emotional responses to guide our consumption behaviours. In contrast, mindfulness equips us with the clarity to steer our actions based on self-awareness rather than external influences.As we face rapid social and technological changes, such as those brought by artificial intelligence, the necessity for mindfulness becomes even more pronounced. To adapt and thrive, we must be present, mentally clear, and ready to navigate the paradigm shifts of our lives. By practising mindfulness meditation, we train ourselves to harness our awareness, make better choices, and truly engage with life's vast potential.Meditation has two parts: achieving mindfulness, or presence in the now, then regaining the ability to make better choices with this renewed perspective. It's an invitation to embark on a mindful journey that promises a paradigm shift in our daily existence.For the full podcast notes (transcript) or to learn more visit The Meditation Course website at https://meditationcourse.live
When you're physically stressed, you only have a few options to intervene in your stress.One option is to learn how to relax.Relaxation isn't something you need to go on holiday for; you also don't need a glass of wine, a cigarette, or a magic combination of price-tagged experiences. It's a really simple thing. When we get stressed, our body becomes tense because we're finely tuned for nature, and our body prepares us for action. Relaxation is how we return to our normal calm, relaxed, focused condition.Unfortunately, in our consumer society, advertisers have stolen the concept of relaxation. Like so many other valuable and natural things, we have forgotten what it is.Learning to relax takes time, but you can switch off all this stress and tension in a few seconds and return to a calm and relaxed state of mind. This podcast is a great place to start to learn how to relax. You can learn what relaxation is, how it works, and how to train to gain this essential life skill. Listen in and have a calm, relaxing day.Join my regular online in person, guided meditation, classes at: https://meditationcourse.live/
In this class, I teach about mudras, which are hand gestures used in meditation.
Anjali Mudra The Anjali mudra involves pressing your palms together. I teach this because it has a real effect. You can explore it yourself.
Specific Mudras in Meditation I focus on the chin mudra, where you lightly touch your thumb and first finger. My methods for Anjali and chin mudra are unique. They're not just gestures; they have a purpose.
Some say the chin mudra connects to universal consciousness. If you experience that, let me know.
Focus and Awareness And The Importance of A Light Touch I use these mudras to help focus awareness. They're also useful for relaxation and sleep. A lighter touch in these mudras can have a strong impact.
Anjali Mudra Explained In India, Anjali mudra is a greeting, often accompanied by the word "Namaste." It's an old practice seen in ancient art. It's a sign of peace, showing you're unarmed. It's a way to show you're safe to talk to. This gesture is powerful when done with a light, springy pressure between the palms. Pressing your palms together like this engages many nerve cells in your body, making it a rich sensory experience.
The brain has a part called the somatosensory cortex that processes touch. The single largest part of which is dedicated to interpreting our hand sensations. Our hands are important for sensing our environment and using tools. They're a big part of our sensory experience.
Sensory Focus in Meditation Focusing on the sensation of the hands pressed together can be immersive and comfortable. The chin mudra involves a very light touch between the thumb and first finger. You need to maintain this light touch, noticing if the contact changes. Keeping this light touch requires focus but not forced concentration. The aim is to maintain a light focus, which can bring a sense of calm over time.
https://meditationcourse.live/the-power-of-mudra
Dive deep into the mechanics of nature meditation in this particular recording from our Sunday guided meditation class held on July 23rd. As part of The Meditation Course, this podcast explores the intricate relationship between the natural environment and the process of meditating, illustrating how the calm and quiet of nature can significantly enhance our emotional processing and healing journey. The complete transcript of this insightful group session is now available on The Meditation Course website here: https://www.meditationcourse.live/understanding-nature-meditation This will allow you to reflect more on each point and perhaps deepen your understanding at your own pace. By subscribing (for free), you gain access to a variety of resources. You will be the first to know about our new podcasts and receive notifications about insightful articles, upcoming online events, and much more. The beauty of the meditative journey is that there's always something new to learn, and our platform aims to make this journey easier for you. Subscribe today and join us on this life-enhancing path. Remember, the subscription is free! Explore, learn, meditate, and grow with The Meditation Course. Learn More: https://www.meditationcourse.live/about-the-meditation-course/
Mood and meditation
This is our second instantly recorded live group, guided online meditation podcast episode. Hopefully the audio quality will be better than the last one.
A lot of students of meditation, engage in meditation to help and benefit their mood and they're looking for ways to improve their mood. I'm confident there in time pretty much. Everyone can benefit emotionally from Meditation but it's a long process. In this class, I teacher set of practices that you can use when you're in alone mode, and you're feeling demotivated, and you don't feel like meditating .
This is a class taught on 2 July 2023 online on The Meditation Course.
The Meditation Course is four live guided group meditation classes each week for the same price as a weekly Starbucks latte!
https://meditationcourse.live
This is a class taught on first of July 2023 in Bromley on the subject of purpose, Resilience and Connection.
The Meditation Course is four live guided group meditation classes each week for the same price as a weekly Starbucks latte!
https://meditationcourse.live
I taught this class today on Saturday, the 29th of April on The Meditation Course at https://meditationcourse.live because I was contacted by yet another person who told me that they can't meditate because they can't stay focused on their breath.It is a common misconception that meditation is an attempt to stay focused on the breath and the successful meditation is one where we remain focused on the breath instead of losing our attention and mind wandering.In this class, I explain the mechanism behind all the benefits of meditation, which is called the Moment of Recognition, and is actually what happens when our mind wanders.Blessings🙏🙏🙏PS, apologies for the delay in getting a podcast published. I've been really busy with retreats and courses and classes.
Mindful Awareness is that crystal-clear sensory experience we can feel in a forest. Or when standing on a quiet beach or at the top of a mountain. Mindful Awareness is what we can sense when we connect to nature and what we share with animals.We can culture Mindful Awareness by practising focused attention meditation.Focused attention meditation is often called mindfulness meditation and is an ancient mental exercise that helps you focus on the present moment, while calmly acknowledging and accepting your feelings, thoughts, and bodily sensations. Focused attention builds attention regulation, which in turn, can enhance many aspects of our lives.
In 2013, I started teaching meditation to a group of friends, who then suggested that I teach it at a local church room. In 2015, I was asked to run some courses by my students who wanted more structured training. I had discovered the high level of stress in the modern world, so I started by including stress management and emotional regulation techniques with the mindfulness and meditation practices. I learned after some research that this combination contributes to resilience.Resilience is the ability to cope with adversity in a way that helps us cope with future adversity.Resilience is a process, not a state. At any given time, our resilience is either growing or diminishing. Since 2013 I've taught around 3,000 sessions, with an average of 10 people per session. I gather feedback at every stage. I continually research to better understand and improve my teaching, drawing from wisdom traditions and scientific studies. Building resilience has been my guide throughout most of this time.The practices of Mindfulness-Based Resilience are aimed at five aspects: focus, calmness, relaxation, mindfulness, and resilience.Focus is Attention Regulation. Attention Regulation comes about through practice. Meditation is that practice. Focus and calmness involve attention regulation, being aware of the mind's direction, and regulating its choices.Mindfulness is the undistracted awareness of the experience of the present moment.Mindfulness is awareness of all the sensory experiences happening right now. Life isn't the past and the future. It is a succession of present moments. Unfortunately, we're trained to live in a world where the past and the future are like a continuum. And we are simply walking along this path from the past to the future. The present moment then becomes something to get out of the way to gain future happiness.Mindfulness brings awareness of the present moment. It doesn't mean that you don't have any memories, or that what has happened in the past doesn't affect you. It isn't that you ignore your future or you stop caring about it. What does happen is that fear of the future and regret or resentment of the past no longer rules your present moment. Because life is a succession of present moments.Mindfulness is the foundation of all the Mindfulness-Based Resilience techniques. For example, if you learn a stress management technique, you have to be aware that your stress is growing to know when to use it.To relax, we might have a glass of wine and watch TV. That is not relaxation. Relaxation is releasing the musculoskeletal tension that builds up in our bodies due to stress. I teach relaxation practices that are also great stress management tools.Calmness is becoming comfortable with the mind, thoughts, and emotions. Training the subconscious to become sensitive to changes in state enables awareness and intervention using various tools, like extending the breath. Mindfulness-based resilience includes stress management, emotional regulation, and meditation practices to process emotions and improve focus, relaxation, and calmness. It's about integrating these skills and not relying on external factors.I teach Mindfulness-Based Resilience in 6-week online and in-person courses.Learn more here: https://bromleymindfulness.org.uk/mindfulness-courses
Each Sunday Evening from Sun 26 March 2023 on The Meditation Course for the next few weeks, I shall run a Yoga Nidra meditation.Yoga Nidra is a type of meditation that can help us access the hypnagogic state. This state is the transitional phase between wakefulness and sleep. Practicing Yoga Nidra can make it easier to move into this state and therefore help us achieve rest. To practice Yoga Nidra, find a comfortable and relaxed seated position with your back free and your head balanced. The goal is to enter and stay in the hypnagogic state while maintaining awareness of the warm, comfortable feeling that comes with it. If you wake up from this state and you don't feel sufficiently rested, use the feeling to guide you back into it. Use the feeling of the hypnagogic state to get back into it. So, get comfortable, and let's start practicing. You can also find various other Yoga Nidra meditations on my podcast.This podcast episode is a recording of a class from The Meditation Course, an online program that offers live guided meditations throughout the year, with up to four classes per week!You can join us on The Meditation Course by clicking on this link here: https://www.meditationcourse.live/about-the-meditation-course/If you can't join us for whatever reason but you enjoyed this meditation, I encourage you to become a podcast supporter. By joining us, you'll receive two newsletters and a host of other benefits that will take your meditation practice even further. All for the price of a monthly Starbucks extra shot, caramel latte! Become a Podcast Supporter here: https://www.meditationcourse.live/podcast-supporters-membership/And if you're feeling generous and you would like to support my work with a single one-off donation, you can buy me a coffee at https://www.buymeacoffee.com/robertmitchell
Yoga Nidra is a type of meditation that can help us access the hypnagogic state. This state is the transitional phase between wakefulness and sleep. Practicing Yoga Nidra can make it easier to move into this state and therefore help us achieve rest. To practice Yoga Nidra, find a comfortable and relaxed seated position with your back free and your head balanced. The goal is to enter and stay in the hypnagogic state while maintaining awareness of the warm, comfortable feeling that comes with it. If you wake up from this state and you don't feel sufficiently rested, use the feeling to guide yourself back into it. Use the feeling of the hypnagogic state to get back into it. So, get comfortable, and let's start practicing. You can also find various other Yoga Nidra meditations on my podcast.This podcast episode is a recording of a class from The Meditation Course, an online program that offers live guided meditations throughout the year, with up to four classes per week!And get this: the price of this program is actually less than what you might spend on a weekly Starbucks latte. Enjoy the countless benefits of regular live guided meditation classes while saving some serious cash. You can join us on The Meditation Course by clicking on this link here: https://www.meditationcourse.live/about-the-meditation-course/If you can't join us for whatever reason but you enjoyed this meditation, I encourage you to become a podcast supporter. By joining us, you'll receive two newsletters and a host of other benefits that will take your meditation practice even further. All for the price of a monthly Starbucks extra shot, caramel latte! Become a Podcast Supporter here: https://www.meditationcourse.live/podcast-supporters-membership/And if you're feeling generous and you would like to support my work with a single one-off donation, you can buy me a coffee at https://www.buymeacoffee.com/robertmitchell
Mindfulness is the undistracted awareness of the experience of the present moment.Mindfulness meditation is a set of ancient practices now supported by a mountain of scientific study that we use to gain that experience of mindfulness.There are many barriers, distractions and dead ends that can divert us from our path of acceptance and connection to all of the experiences of the present moment, internal and external.By connecting to the entire body, we are able to minimise physical and emotional pain enough to learn to become comfortable with it. This is a key step in the process of learning to accept and release our suffering.In the period leading up to the next nature connection day retreat, I will be teaching practices specifically to support this process of acceptance and connection.In this class, taught on Thursday 9 March on The Meditation Course, I teach a set of practices designed to connect to the present moment and to our bodies.This podcast episode is a recording of a class from The Meditation Course, an online program that offers live guided meditations throughout the year, with up to four classes per week!And get this: the price of this program is actually less than what you might spend on a weekly Starbucks latte. Enjoy the countless benefits of regular live guided meditation classes while saving some serious cash. You can join us on The Meditation Course by clicking on this link here: https://www.meditationcourse.live/about-the-meditation-course/If you can't join us for whatever reason but you enjoyed this meditation, I encourage you to become a podcast supporter. By joining us, you'll receive two newsletters and a host of other benefits that will take your meditation practice even further. All for the price of a monthly Starbucks extra shot, caramel latte! Become a Podcast Supporter here: https://www.meditationcourse.live/podcast-supporters-membership/And if you're feeling generous and you would like to support my work with a single one-off donation, you can buy me a coffee at https://www.buymeacoffee.com/robertmitchell
The body and mind are deeply connected.The ancients had a concept of the body-mind which is the combination of thoughts, emotions and drives that influence our choices and actions. This leaves us with a psychophysiological state that can be unhelpful and is sometimes difficult to shift. We can find ourselves 'in a mood' and subject to a combination of autopilot behaviours and mind loops.We all need to build a toolkit of practices we can use to intervene in these processes. To coin a phrase, we need learn how to take back control.In this class we explore the ancient third eye meditation which was first taught in the Bhagavad Gita.We then go on to practice a deep relaxation technique that focuses on the key areas of stress in the body which are: the eyes, the jaw, the shoulders and the hands.This is followed by what I call The Relaxation Response which is a practice that, in time, you can learn to use to totally change your state with a single breath. This podcast episode is a recording of a class from The Meditation Course, an online program that offers live guided meditations throughout the year, with up to four classes per week!And get this: the price of this program is actually less than what you might spend on a weekly Starbucks latte. Enjoy the countless benefits of regular live guided meditation classes while saving some serious cash. You can join us on The Meditation Course by clicking on this link here: https://www.meditationcourse.live/about-the-meditation-course/If you can't join us for whatever reason but you enjoyed this meditation, I encourage you to become a podcast supporter. By joining us, you'll receive two newsletters and a host of other benefits that will take your meditation practice even further. All for the price of a monthly Starbucks extra shot, caramel latte! Become a Podcast Supporter here: https://www.meditationcourse.live/podcast-supporters-membership/And if you're feeling generous and you would like to support my work with a single one-off donation, you can buy me a coffee at https://www.buymeacoffee.com/robertmitchell
This article and podcast are from a class taught as part of The Meditation Course - Four live online classes each week for the same price as a weekly Starbucks latte.We all have a voice in our heads, and that voice tells a story. I call this voice the Inner Narrative.Our Inner Narrative can become unhelpful, destructive or self-destructive. It can weaken us instead of strengthen us.Thought has what I call momentum. Over time, our Inner Narratives can become more intense. It can fixate on one or a few subjects and become really unhelpful. This self-destructive process is intensified by consuming the fear-based narrative of the media.To counteract all of this, we need a powerful set of tools that have stood the test of time and are backed by a growing mountain of scientific research.We need to get our focus back from the voice in our heads that is being continuously enhanced by a stream of continuous messaging from the media to us, and to our peers.This is the place where the focused-based meditations I've been teaching meets our Inner Narrative.https://meditationcourse.live/meditations-to-calm-the-inner-narrative/
This Meditation is taken from the Deepening Course which is a course for committed meditators. See the end of this description for the link.There are a five different main areas of focus for our awareness.There is mind wandering and awareness of the body. These are what are called Inner Phenomena. With mind wandering, our single awareness has been captured by an inner narrative.There is autopilot and external awareness. These are external phenomena. In autopilot, we are generally repeating activities we have learned unconsciously, such as driving or navigating on a regular journey. Then there is balanced focus where we can maintain our awareness and yet be sensitive to both inner and outer phenomena.In this class, we explored these both with meditation and by going through the experiences that we have that enable us to become aware of these different states of focus.From a class in The Deepening Course.https://www.meditationcourse.live/about-the-deepening-course/
Dear friends,I hope that you are in high spirits and good health.Thanks for your wonderful response to my message about supporting my podcast.I shall be making some changes to the format of the podcast so that I can deliver more meditations.Starting from this week, I will only put the meditations themselves online.To listen to the talks, please subscribe to the meditation course at https://meditationcourse.live.This will enable me to publish a podcast with the absolute minimum of audio editing. You will then have multiple meditation only episodes each week.This will begin as series 11 of the podcast which starts this week.Thank you again for your support. Please do contact me with any questions.Blessings to you all.Robert.
Friends,
I hope this message finds you well and you're enjoying the content I provide on the podcast and on https://meditationcourse.live. I'm constantly working to improve and expand my training and I'm totally focused on the needs and interests of my podcast listeners and my site subscribers.
My goal for the podcast is to have multiple weekly episodes but the reason this isn't happening is because I'm focused on delivering the in-person and subscription training that is my source of income. To be able to deliver two to four podcast episodes each week I need some support from you, my podcast listeners.
I completely understand that some of you might be happy to continue enjoying the free content and I'm really pleased that I am able to offer it without charge. But if you're someone that values my work and wants to help me continue to produce the best possible content, I'd be grateful if you would consider becoming a podcast supporter. Your contribution will enable me to maintain and grow the podcast.
Like with everything else I do, my primary focus is to make it accessible and inclusive. I don't want anyone ever to not be able to access my training because they don't have the means.
Because of that, the Podcast Supporters membership will always be fixed to the price of a monthly Starbucks extra shot caramel latte.
Also for those of you that might want to make a donation, here is a link to my Buy Me A Coffee page: https://www.buymeacoffee.com/robertmitchell
To subscribe all you need to do is visit https://meditationcourse.live, click on the green button and you're a supporter. The site will get your email address, you will get the monthly podcast newsletter and you will also get the weekly-ish Insights newsletter which often supports a podcast episode.
Also as a site member, you'll become part of our community and you'll be notified about all of the things I plan to do for the podcast community in future such as live/streams, Q&A and workshops
Bless you, for listening this far, and click the link below if you'd like to join us.https://www.meditationcourse.live/#/portal/
Today, I've been working on a research paper which is a literature review that reflects the Mindfulness-Based Resilience training that I deliver.
As a result of today's research, I realised that there is growing support for the link between Mindfulness, Interoception (physiological awareness), and Wellbeing.
These links are generally accepted and researchers have moved to investigate the causal mechanisms underlying these links.One likely mechanism is that meditation connects us to our physiology, builds empathy, and grows our connection to others.
Of all of the supporting elements of resilience and Wellbeing, the sense of connection to others is the most consistent.
06:17 - The MeditationsIn this class, taught online in The Meditation Course, I teach some meditations that enhance our physiological connection frictionlessly.
One Meditation is The Inner Body Meditation which I learned from Eckhart Tolle's book The Power of Now.The second meditation is The Outer Body Meditation which includes a soft close Open Focus style meditation.
I believe that this combination of practices sensitises us to physiological connection, and will contribute to interoception, empathy, well-being, and resilience.
To read more about this set of practices and mind-body connection, read the show notes here: https://meditationcourse.live/mind-body-connection.
This podcast is a recording of a class on The Meditation Course. The Meditation Course is a year-round live guided meditation course with up to 4 live classes each week for the price of a weekly Starbucks latte.
The link is here: https://www.meditationcourse.live/about-the-meditation-course/
Alternatively, if you wish to become a podcast supporter, you can join us and get two newsletters, and various all for the price of a monthly Starbucks extra shot, caramel latte: https://www.meditationcourse.live/podcast-supporters-membership/
Or... you can make a one-off donation at Buy Me a Coffee: https://www.buymeacoffee.com/robertmitchell
Having the power to calm our minds, especially the voice in our heads (the inner narrative) is a powerful skill. And I think it's one of the main reasons people get into meditation.
In this class, taught in February 2023 and part of a series on the inner narrative, I explain the process that we apply to calm the inner narrative and I explain how it is not a process of distraction.
To calm our minds, we need to use the mental training aspect of meditation to elevate our experience of the present moment.
Join us for four Live online meditation classes each week for the price of a weekly Starbucks latte: https://www.meditationcourse.live/about-the-meditation-course/
The podcast notes including a full edited transcript for this class are here:
https://www.meditationcourse.live/how-to-calm-the-inner-narrative/
I taught this class on Sunday 6 February. It is the first on the Narrative series.
Join us online and Sign up for four live weekly guided group meditation classes for the same price as a weekly Starbucks latte.
https://www.meditationcourse.live/
What is a Narrative?When discussing narrative, we refer to a story that is told by a storyteller, such as the media. This can take the form of a talking head or a monologue in a theatrical production, or even a narrator. This style of storytelling is deeply rooted in human genetics and can be seen in the myths and legends found among different cultures across the world. A famous literary researcher named Joseph Campbell studied these myths and identified common archetypes, such as the hero, the sage, and the princess. These archetypes appear in different cultures and often, the stories themselves are similar. Campbell is most well-known for his concept of the Hero's Story, which is a story of a hero who goes on a journey, experiences struggles, transforms, and brings back their knowledge and skills to pass on.
Narratives in The Modern WorldNarrative storytelling is not unique to primitive cultures. Narratives are also told in the modern world. We are effectively told stories by the media, which are often framed as simple hero-villain tales. The identities of heroes and villains is dictated by those that influence media organisations such as financial sponsors, owners and advertisers. In the modern world, our greatest narrative stories are historical tales. This is a primary way in which culture is manipulated. Historical figures become archetypes and are identified as heroes or villains. For example, British heroes are often seen as villains in the histories of other countries. The morality of a narrative story reflects the cultural perspective of the storyteller.
Narratives and The IndividualThis process of passing on information through stories continues. If we examine Aesop's fables, children's stories, and tales that convey moral messages, we see that they often carry a moral lesson on right and wrong, as do the historical tales. We adopt these narratives and some of them become very influential in shaping our understanding of human nature, our relationships with others, and even ourselves. We can identify with a particular story, archetype or character and adopt it as part of our own personal narrative. By adopting the narrative, we integrate the moral message which adjusts our perception of right and wrong.This process of passing on information and adopting narratives is how groups form. We share our narratives, find common ground, and adopt a shared narrative, making us feel more connected to the group.
In this series, we will examine the power of narratives and how deeply they are ingrained in our consciousness. We will explore the formation, creation, and evolution of our personal narratives and learn what power we have over them. This is the key to understanding the impact of stories on our lives, and I will be discussing this in more detail in the coming classes.
Narratives as Morality TalesIn meditation, we become aware of our inner narratives and the narratives of others. This awareness helps us understand the narratives that shape our thoughts and communication with others. Through meditation, we can observe these narratives and have power over them. One meditation technique that involves observing narratives is counting breaths, which uses the internal voice to count. This technique can be effective for some people, but not for everyone.
https://www.meditationcourse.live/the-power-of-narrative-and-the-inner-dialogue
In this class, I explain the techniques of 'The Frictionless Way' which is the set of practices that my students use to integrate mindfulness practice into their lives.For most of them, it is an alternative to regular practice.One of these is either attending my in-person classes or joining us live online on The Meditation Course.I also teach a meditation that can't be done alone which is the Connection Meditation. This will help you understand the benefits, and the power, of group meditation and help you to realise why it can make such a difference.
To join us on The Meditation Course for up to four live online meditation classes each week, subscribe at https://meditationcourse.live for the same price as weekly Starbucks coffee.
A recording of a class on body-focused meditations creating a foundation to process uncomfortable emotions.In this class, we continue learning the practices we need to process difficult emotions.
Introduction:My goal is to share what I've learned from my personal meditation practice and my knowledge of meditation, mindfulness and resilience. My journey began in 2013 when I was asked to teach meditation to friends.
Unique Responses to PracticesEveryone is Different. I have realised that everyone has a unique response to each meditation practice. For example, a relaxation practice can result in various outcomes, from no benefit at all, to feeling the most relaxed ever.
Continuous ImprovementMy training and meditation practices have evolved over the years. I continue to try new practices and incorporate them into my teachings if they show greater benefits for my students. Although the foundational practices remain the same, my methods for teaching stress management have changed.
Acceptance is the key to becoming comfortable with difficult emotionsIn the early days of my teaching, in 2013 and 2014, I wanted to focus on emotional release, but I found that the unique responses of my students meant that this approach only benefited a small number of them. I have learned that the most universal way to address difficult emotions is through acceptance, which is a common theme in many therapies and is also part of meditation. Connection and focus with the body is the foundation of the practices we need to learn to help us sit with and process uncomfortable emotions.
Summary:I am excited to share what I have learned through my personal meditation journey with others. I will be focusing on foundational practices for emotional release, also known as body-focus practices, in my teachings. I look forward to continuing to grow and learn in my meditation journey.
To be notified of more classes like this, get our free weekly insight newsletter, sign up for free on https://meditationcourse.live
Podcast Notes for this episodehttps://meditationcourse.live/embracing-emotions-a-meditation-journey-part-one/
You only have a single awareness. Either you are connected to the present moment or to narratives of the past and future that have captured your mind.
In the modern world, these narratives create the illusion that fulfilment is always in the future, one pay rise, purchase, job, journey or partner away.
We seek fulfilment in a future experience when it can be found in the present moment simply by being aware of the present moment, being aware.
In this class, I teach how to be present and find fulfilment right here and right now.
A class from The Meditation Course - live guided meditations four times on most weeks of the year for the price of a weekly Starbucks latte.
Join us at https://meditationcourse.live
Mindfulness is the undistracted awareness of the experience of the present moment.
To experience mindfulness, therefore, we need to experience the present moment free of the endless distractions of the modern world.
The present moment isn't a fuzzy new-age spiritual concept that requires a particular mindset or beliefs to experience. We also don't need to be nonjudgemental (whatever that is).
The present moment is a very real part of our experience as human beings. It is part of our genetic heritage. The big problem is that we are taught to spend our lives in our minds.
For most of us, this means a life of autopilot and mind loops where we can spend entire days and even longer in a wandering mind.
In this class, I explain the mechanism of the experience of the present moment based on the commonly accepted science of perception.I then teach the vanishing point meditation, a practice that enables us to find our way into the present moment.
You can join our four live online meditation classes for the price of a weekly Starbucks latte. Click here to subscribe: https://meditationcourse.live
This audio was recorded from a 90-minute workshop I ran on Thursday, 22 December 2022, for members of The Meditation Course.
The workshop is an introduction to my popular one-day dealing with difficult people training class I have been teaching since 2016.
In this intensive 22-minute class, I focus purely on a small set of practices that you can use to regulate your stress and your emotions.
These are all tried and tested practices with the most significant effects that can be learned quickly.
You only need a few short training sessions to make some of these practices your own. And then you're in a position to integrate them into your life to transform how you deal with uncomfortable situations and difficult people.
Practices:
- Breathing for difficult emotions and difficult interactions - 03:22
- Returning to the breath - 05:58
- Ujjayi Breath - 08:21
- Pranayama - 09:30
- Character counting - 12:42
- Counting the breaths. Focusing on the extended out-breath - 15:22
- Butterfly hug - 17:30
If you find this sort of training useful, join us on the meditation course at:
https://meditationcourse.live
A recording of a class I taught on Tuesday, 13 December.
Equanimity is a state of psychological stability and composure which is undisturbed by experience of or exposure to emotions, pain, or other phenomena that may cause others to lose the balance of their mind. The virtue and value of equanimity is extolled and advocated by a number of major religions and ancient philosophies. - WikipediaWhen one meditates with experience, it is usually possible to find a space that does not have the emotional content of emotion-provoking thoughts in a situation that would previously have triggered an emotional response.
As well as experiencing the present moment, a new perspective arises where we see our reality as the present moment, and our thoughts and expectations of the past and future gain perspective.
Meditations at 07:17
- Releasing resistance to meditation
- Noting and releasing resistance to meditation
- Using a compassion mantra as releasing...
Click the link below to join us on The Meditation Course for four regular live online guided meditation classes each week for the price of a weekly Starbucks latte.
https://www.meditationcourse.live/equanimity/
From a Sunday evening meditation class taught on 11 December 2022.
In this class, I explain my experience with meditation students: the beginners, those returning to Meditation and the committed students who have found a set of practices they can maintain.
I describe my insights into the motivations of these groups based on what they tell me and what I've learned.
Meditations begin at 09:53.
Meditations:
- Just Sitting
- Noting the Breath
- Tonglen
- Noting thoughts on the out-breath
Visit us to listen to this class at:
https://www.meditationcourse.live/the-frictionless-way/
Or sign up to Join us for four live weekly guided meditation classes for the same price as a weekly Starbucks Latte.
Meditation begins at 4:49.
A recording from the live guided meditation class run on Tuesday, 6 December 2022.
Mindful Communication stems from mindful listening. Mindful listening is opening our awareness to all sounds, language or otherwise.
During this class, there was considerable background noise from our urban location. I used this constant backdrop of sound to teach meditations that can help us learn how to accept the intrusions of the modern world and release the resistance that results from this perspective.
A recording of one of my live classes. You can join us or listen to the recordings on The Meditation Course website.
Visit us to listen to this class at:
https://www.meditationcourse.live/mindful-communication/
Four live weekly guided meditation classes for the same price as a weekly Starbucks Latte.
Learn what burnout is, how it comes about, and what we can do to avoid or recover from it.
This ten-minute talk and 30 minutes of meditation is the first full class of the Avoiding Burnout series I'm currently teaching in my in-person Meditation classes.
A recording of one of my live classes. You can join us or listen to the recordings on The Meditation Course website.
Visit us to listen to this class at https://www.meditationcourse.live/deconstructing-burnout/
Four live weekly guided meditation classes (with recorded backups) for the same price as a weekly Starbucks Latte.
You may have heard about meditating on emptiness. Or you may have experienced it. Meditating on emptiness is a key part of Buddhist practice and is something every meditator experiences at some point on their meditative journey.
In this class, I explain and guide the practices that I use and which help me experience emptiness.
I also explain the benefits and potential pitfalls of meditating on emptiness.
Meditations
- Meditating on the space in a container
- Meditating on the space in the room
- Meditating on the space outside of the building
- Moving our awareness back into the body and meditating on the space in the inner body
- Moving our awareness into the body
Most of these podcast episodes are live classes I teach in person and online. I run these live guided meditation classes four times each week throughout most of the year for the same price as a weekly Starbucks latte. Visit https://meditationcourse.live to join us.
Today is an experiment. I am publishing this episode within 30 minutes of teaching it online.
I realise that it won't be as polished as normal, but it means that it gets done and that those who listen to the classes live can go back and listen again to a class on the podcast if they wish.
In this class, I outline a strategy for those of you struggling to find the time, energy and focus for a regular sitting meditation practice.
Most of these podcast episodes are live classes I teach in person and online. I run these live guided meditation classes four times each week throughout most of the year for the same price as a weekly Starbucks latte. Visit https://meditationcourse.live to join us.
Yoga Nidra is the ancient Yogic practice of exploring meditation and sleep.
Yoga Nidra is often taught as a body scan that helps you drift off. More appropriately, Yoga Nidra is an exploration of sleep states.
Some practices bring awareness into that sleepy place between waking and sleeping that is so comfortable for most of us (the hypnagogic state).
This is one of two podcast episodes I have published from a recording of the meditation course on Saturday, 19 November class.
This recording is the sleep mediation, which adds time to meditate at the end and misses out the summary, so you can use this to help you sleep or rest.
I've taken the transcription of the talk and added it to The Meditation Course website as podcast notes. If you want to read about Yoga Nidra, click the link below.
Also, subscribe to be updated with new podcasts and get a free weekly insight newsletter.
www.meditationcourse.live/yoga-nidra/
Yoga Nidra is the ancient Yogic practice of exploring meditation and sleep.
Yoga Nidra is often taught as a body scan that helps you drift off. More appropriately, Yoga Nidra is an exploration of sleep states.
This episode includes practices that bring awareness into that sleepy place between waking and sleeping that is so comfortable for most of us (the hypnagogic state).
This is one of two podcast episodes I have published from a recording of the Saturday, 19 November class on the meditation course.
This recording is the full meditation, including the summary, and the other is a meditation you can listen to that may assist you in sleeping or resting.
I've taken the transcription of the talk and added it to The Meditation Course website as podcast notes. If you want to learn more about Yoga Nidra, you can read the notes by clicking the link below.
Also, subscribe to be updated with new podcasts and get a free weekly insight newsletter.
www.meditationcourse.live/yoga-nidra/
In this 40-minute meditation class, I guide meditations that can help us to build and recover our mental energy.
In the previous podcast episode, I published a 12 minute talk on the topic.
These episodes are recordings from The Meditation Course, which is live, guided meditation classes that I run four times on most weeks throughout the year and that you can subscribe to for the price of a weekly Starbucks latte.
Visit https://meditationcourse.live to learn more.
In this talk 12-minute talk, I discuss cognitive or mental energy.
In the following podcast episode, I will publish a set of valuable meditations for recovering energy.
This talk and podcast are recordings from The Meditation Course, which is live, guided meditation classes run four times on most weeks throughout the year that you can subscribe to for the price of a weekly Starbucks latte.
Visit https://meditationcourse.live to learn more.
This recording is from the Saturday online guided meditation class on Nov 5. It was a taster session for the November Sleep, Rest & Energy Online Course.
There is plenty of training for managing sleep and insomnia, but none includes techniques and tools to recover our energy and rest during the day.
In this class, I explain how our energy can be drained from us and how we need to build boundaries that stop our energy from being depleted.
I then teach a variety of energy-renewing meditations.
Learn more at https://meditationcourse.live
There is much evidence that meditation creates happiness.
In this class, I explain how this comes about and teach a set of focused mindfulness meditations that help us find calmness and relaxation.
From a class taught on Thursday, 13 October 2022, on The Meditation Course.
The Meditation Course provides four subscription-only online meditation classes on most weeks throughout the year.
Visit https://meditationcourse.live to learn more.
Here is a quote from the talk preceding the guided meditations:
"Unfortunately, it is a bit of a binary thing.
Either you develop the skills to recover your attention from the largely unwanted and unhelpful, repetitive, persistent thought patterns. Or you become a slave to a narrative that you've adopted in your mind."
We train ourselves to break out of this repetitive narrative by learning to return to the breath.
Returning to the Breath happens after many years of practising the mindfulness meditation called Following the Breath.
When we meditate, we are training our awareness to break into the mind loops and return us to the present moment.
This isn't a battle against mind wandering. It is empowerment. With this practice, we get to choose how to focus our minds. We no longer slavishly follow an internal narrative, which is often a reflection of the external cultural narrative.
Training ourselves to break into the narrative and return to presence frees our minds.
This podcast is a recording of a live-streamed guided meditation class taught in The Meditation Course - four weekly live guided meditation classes for the price of a weekly Starbucks latte. Join us at:
https://meditationcourse.live.
In this episode (recorded at a guided meditation class on Sunday, 25 September, in The Meditation Course), I explain how to refocus your awareness away from a repetitive and unhelpful narrative.
The 15-minute talk explains
- One of my personal practices that I use to exit from unhelpful mind loops.
- Where thoughts actually originate.
- The origin of our inner narrative and how it has become unhelpful
- How the common fallacy that worry and stress are useful is not true.
The meditation teaches
- How to use the Breath to intervene in the persistent, repetitive and unhelpful mind loops.
To learn more practices like this, join us up to four times each week live for the same price as a weekly Starbucks latte.
https://meditationcourse.live
This is a recording of the second class I taught in September on imposter syndrome - September 22, 2022.
Imposter Syndrome is not feeling good enough for something you are qualified for through experience or knowledge. Imposter syndrome is almost universal.
In this class, I explain what Imposter Syndrome is, how it comes about, and I teach the practices we can use to neutralise it.
"Acceptance is allowing yourself to feel however you feel in the present moment." - Eckhart Tolle.
The neutral spot meditation is an ancient practice designed to help meditators to sit with uncomfortable emotions and, over time, become comfortable with them.
As I explain in the podcast, you mustn't use this as a way of sitting with emotional overwhelm. If you're feeling overwhelmed, choose another time to practice this or try another practice.
This practice isn't about "facing your fears" Tony Robbins style; it is best used when you have low-level background anxiety.
I have had positive feedback on the practice from students with chronic pain. There are no guarantees, but the overall response is that it reduces the experience of the pain by about 2 out of 10.
There is little doubt that meditation is a form of habituation for uncomfortable emotions, and this practice encapsulates that. (Habituation is getting used to something.)
Essentially, we are becoming comfortable with being uncomfortable.
All meditation practices that work with emotions must be treated with care.
Your expectation should be that you feel better or more neutral at the end of the meditation than when you began.
If you are getting no benefit, then don't do it.
Check out the Four Rules of Meditation for guidance here:
https://www.meditationcourse.live/the-four-rules-of-meditation-2/
If you find these podcasts useful and you would like to join us for up to four online in-person guided meditations each week, subscribe to The Meditation Course for the same price as a weekly Starbucks latte:
https://www.meditationcourse.live/#/portal/signup
This is an introduction to Stress Management, Resilience and Mindfulness. I explain what Resilience and Stress are. I demonstrate Mindfulness experientially. I explain the strategy you can apply to use the skills I teach, and I guide some introductory practices in all three of these areas.
You can join our regular live Guided Meditation Classes (usually four classes each week) by subscribing to The Meditation Course here:
https://meditationcourse.live
Or if you want to learn hire to build your Resilience and manage your stress Join my Stress Management And Resilience Training classes here:
https://bromleymindfulness.org.uk/smart-day-workshops
Connection has my meanings for meditators.
there is connection to to the Present Moment, the body, the Mind, thoughts, emotions, others and many different sorts of focus, awareness and an awareness of our location in space-time.
In this class we explore the fundamentals of connection with questions and practices designed to answer them
pleased to be back on Spotify. I was dropped due to my fully formats not being what they wanted.
Many more classes to come for you guys!
If you’d like to listen in subscribe at https://meditationcourse.live
Froma Class taught in Bromley on Thursday 11 August, 2022.
No skill is of any value if you don't have the Presence of Mind to use it.
Our minds, the stories we tell ourselves and the stories we are told Our modern minds are filled with an interplay of narratives. The inner narrative (the story of our lives) combines with the stories of others, the contrived theatre of the news cycle, and the melodramas of celebrities.
To escape, we don't need another foreign holiday; we need to learn to train our minds. Our culture is in denial of the existence of the mind The idea of training the mind is taboo. When did your teachers speak to you about training your mind? It's not on the curriculum. The mind is only part of the cultural narrative as something that becomes broken and needs to be fixed by experts with drugs!
Resilience is how we cope with adversity. At the heart of resilience is mental focus. If our attention is constantly drawn to a disempowering narrative, we lose hope and optimism, and we compromise our natural inbuilt inner strength.
I teach practices that will help you let go of disempowering and unhelpful narratives and return to Presence. What is Presence? Presence (sometimes called mindful awareness) is a natural state of mind. It is driven out of our experience in the modern world.
Presence is the legacy of our ancestors' connection to nature and each other.
An invasive media cycle plants new wants and needs in our distracted minds through viral newsfeeds, advertising, PR, product placement and influencers. This cycle of "news, information, and entertainment" distracts us from the present moment with empty promises of security, pleasure, comfort and happiness.
"Being associated with happiness helps build stronger emotional connections between consumers' memory structures and the brand," - Steve Hastings, a marketing expert on Marketing Week Feb 2014. This is how they manipulate our minds. It's wrong because happiness is how we experience, not what we experience.
Happiness is experiences we need less of over time to feel good. Consumer Culture sells us experiences we need more of over time to feel good.
https://www.meditationcourse.live/presence-mindfulness-and-resilience/
In this class, taught in person in Bromley on Tuesday, the 5th of July 2020, I explained how using the foundational meditation technique of focusing on the breath works to build our resilience.
We then practice following the breath and we also do two noting practices that are essential mental training to build resilience.
I explain how the Following The Breath practice works to calm the mind.
Meditations:
- Following The Breath
- Noting Thoughts
- Noting The Quality Of Thought
Learn more by joining our mindfulness and Resilience training here:
https://www.meditationcourse.live/tag/unit-g5-resilience/
The class on Saturday morning of 2 July was on Mindfulness, Interoception and Resilience. Interoception is the sense of the internal state of the body. Interoception is the process that helps us recognise physical sensations and emotional feelings. To learn more, search for interoception on Wikipedia for a clear and well-researched article. Mindfulness meditation slowly introduces us to this interoceptive sense of the internal state of the body and over time, our interoception grows. There is plenty of evidence that interoception is associated with high resilience and better mental and physical health outcomes. This particular mechanism to resilience from mindfulness, therefore, becomes easy to identify.
In this podcast, I explain this and I teach the two main interoceptive techniques, following the breath and a body scan. In the talk: - An explanation of interoception. - How interoception is a way to be aware of and interpret our emotions. - How our culture interferes with our awareness of our internal state. - How mindfulness meditation reconnects us to our internal state. - The benefits of connecting to our internal state.
Meditations are: 1. Mindfulness meditation increases interoception. 2. Increased interoception builds our resilience.
Another class from the #Resilience series taught in Saturdays 25 June 2022.
Whatever we believe, humans are not designed to live in an ever-changing world. Great changes bring great adversity which then becomes a test of our resilience.
Predicting that there will be change is much easier than predicting what those changes will be, and which effects they will have.
Rather than trying to guess what to prepare for, now is an opportunity to build universal skills to help us to cope with whatever arises.
For the meditations in this class we go on a journey of opening our awareness and noticing the flow of Time and life that is always with us and which we have learned to ignore.
Now is the time to learn resilience.
"Don't wait until you are about to jump out of the plane to weave your parachute!" - Jon Kabat-Zinn.
In which Robert introduces the listeners to the present moment and the connection thereof through a portal.
Robert also describes the process of being drawn into the narratives that saturate our lives in the modern world.
Robert then teaches the practices that help us to become aware of the process of being drawn into these narratives.
From a class taught on Sunday, the 29th of June 2022.
In this class, I investigate thought and I teach Eckhart Tolle's Inner Body Meditation from his book, The Power of Now.
Witness Consciousness is where we move away from the incessant narratives of the mind and into a place of calm, still awareness.
This is the process of becoming the Witness of our minds and our experience.
In this class, taught in Bromley on Saturday 30 April, I explain the attributes of the Witness and some meditations that let you explore this state.
join us for regular classes online at https://meditationcourse.live
Understanding Stress is the first class in the 7 Steps to Resilience and Stress Management Series. This class was taught today in Bromley.
I am running this series as a free one-week online event to support #stressawarenessmonth in the UK.
I am running this series as part of Resilience Week 2022 from the 19th to the 26th of April -The hashtag is #ResilienceWeek2022. Feel free to share this podcast and hashtag on any social media!
To support all my students and listeners, All my live streams will be public for the duration of this week and I will add any recordings as public podcasts.
This sort of content is normally behind the paywall at https://meditationcourse.live at £12 per month.
Resilience Week is here to bring awareness to the fact that resilience can be learned!
By learning resilience and stress management skills, you can learn to manage your stress levels and become more resilient in the face of adversity.
Additional classes will appear here: https://www.meditationcourse.live/tag/7-easy-steps-to-resilience-stress-managment/ You can subscribe for free to get notified of the rest of the series.
Reclaim your mind! Learn to get your attention back from the relentless media and news cycle. Underlying everything you view and consume online is the profit motive. Someone, somewhere wants you to believe or think or want or fear something, or someone.
You need to choose. You need to choose to free your mind from the media, from what they want you to think and what they want you to feel.
In this class, I teach a set of practices designed to help us intervene in the mind's tendency to go down a rabbit hole or be swept into a vortex of thoughts and emotions.
These are the real-life skills you need to practice if you want to get back your mind and your life.
From a class taught in Bromley on Saturday 26 Feb 2022. Subscribe at https://meditationcourse.live to listen in to four live online classes each week.
"You want to reclaim your mind and get it out of the hands of the cultural engineers who want to turn you into a half baked moron consuming all this trash that's being manufactured out of the bones of a dying world. Where is that at?" - Terence McKenna (1946 -2000)
From a class taught on Saturday 12 February 2022.
With biohacking, we are tapping into the body's natural goal of finding a balanced state.
This class is a collection of short and easy to learn tweaks and practices that will help us to regulate our stress.
In the modern world, we tend to hold and carry stress and we also have to navigate a constant maze of threats and conflicts.
Learn how to manage this with a variety of practices that can help anyone.
To be notified of new episodes and get access to other benefits and meditation goodness, subscribe to https://meditationcourse.live for free.
There is a difference between what we perceive and what we believe.
It is easily demonstrable with some simple exercises that we will do today.
In this Saturday's meditation class at 10, using the power of meditative insight, we shall take a peek through the looking glass.
Meditation is a lens that allows us to, over time, see through many of the illusions and delusions that we adopt to navigate a very confusing, fuzzy reality.
The modern Mind is enslaved by the thoughts that result from how you feel.
Learn how to break the cycle...
A Live Guided Meditation you can listen to on your device to help you learn walking meditation.
A Live Streamed Guided Meditation I taught on the 3rd of February 2022.
I take you from the point of starting the practice and through the various versions of walking meditations that I personally practice.
To learn more and discover our Walking Meditation Training visit
https://www.meditationcourse.live/live-guided-walking-meditations-episode-1
All of humanity is now part of a global Consumer Society. The thing that unites isn't morality or ethics or shared values, it's the drive to Consume.
From Billionaire Oligarchs to Third World Street Kids, almost all of us are driven to repeat and extend those things, places, and experiences we need to reward ourselves with. Humanity is now on a hamster wheel seeking Escapism, DIstraction, Comfort and Pleasure.
This all comes with a cost. The cost is the loss of Happiness and Connection.
In this class, I explain how this happens and offer a personal solution through meditation and the daily practice of awareness.
From a class taught in London in-person and online on https://meditationcourse.live
In this class, taught in person in Bromley, I explain how Mindfulness Meditation differs from most popular meditation practices.
I then teach some practices designed to help us sit when we are feeling emotionally uncomfortable.
The training enables the practitioner to become familiar and comfortable with their emotional states.
The classes are taught in-person and online in The Meditation Course at https://meditationcourse.live/
To learn more about me and the training I deliver, visit Bromley Mindfulness at https://bromleymindfulness.org.uk/
Our energy can be depleted in a number of ways.
Physical, cognitive, emotional and spiritual.
Various meditations work to help us to recover.
In this meditation-only episode, I teach three practices.
One for recovering physical energy.
One for recovering cognitive (mental) energy.
And a general practice for releasing unhelpful or uncomfortable states.
A class taught at The Mansion in Beckenham Place Park on 14 October 2021
What is Self-Care? What is Mindfulness? How does Mindfulness help us to care for ourselves to support us in helping others?
In this class, I teach some very basic meditations from the perspective of supporting our self-care.
Listen in to the meditation classes live-streamed on my Live Meditation Course here:
https://www.meditationcourse.live/
I upload more episodes at my premium podcast here:
https://www.podbean.com/premium-podcast/meditationcourse
From a class taught on Tuesday 12 October.
How meditation can help us to become closer to the reality of our experience.
Here are references for the talk
The Bhagavad Gita - https://bookshop.org/books/bhagavad-gita-a-new-translation/9780609810347
The Tao of Physics by Fritjof Capra
https://uk.bookshop.org/books/the-tao-of-physics/9780006544890
The First Law of Thermodynamics
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_law_of_thermodynamics
The best and simplest explanation of Quantum Field Theory
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zNVQfWC_evg
A class from the meditation course at https://meditationcourse.live.
A short (five minute) talk on mindfulness and compassion and 25 minutes of gratitude meditation.
Healing from tge common trauma of modern life can most definitely be done through Meditation.
In this class i discuss this healing process then teach some Present Moment practices that are regenerative meditations.
Taken from a class on The Meditation Course at https://meditationcourse.live
Visit the website to subscribe to future Live steamed Meditation classes.
This is a combination of the most frictionless ways to experience the passage of the present moment combined in a single meditation.
Taught in the Sunday evening meditation class on 5 September 2021 of The Meditation Course at https://meditationcourse.live.
From a Sunday Evening class I taught on The Meditation Course website at https://meditationcourse.live
August 29, 2021.
The last 18 months has been extremely difficult for many of us in a variety of ways.
It will be a long journey to recover and rebuild our resilience.
There can be no better way than to begin that journey than with Compassion, and no better time to set out than now.
In this class I explain how important compassion and self-compassion are to personal growth and recovery and teach compassion and gratitude meditations that enhance compassion in our minds and lives.
Originally broadcast live at 10 am Saturday July 31 - London Time on Podbean and Instagram Live
Either you use technology, or its uses you.
In this class, I cover some benefits of technology for meditators and show how our basic mindfulness meditation practices can help us to re-focus our attention away from the on helpful narrative that the media wants us to subscribe to.
This training is from The Meditation Course. The Meditation Course is a live Stream training course with between three and five classes each week for the price of a weekly Starbucks coffee. https://meditationcourse.live
Here are some links referred to in the training.
The Headgear Meditation timer app - run the timer and view the centre of the timer. https://apps.apple.com/gb/app/headgear/id1205534398
The Overton window of acceptable discourse. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Overton_Window
"If your mind can't be calm, you can't be happy."
In this class I explain how important it is in our modern world, and for our modern minds, to learn how to calm the mind.
I teach some light touch inner focus meditation to help us witness thought as part of the noting practices.
This class was taught at Chantry Studios in June 2021 and forms part of The Meditation Course online course.
Visit the site for more information:
https://meditationcourse.live
Over the past eight years and the thousands of classes, courses and retreats I have taught, I have consistently requested the intentions of the students that attend.
I recored these anonymously and I have collated the intentions into categories.
These categories are:
- Calmness
- Focus
- Relaxation
- Mindfulness
These are the components of a healthy mind.
A healthy mind is either calm or can find calmness.
A healthy mind can focus.
A healthy mind is connected to the body and can relax the body to lower stress.
A healthy mind can bring its attention into the present moment from wherever the internal (or external) narrative takes it.
I have made these categories the main focus of my training and in this class, the meditations work in all of these areas.
This recording is from a class I taught in Bromley on June 29, 2021 and forms part of The Meditation Course online training which you can find here
https://meditationcourse.live
Transformation, Liberation, Freedom, Nirvana, The End of Suffering is a process of recognition and realisation of what is absolutely true in our experience. With that realisation, we can release many unhelpful beliefs.
This process of healing is one of the gifts of meditation but to experience it, we first need to calm our minds.
In this class we work with Relaxation and Calmness through focus and a relaxation meditation to calm the mind and body.
A session from The Meditation Course.
Visit the site to Learn More...
https://meditationcourse.live
This was a meditation class that I taught in the park. The class is an introduction to the tools, techniques, and practices we can use to help us reconnect effectively from the separation we have all experienced. This sort of enforced separation leads to trauma which must be healed. We can heal through reconnection to the present moment, our bodies, others and nature. This class is focused on body meditations and working with difficult feelings by connection to the body. Conveniently there is a source of irritation during the class for us to work with!
This class was taught at one of my meditation classes in Bromley and also forms part of The Meditation Course online training which you can learn about here: https://meditationcourse.live
The course starts this Tuesday, the 15th of June 2021 and runs for six Tuesdays.
The timing is 7 pm in London, 2pm New York, 1 pm Chicago, 12 pm in Denver and 11 am in San Francisco.
Pricing is - in British pounds. £185 in-person and £149 online. In US$210 for the online version.
There are online and in-person options. If you purchase the in-person option, you can mix-and-match by choosing to attend some sessions online and others in person.
Each class is recorded so if you miss it you can catch up by viewing the class online.
On completion, you get three months free access to the meditation course which is the year round live-streamed meditation course that I have been running throughout 2020 and 2021.
To join us on the course, visit greatreconnection.com
This class was taught at the mansion in Beckenham on 7 June 2021.
Anxiety begets stress. Chronic anxiety begets chronic stress. Chronic stress, among other things, suppresses our Immune systems. Stress is a killer. To gain quality of life we need to manage our stress and anxiety with a powerful toolkit of practices that help us build emotional resilience. In this class, I explain my personal experience in this area and my experience of How the stress of my students gets in the way of their capacity to build a sustainable meditation practice. I am using a new app for show notes so that I can include more references in an organised manner. To find the references for the show, visit https://trove.to/robert/
You will find notes about the following:
About The 6-week Course Mindfulness-Based Resilience Incremental improvement The Sedona Method Shawn Achor book Blue zone study Positive Psychology
Recorded in The Loving Awareness Meditation Course on Sunday 25 April 2021. Published on Monday 31 May, 2021. In this class I explain the relationship between meditation, sleep, and energy. I categorise energy as being cognitive, emotional, physical, or spiritual. Spiritual energy can be seen as will. Are you acting on the universe, or is the universe acting on you? Having sufficient spiritual energy will determine this. In this class I'm focusing largely on cognitive energy but the meditative tools are largely the same for all energy. Recovery also has a lot to do with us having had not just had sufficient sleep, but also refreshing sleep. Meditation is an excellent source of all energy. In this class we do energy meditations. Meditation can also work to assist our recovery and rebalance our energy levels. Energy can be recovered after what is known as a refractory period. This is the amount of time that an organism requires before it can engage in the same amount of effort it could before stress of some sort. It's a resting period. Refractory periods are not just about duration they are also about being able to access a deeply enriching state. This is a class from The Meditation Course . Several regular live streamed classes each week for less than the cost of a weekly Starbucks latte. https://meditationcourse.live
We're back. A class I taught in-person after lockdown.
First an explanation of the power of meditating in nature and a full relaxation body scan.
For historic reasons many mindfulness meditation teachers don't teach the body scan as a relaxation exercise. I do. It is immensely popular.
This class was our first Sunday evening class at the mansion at 7 pm UK time.
If you would like to join us live on Podbean join The Meditation Course at https://www.meditationcourse.live/
This week is UK #MentalHealthAwarenessWeek 2021 and the topic is nature.
To coincide with this event I have been running classes on connection to nature.
Connection to nature is a key element of Loving Awareness. Loving Awareness is living with a sense of connection to others, and to nature.
In this class, I start from this sense of connection to nature and how we are taught, in our culture, to believe that we are separate.
This sense of separateness is destructive. I cover the concept of 'Othering' where we reinforce this sense of separateness.
I also explain how this is a foundation of our personal suffering. We become addicted to approval from others as a way of trying to cope with the loneliness, sense of rejection or failure that is so pervasive.
I explained how the foundation of working with this suffering to remove the barriers to the sense of connection is being able to calm the mind enough with the basic meditations.
I teach a set of the basic practices that are designed to help us calm our minds. I order them in order of efficacy for new meditators.
All of my regular followers and students will have heard these before but quite possibly not in this order.
This class was recorded at Contingent Works in Bromley on our first day back to the regular in-person meditation classes after lockdown.
To learn about my online Meditation Course visit https://www.meditationcourse.live/
We connect to nature each and every moment of our lives.
The sense that we are separate from nature somehow is an allusion.
The concept that humanity's purpose is to overcome nature is an illusion that has been fostered by our society and its predecessors. This is largely come about through political and religious expedience. The artificial world that humans create is no different to the artificial world the ants and termites create.
The notion of separation is at the heart of our ability to separate ourselves from the destruction that we wreak on nature and on each other.
There is no real reason why humans can't live in harmony with nature. By nature I mean the link living organism of planet Earth.
In this session I focus on how deeply connected we are in the present moment through a sensory experience and through the air that we breathe.
Making this a practice will help you to release these harmful beliefs, reconnect to yourself, present moment, nature, and others.
This is our heritage. It's our legacy and we can retrieve it so long as we spend the time to do so.
I hope you enjoy this meditation class.
Blessings,
Robert.
This is a class from The Meditation Course.
https://meditationcourse.live
In this class, I explain how the awareness of the experience of the present moment through mindfulness meditation leads us to an understanding of the cycle of life.
Each breath and each moment is a cycle which connects us to nature in many ways.
This reconnection is critical to releasing the suffering of the modern world and the modern mind.
These unhelpful concepts and beliefs block our connection to nature and to others which is our natural heritage.
Also underlying our connection is a recognition of the nature of impermanence. Becoming comfortable with this is a liberation.
10 minute talk and 30 minutes of meditation.
Finding Loving Awareness in the Present Moment
The two most powerful elements of meditation are the breath and focus.
In this class, we explore the breath and focus. I also combine them into a powerful meditation and daily practice which you can introduce into your life to help you recover from the mind and body's response to the modern world.
This is a class from The Meditation Course.
Join our active and engaged student group by subscribing at https://www.meditationcourse.live/
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May is #lovingawareness month.
Loving awareness is living with a sense of connection to nature and to others.
Our culture separates us from each other. It separates us physically, emotionally, ideologically, and spiritually.
In this class, I explain how I work with my personal tendency for Othering and teach a meditation focused on inner awareness.
Othering (in this context and used as a verb) refers to how we actively separate ourselves from others psychologically. This causes us to feel different to others and also separate and also possibly rejected.
We are all members of a single global family of living beings. All creatures are related to us, and we are related to all beings, including all human beings.
We are energy beings.
Every breath that we take is a transfer of energy that has been donated over billions of years by living beings (plants and bacteria) as Oxygen. Our contribution, in return, is to replace that Oxygen with Carbon Dioxide (ideally not too much of it, though).
Plants and bacteria need our contribution in the same way that we need theirs.
Human beings cannot survive for more than three minutes without Oxygen.
Oxygen is the product of the energy donated to us by these other members of the global family of living beings.
Also essential is our connection to the global family of human beings. The food on the shelves, the buildings we live in, everything we use, and everything we need is part of an immense collaborative process.
Perceiving other human beings and nature as separate is totally insane. Yet, this is how we perceive ourselves in the modern world.
We are social animals designed to live in a group in nature with a bond that can only be described as unconditional love.
Every kind of suffering, misery, and distress exists in our world due to this sense of otherness.
My personal journey has been one of reconnecting to myself, my body, my mind, others, and nature.
I invite you to join me on this journey of re-connection. In the same way that the skills and knowledge were donated to me, I also contribute what I have learned. I hope that the practice that I teach in this class will help you join me in The Great Reconnection that we all so desperately need to be part of.
To learn more visit https://www.meditationcourse.live/
Working with the mind-body connection to combine the basic practices into a high power meditation.
Breaking the cycle of worry, anxiety, and stress. (Mainly for experienced meditators)
The mind-body connection encapsulates stress, tension, relaxation, focus, awareness, calmness, intensity, lightness, thought, emotion, action, choice, and every element of our lives.
We can't work with any element for or experience, without accepting the effect of any of the others.
The basic practices that we have focused on so much recently create a foundation that enables us to work with our internal and external experience.
I am currently teaching a series of meditations that bring together all the strands from the basic practices.
These combined practices can then become an important part of our personal toolbox to help us cope with the change and adversity that is arising in all of our lives.
In this class, I will be teaching another version of the forest lake meditation that will combine many of the strands of the basic practices.
To learn more, visit The Meditation Course website:
https://www.meditationcourse.live/
(Mainly for experienced meditators)
From a live streamed class on Saturday April 24, 2021.
The format of the training is guidance followed by meditation.
Working with the mind-body connection to combine the basic practices into a high power meditation.
The mind-body connection encapsulates stress, tension, relaxation, focus, awareness, calmness, intensity, lightness, thought, emotion, action, choice, and every element of our lives.
We can't work with any single element, or experience, without taking into account the effect of the others.
The basic practices that we have focused on so much recently create a foundation that enables us to work with our internal and external experience.
I am currently teaching a series of meditations that bring together all the strands from the basic practices.
These combined practices can become an important part of our personal toolbox to help us cope with the change and adversity that is arising in all of our lives.
In this class, I teach a powerful meditation that combines many of the strands of the basic practices.
To learn more subscribe for free at https://www.meditationcourse.live/
This is a guidance and advice episode aimed at those of you that are new to meditation or that have a meditation practice and are either trying to build it or maintain it.
Begins with an Introduction to building a meditation practice.
- 00:17 The most important thing to learn to build a meditation practice.
- 02:15 The second most important thing to learn to build a meditation practice.
- 03:37 What to avoid and what to expect for new meditators.
- 05:11 Distractions to building your meditation practice and how to avoid them.
- 06:04 Which meditation path to take, and which practices to prefer.
- 07:17 More distractions to your meditation practice, and which meditations to prefer to avoid them.
- 14:26 Witnessing the mind and what meditation really is.
- 15:44 Summary.
The episode also has a number of 'those things I wish I knew early in my meditation practice'.
There is probably something useful here for any meditators. Do share it if you find it useful.
Blessings,
Robert.
To learn more, visit my online meditation course. https://www.meditationcourse.live/
In this class, I explain and show how meditation can rebalance our energy levels.
This isn't deeply spiritual concepts. It is common graspable concepts of energy such as cognitive energy, will and emotional energy.
This is a class from one of my online meditation courses.
Learn more here:
https://www.meditationcourse.live/
Emotional Resilience and 'The Self'
"Being able to release unhelpful trains of thought is the most liberating thing a human being can do."
From a class that I taught in one of my online meditation courses on Saturday, April 3, 2021. Some insight into the nature of the self, the helpful and unhelpful elements of it, and what we can do about it in meditation.
https://meditationcourse.live
Accelerated Resilience is the set of Meditation, Awareness and Kindness practices that bring the greatest benefit, in the shortest time, with the minimum of effort.
Taken from a class of The Meditation Course at
https://meditationcourse.live
This meditation is from a class in the The Loving Awareness Meditation Course. You can visit the course site, subscribe for free to be updated with new podcasts and free training and you can join the course here:
https://lovingawareness.fm
I often explain how meditation basically all boils down to focusing our attention, and learning how to do so.
There is another element to this that is only really useful for meditators that have some experience.
I call this depth of focus. There is a way of perceiving depth of focus as being deep or light.
That light touch is incredibly beneficial as a meditation technique when we meditate on thought.
It's a way of witnessing thought without being drawn into it.
This class is a set of exercises that will help you experience this.
This meditation is a practice that I have taught a few times in the last week or two.
It is a collection of the most frictionless practices that I teach composed in an order that allows us to become aware of the movement of time gain connection to the present moment and a very soft and gentle way.
This is from a class that I taught in the loving awareness meditation course.
The heart of the course is the three or four regular weekly live-streamed classes I teach.
Check out my Loving Awareness Meditation Course site here:
https://lovingawareness.fm/
Visit our website if you would like to learn more.
Meditation can be seen as, very simply, focusing more usefully.
In the same way that focus can be part of meditation, we can also meditate on focus.
This Podcast Episode is taken from a class in The Loving Awareness Meditation Course at https://lovingawareness.fm
Come to our site and subscribe to the newsletter to receive updates about the podcast and other free content.
This episode is an extract from a free public YouTube taster session that I taught recently.
The class was a taster for the Accelerated Resilience Training For Teams training that I do for organisations and which consists of two lunch hour sessions.
Pandemic burnout has become part of everyone’s lives. The combination of anxiety and uncertainty is a recipe for chronic stress.
To build resilience we need a toolkit of stress management and emotional regulation practices that we can become skilled in using and improving to help us cope with adversity.
This session is a condensed (accelerated learning) insight into my very latest Focus, Stress Management and Emotional Regulation practices.
If you're interested in this training over two lunchtimes for a team that you run or manage, drop me a line at info@bromleymindfulness.org.uk
To view the original training session on YouTube click here for the link: https://www.meditationcourse.live/accelerated-resilience-breaking-the-cycle-of-worry-anxiety-and-stress/
Historically, I haven't taught as the body scan very often largely because, very simply, people don't have the time to do it. however, I believe that For a number of us, there will now be more time, temporarily at least.
So here is my version of the body scan.
The thing that makes it different to how it is normally taught is that it includes relaxation as well as just focusing on the sensations in the body which is the common teaching method.
The reason for this, as you will know if you have listened to my other teaching, is that relaxation relieves stress and the opportunity to learn to relax should not be missed.
By doing the body scan with relaxation, not only do we reconnect with our physiology, but also we develop the skill of relaxation which is incredibly important in these difficult and stressful times.
This is a recording of a live-streamed class from The Loving Awareness Meditation Course - Three live-streamed classes each week.
You can subscribe to The Loving Awareness Meditation Course website for free to be updated with new podcast episodes, offers and information on training. https://lovingawareness.fm/
If you want to just listen to meditations without the guidance, visit The Meditation Course Podcast here: https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/the-meditation-course/id1549271245
This is a practice that I stumbled on recently.
I have spent more time focusing on meditations that bring our attention to our eyes.
The Inner Eye and The Third Eye are ancient concepts that have originated in the ancient Wisdom traditions and that have been, less usefully I feel, incorporated into New Age Spirituality.
I think that at some point, the actual value of our awareness of the eyes and the area around the eyes has been lost. This is an interesting aspect of my personal meditation journey and I think it will bear more fruit over time.
In this class I talk about my Third Eye and Inner Eye meditation practices and then teach them in the context of relaxation practices.
This is a recording of a live-streamed class from The Loving Awareness Meditation Course - Three live-streamed classes each week.
You can subscribe to The Loving Awareness Meditation Course website for free to be updated with new podcast episodes, offers and information on training. https://lovingawareness.fm/
If you want to just listen to meditations without the guidance, visit The Meditation Course Podcast https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/the-meditation-course/id1549271245
Session 4 of The Gratitude Sessions from The Loving Awareness Meditation Course.
This recording is taken from session 4 from the gratitude sessions. The Gratitude Sessions are a short course running within The Loving Awareness Meditation Course.
https://lovingawareness.fm/
Mindfulness is "The undistracted awareness of the experience of the present moment."
Acceptance is "Allowing yourself to feel however you feel in the present moment."
Acceptance is part of gratitude practice.
Learn how mindfulness and gratefulness work together to help you to neutralise uncomfortable emotions.
View the entire class on YouTube: https://youtu.be/_pg8q522o4M
References
In this class, I refer to two great meditation teachers, Eckhart Tolle and Mingyur Rinpoche.
For weekly live streamed classes check out our online meditation courses here:
https://www.meditationcourse.live/
https://lovingawareness.fm/
This is a recording of a live-streamed class from The Loving Awareness Meditation Course - Three live-streamed classes each week.
You can subscribe to The Loving Awareness Meditation Course website for free to be updated with new podcast episodes, offers and information on training. https://lovingawareness.fm/
If you want to just listen to meditations without the guidance, visit The Meditation Course Podcast here: https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/the-meditation-course/id1549271245
This is a class that I taught as a live stream in The Loving Awareness Meditation Course on the evening of Sunday, 7 February 2021.
The meditation explores the intersection between Presence (mindfulness) and impermanence by witnessing the present moment lightly as we perceive phenomena arising and subsiding within our awareness.
By noticing this change through the flow of time of the present moment, we find ourselves connected to the present moment and hence to all things. This brings a sense of lightness and connection to nature, to the self, and to others.
Meditations are:
- Following the breath
- The mountain stream meditation and the thoughts as clouds meditation.
This is a recording of a live-streamed class from The Loving Awareness Meditation Course - Three live-streamed classes each week.
You can subscribe to The Loving Awareness Meditation Course website for free to be updated with new podcast episodes, offers and information on training. https://lovingawareness.fm/
If you want to just listen to meditations without the guidance, visit The Meditation Course Podcast here: https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/the-meditation-course/id1549271245
In this recording of a live-streamed training class from The Loving Awareness Meditation Course, I explain and demonstrate how modifying our optical focus can help us intervene really effectively in anxiety and stress.
Check out my Classes and Courses online and in-person.
The Meditation Course:
https://www.meditationcourse.live/
The Loving Awareness Meditation Course:
https://lovingawareness.fm/
Bromley Mindfulness:
https://bromleymindfulness.org.uk
The eyes are actually an extension of the brain. The cells in the retina are neurons that have been modified through evolution to process light.
The connections between the eyes and the brain are not typical nerve fibres. They are axons. Axons are the fibres in the brain that pass messages from one neuron to another.
The eyes are also involved in emotional memory processing during a phase of sleep known as rapid eye movement sleep.
The early accounts of meditation, such as that found in the Bhagavad-Gita, an ancient Hindu spiritual text, instructs the meditation student to focus their eyes downwards past the tip of the nose.
“With torso and head held straight, with posture steady and unmoving, gazing at the tip of his nose, not letting his eyes look elsewhere, the Yogi should sit there calm, fearless, firm in his vow to be chaste, his whole mind controlled, directed, focused."
— The Bhagavad Gita by Stephen Mitchell
Downward gazing of the eyes can be seen in many ancient statues of meditators especially those in the Buddhist Tradition.
This practice is taught in the Buddhist tradition as 'softening of the gaze' and 'adopting a downward gaze'.
This can be experienced when practising the mirror meditation which I teach in this class.
References
Recent studies by Andrew D. Huberman of Stanford University and his research team have identified that softening the gaze and adopting a downward gaze, along with moving the eyes to the periphery of the vision significantly reduces anxiety and stress.
This is a recording of a live-streamed class from The Loving Awareness Meditation Course - Three live-streamed classes each week.
You can subscribe to The Loving Awareness Meditation Course website for free to be updated with new podcast episodes, offers and information on training. https://lovingawareness.fm/
If you want to just listen to meditations without the guidance, visit The Meditation Course Podcast here: https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/the-meditation-course/id1549271245
These meditations are taken from a live stream online meditation class taught on January 23, 2021.
The topic of the class was 'About The Meditation Course'.
The class explains the differences about The Meditation Course, and its history.
These meditations are examples of Robert's unique style of teaching meditation, and provide a sample for anybody that is interested in finding out whether it's the right course for them or not.
If you enjoy these meditations, you will enjoy The Meditation Course.
Meditations:
- The Meditation of No Meditation for Sound
- The Meditation of No Meditation for The Breath
- The Modem Mind Meditation
- The Mountain Steam Meditation
- Following the Breath
The full live-stream is on YouTube here: https://youtu.be/25wTEsKdRkU
The live stream is also on what is currently The Meditation Course Podcast which will consist of just meditations. The link is here:
To learn more, or to subscribe, visit The Meditation Course website here: https://www.meditationcourse.live/
This is a recording of a live-streamed class from The Loving Awareness Meditation Course - Three live-streamed classes each week.
You can subscribe to The Loving Awareness Meditation Course website for free to be updated with new podcast episodes, offers and information on training. https://lovingawareness.fm/
If you want to just listen to meditations without the guidance, visit The Meditation Course Podcast here: https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/the-meditation-course/id1549271245
Meditating on our external experience (Meta-awareness of external phenomena - taught in the Loving Awareness Meditation Course on 14 Jan 2021)
Meditation and Mindfulness is about awareness. Meta-awareness is awareness of awareness. It is a more conscious choice of our awareness and of where we focus it.
This class is an exploration of meditation and external awareness.
Meditations:
- The Breath
- Third eye
- Sound
- Open Focus
- Open Awareness
- The Mirror Meditation
- Trataka
- Third Eye
- The Breath
Chapters
00:00 Talk
09:06 Meditation starts
38:29 Summary
This is a recording of a live-streamed class from The Loving Awareness Meditation Course - Three live-streamed classes each week.
You can subscribe to The Loving Awareness Meditation Course website for free to be updated with new podcast episodes, offers and information on training. https://lovingawareness.fm/
If you want to just listen to meditations without the guidance, visit The Meditation Course Podcast here: https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/the-meditation-course/id1549271245
In a world where meditation attracts a mountain of dogma, it is useful to remind ourselves that it is really all about simplicity.
https://www.youtube.com/c/themeditationcourse
This is a recording of a live-streamed class from The Loving Awareness Meditation Course - Three live-streamed classes each week.
You can subscribe to The Loving Awareness Meditation Course website for free to be updated with new podcast episodes, offers and information on training. https://lovingawareness.fm/
If you want to just listen to meditations without the guidance, visit The Meditation Course Podcast here: https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/the-meditation-course/id1549271245
Demystifying the mind - Part 2 - taught live on my YouTube Channel on December 12.
https://youtu.be/TR8wwx51jvM
Last week we looked at the schema (beliefs) and the interpreter (the inner narrative).
This week, we shall explore the awareness, identify its purpose and learn how to influence it.
This is a recording of a live-streamed class from The Loving Awareness Meditation Course - Three live-streamed classes each week.
You can subscribe to The Loving Awareness Meditation Course website for free to be updated with new podcast episodes, offers and information on training. https://lovingawareness.fm/
If you want to just listen to meditations without the guidance, visit The Meditation Course Podcast here: https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/the-meditation-course/id1549271245
Autonomic regulation Is the skill of using stress-management and emotional regulation techniques to regulate our stress response and keep it in line with whatever demands we have to deal with.
The ancient yogic system of pranayama is a source of many practices that enable us to intervene in our stress and emotional overwhelm.
Courtesy of some in-depth studies into stress management using the breath and other meditation techniques, we can build up a toolkit of practices to use to regulate our Autonomic state.
In this podcast, I teach a combination of biohacks that work together to help us manage the demands of a difficult and uncertain world.
This is a recording of a live-streamed class from The Loving Awareness Meditation Course - Three live-streamed classes each week.
You can subscribe to The Loving Awareness Meditation Course website for free to be updated with new podcast episodes, offers and information on training. https://lovingawareness.fm/
If you want to just listen to meditations without the guidance, visit The Meditation Course Podcast here: https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/the-meditation-course/id1549271245
Much has been said and written about this seemingly simple element of meditation.
The practice of Yoga originated nearly three thousand years ago as a set of seated postures designed to assist meditators. (See 'The Yoga Sutras of Patanjali').
Throughout all of the multitude of information about how to sit when meditating runs a thread of common advice about keeping one's back straight.
This raises the question of, among other unanswerable questions, "How do I actually know when my back is straight?".
This is one of the many conundrums that I simplify in this short video.
I also cover a number of useful physiological hacks along with explanations on how and why they work all designed to make meditating a more relaxing and comfortable experience.
You can view this podcast on YouTube here: https://youtu.be/yT18TjCnbGg
This is a recording of a live-streamed class from The Loving Awareness Meditation Course - Three live-streamed classes each week.
You can subscribe to The Loving Awareness Meditation Course website for free to be updated with new podcast episodes, offers and information on training. https://lovingawareness.fm/
If you want to just listen to meditations without the guidance, visit The Meditation Course Podcast here: https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/the-meditation-course/id1549271245
Demystifying the Mind
Most of the influences that operate in the mind are actually quite simple and obvious. They can mainly be explained simply and without recourse to constructing new beliefs.
These influences are self-evident to anyone that spends the time, through meditation, to become familiar and comfortable with the mind.
Watch on YouTube.
https://youtu.be/TR8wwx51jvM
This is a recording of a live-streamed class from The Loving Awareness Meditation Course - Three live-streamed classes each week.
You can subscribe to The Loving Awareness Meditation Course website for free to be updated with new podcast episodes, offers and information on training. https://lovingawareness.fm/
If you want to just listen to meditations without the guidance, visit The Meditation Course Podcast here: https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/the-meditation-course/id1549271245
Emotion is mainly about the future rather than about the present moment. It is about building an emotional response to an experience which will in the future, influence our actions. Emotional processing enables us to resolve traumatic emotional responses.
This class teaches breath meditation that assists in Emotional Processing.
This is a recording of a live-streamed class from The Loving Awareness Meditation Course - Three live-streamed classes each week.
You can subscribe to The Loving Awareness Meditation Course website for free to be updated with new podcast episodes, offers and information on training. https://lovingawareness.fm/
If you want to just listen to meditations without the guidance, visit The Meditation Course Podcast here: https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/the-meditation-course/id1549271245
I taught this Meditation as part Chakra Meditation and part Connection Meditation.
Chakras are locations in the body which traditional Indian and Chinese medicine view as energy centres.
Each chakra has a location, and is identified with a colour and a human characteristic. There are many locations for these but the ones that I prefer are the following:
- Crown - Indigo - Spirituality
- Third eye - Indigo - Intuition
- Throat and Jaw - Blue Communication
- Heart - Green - Love, Compassion, Forgiveness
- Dan Tien - Yellow - Below the navel in the centre of the body - the gateway to Life Energy
- Sacral Chakra - Below the hips - Orange - Sexuality and Creativity
- Root Chakra - Base of the Spine - Red - Support and Safety
Chakra meditation, like relaxation practice, is a good way to reconnect with your physiology and emotions. I shall teach a chakra meditation in this session.
This is a recording of a live-streamed class from The Loving Awareness Meditation Course - Three live-streamed classes each week.
You can subscribe to The Loving Awareness Meditation Course website for free to be updated with new podcast episodes, offers and information on training. https://lovingawareness.fm/
If you want to just listen to meditations without the guidance, visit The Meditation Course Podcast here: https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/the-meditation-course/id1549271245
Loving Awareness is living with a sense of connection to nature and to all other living beings.
In this class, I go some way to explaining why this is and lead some meditations that will help you to reconnect.
This is a recording of a live-streamed class from The Loving Awareness Meditation Course - Three live-streamed classes each week.
You can subscribe to The Loving Awareness Meditation Course website for free to be updated with new podcast episodes, offers and information on training. https://lovingawareness.fm/
If you want to just listen to meditations without the guidance, visit The Meditation Course Podcast here: https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/the-meditation-course/id1549271245
The Meditation of No Meditation.
This is a recording of a live-streamed class from The Loving Awareness Meditation Course - Three live-streamed classes each week.
You can subscribe to The Loving Awareness Meditation Course website for free to be updated with new podcast episodes, offers and information on training. https://lovingawareness.fm/
If you want to just listen to meditations without the guidance, visit The Meditation Course Podcast here: https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/the-meditation-course/id1549271245
October 10 is #WorldMentalHealthDay and to recognise that I have nominated October as #LovingAwarenessMonth.
Each class will support the Loving Awareness theme in October.
The classes consist of a 10/15 minute talk on the subject and 30 minutes of meditation and mindfulness-based resilience practices.
This is a recording of a live-streamed class from The Loving Awareness Meditation Course - Three live-streamed classes each week.
You can subscribe to The Loving Awareness Meditation Course website for free to be updated with new podcast episodes, offers and information on training. https://lovingawareness.fm/
If you want to just listen to meditations without the guidance, visit The Meditation Course Podcast here: https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/the-meditation-course/id1549271245
"Beauty is the purgation of superfluities." - Michelangelo di Lodovico Buonarroti Simoni (1475 - 1564). An Italian sculptor, painter, architect, poet, and engineer of the High Renaissance. He exerted an unparalleled influence on the development of Western art. From a letter to Rene Lui Descartes XIV (6 March 1540)
Michelangelo clarifies here how he believes that art, rather than adding beauty, removes that which is not beautiful.
A sculptor chisels away the waste to reveal the form that lies within a block of marble.
A meditator builds their skill to release layers of psychological waste. All of the unhelpful beliefs and fears that form over a lifetime and undermine our happiness.
We build our skills through continuous practice. Skill with the mind allows us to explore the nature of our minds. Over time we become familiar and comfortable with the mind. Our quirks, and the quirks of others, become clear and lose their intensity.
In time we identify with a sense of self that isn't dependent on anything anyone else believes. It isn't a product of our cultural narrative. We can finally discover our personal truth.
This week's meditation explores our boundaries. These are boundaries of touch, sensation, emotion, and feeling. In the process, we also can more aware of the very process of awareness.
This helps to reveal a sense of self rooted in the Present Moment and grounded in Presence. Free from the endless perambulations of the mind as it searches endlessly for future suffering.
This is a recording of a live-streamed class from The Loving Awareness Meditation Course - Three live-streamed classes each week.
You can subscribe to The Loving Awareness Meditation Course website for free to be updated with new podcast episodes, offers and information on training. https://lovingawareness.fm/
If you want to just listen to meditations without the guidance, visit The Meditation Course Podcast here: https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/the-meditation-course/id1549271245
Of all the ancient texts that I have read, the setting of the Bhagavad-Gita is the most magical. Chariots and Battle Elephants stand face to face, a few hundred yards from each other like two walls stretching in both directions, as far as the eye can see. The elephants and chariots carry warriors bristling with weapons, spears, swords, knives and bows. Their shields glisten in the sun as they await the orders to engage. This is the great decisive battle of the ancient Indian war to end all wars. A battle between the armies of two great dynasties led by brothers, the Kauravas and the Pandavas, during which all the combatants will die. Into the no man’s land between the two great armies drives a chariot. Unknown to the warrior in it, Arjuna, a prince of the Pandavas, the chariot driver is Krishna, the incarnation of the spirit of the universe in human form. Krishna represents all of reality, all life and all of nature. We can, as secular modern readers, view Krishna as the symbolic representation of the natural world. A dialogue ensues between these two protagonists and so the philosophy of Yoga is passed on to the young Arjuna and finds its way into common consciousness where it resides for many thousands of years. In this class, I shall refer to the Yoga of Meditation that Krishna teaches Arjuna and how it all has such clear relevance some 2.600 years after this great tale was initially recorded.
This is a recording of a live-streamed class from The Loving Awareness Meditation Course - Three live-streamed classes each week.
You can subscribe to The Loving Awareness Meditation Course website for free to be updated with new podcast episodes, offers and information on training. https://lovingawareness.fm/
If you want to just listen to meditations without the guidance, visit The Meditation Course Podcast here: https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/the-meditation-course/id1549271245
"Rest in Natural Great Peace, this exhausted mind, beaten helplessly by Karma and neurotic thoughts. Like the relentless fury of the pounding waves in the infinite ocean of Samsara." Natural Great Peace is resting in nature. Natural rest is calm and relaxed. Karma is what we do to ourselves through any action that denies our humanity, our natural compassion, connection and collaboration. Samsara is the natural cycle of life and death. This is a poem by Nyoshul Khen Rinpoche a great and now deceased Buddhist master. The words are often used as a mantra. I use it to help to relax, become calm and sleep by reciting the words in my mind. I have also included in this meditation the relaxation elements that I practice.
This is a recording of a live-streamed class from The Loving Awareness Meditation Course - Three live-streamed classes each week.
You can subscribe to The Loving Awareness Meditation Course website for free to be updated with new podcast episodes, offers and information on training. https://lovingawareness.fm/
If you want to just listen to meditations without the guidance, visit The Meditation Course Podcast here: https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/the-meditation-course/id1549271245
The class is a 10/15 minute talk on the subject and 30 minutes of meditation and mindfulness-based resilience practices. The Skill of Meditation is how we achieve the Art of Meditation. The Art of meditation is how we craft a Vision of the Self that is authentic and unburdened. The Science is what helps and guides our Skills.
This is a recording of a live-streamed class from The Loving Awareness Meditation Course - Three live-streamed classes each week.
You can subscribe to The Loving Awareness Meditation Course website for free to be updated with new podcast episodes, offers and information on training. https://lovingawareness.fm/
If you want to just listen to meditations without the guidance, visit The Meditation Course Podcast here: https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/the-meditation-course/id1549271245
When I first began meditating seriously, I found that over time, I became more and more connected to my body. I became more aware of how I felt. Once I had became more familiar with my physical sensations I found it easier to identify my emotions. This connection has a scientific name which is Interoception. Interoception is the source of a great deal of scientific study at the moment, much of it in connection with mindfulness. I found that when I sat and meditated, once I silenced my thoughts, I could experience my predominant emotion directly as a sensation in my body. This was uncomfortable, but not immensely so. I discovered a number of emotional resilience techniques which caused my negative emotions to subside and finally to dissolve completely. These techniques became valuable life tools and the process of releasing my negative emotions became, and remains, part of my daily experience. When I began teaching meditation, I discovered that many of my students were meditating to help them understand their inner experiences and learn how to find happiness despite the painful complexity of thoughts, emotions and behaviours. I have since learned that this connection to the emotions into the body is one of the foundations of meditation and in fact it is the first element of meditation that we experience when we sit and do a body scan or focus on the breath or any other body-based meditation. I taught this meditation to experience this connection...
This is a recording of a live-streamed class from The Loving Awareness Meditation Course - Three live-streamed classes each week.
You can subscribe to The Loving Awareness Meditation Course website for free to be updated with new podcast episodes, offers and information on training. https://lovingawareness.fm/
If you want to just listen to meditations without the guidance, visit The Meditation Course Podcast here: https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/the-meditation-course/id1549271245
I have been teaching a version of this meditation since I began to teach meditation to a group of friends in London in 2013. It is a visualization meditation but works for those that are not highly visual as it is largely about how we feel. The connection meditation is a journey within and also a journey into the connection that we all have with ourselves, with the present moment, with others and with all of the beings that we share our planet with - our extended family.
This is a recording of a live-streamed class from The Loving Awareness Meditation Course - Three live-streamed classes each week.
You can subscribe to The Loving Awareness Meditation Course website for free to be updated with new podcast episodes, offers and information on training. https://lovingawareness.fm/
If you want to just listen to meditations without the guidance, visit The Meditation Course Podcast here: https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/the-meditation-course/id1549271245
If you wake up with an alarm clock, you are sleep deprived.
The symptoms of sleep deprivation are low mood, grumpiness, fuzzy memory, brian-fog, stress and anxiety.
Humans sleep better at a core body temperature of 19°C.
When we get warmer, getting to sleep becomes more difficult. If we are cold, we can adjust our temperature by removing the coverings. If we are hot, cooling down becomes more difficult.
We are having a bit of a British heatwave at the moment with temperatures up to 35°. We don’t have the infrastructure for this. Modern British houses and apartments are not cool.
Air-conditioning and fans intervene in sleep too.
Over the years, I have developed several practices that I use to help me get to sleep.
I have combined these into a single meditation practice that helps to calm the mind in many ways.
I call it my ultimate sleep meditation.
This meditation is also a fully-fledged mindfulness meditation practice.
I have edited this podcast so that you can listen to it to help you go to sleep.
This is a recording of a live-streamed class from The Loving Awareness Meditation Course - Three live-streamed classes each week.
You can subscribe to The Loving Awareness Meditation Course website for free to be updated with new podcast episodes, offers and information on training. https://lovingawareness.fm/
If you want to just listen to meditations without the guidance, visit The Meditation Course Podcast here: https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/the-meditation-course/id1549271245
Meditating in nature elevates the experience of meditation.
Even better if we can find a place where we are completely comfortable.
If we are visual people, we can visualise being in nature.
If we are not visual thinkers, we can still experience the sense of being in nature.
This brings with it the stillness and calmness that we experience when we are in nature. There is nothing special about the experience. We don’t need to do anything. We only need to bring the most evocative natural experiences to mind.
For this meditation, Robert uses the mountain stream and the tree. Meditating on a tree is a wonderful experience in itself. You don’t need to do anything other than watch a tree for 20 minutes. Try it. Notice how it makes you feel and then connect with that feeling when you meditate.
This is a recording of a live-streamed class from The Loving Awareness Meditation Course - Three live-streamed classes each week.
You can subscribe to The Loving Awareness Meditation Course website for free to be updated with new podcast episodes, offers and information on training. https://lovingawareness.fm/
If you want to just listen to meditations without the guidance, visit The Meditation Course Podcast here: https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/the-meditation-course/id1549271245
In 2009, I picked up a book called The Power of Now. It taught me three things that I already knew but had not realised. In other words, it was knowledge but they had not become deep intuitive realisations that formed my model of my reality and on which I acted and made choices.
These three things were: The Present Moment is all there is, I Am Not My Thoughts, and I Am Not My Emotions.
Realising this was transformative.
Over time, I learned that these were not the concepts of the author, Eckhart Tolle, but deep-rooted concepts that reside in the great Eastern wisdom traditions.
I teach many meditations and practices but essentially these are foundational concepts.
In this meditation from a recent YouTube Live Stream, I focus on the Present Moment.
This is a recording of a live-streamed class from The Loving Awareness Meditation Course - Three live-streamed classes each week.
You can subscribe to The Loving Awareness Meditation Course website for free to be updated with new podcast episodes, offers and information on training. https://lovingawareness.fm/
If you want to just listen to meditations without the guidance, visit The Meditation Course Podcast here: https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/the-meditation-course/id1549271245
In open awareness meditations, we allow ourselves to experience our present moment experience and everything that arises in it
Open awareness meditation is distinct from focused attention meditations like following the breath where we are focusing on a single element of our experience If the mind is busy, we can move from focused attention to open awareness until the open awareness becomes more comfortable.
In this session taken from The Meditation Course, Robert teaches three open awareness meditations:
- The Just Gone Meditation
- The Presence Meditation
- A Pure Open Awareness Meditation.
This is a recording of a live-streamed class from The Loving Awareness Meditation Course - Three live-streamed classes each week.
You can subscribe to The Loving Awareness Meditation Course website for free to be updated with new podcast episodes, offers and information on training. https://lovingawareness.fm/
If you want to just listen to meditations without the guidance, visit The Meditation Course Podcast here: https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/the-meditation-course/id1549271245
Clarity meditation is a mandala meditation where are we focus our attention on an object. This isn't like Trataka meditation however, where we focus on a single point. Instead, we are resting our awareness on the entire object patiently, and noticing what arises as part of this experience.
To practice this, it is best to use an object that has some meaning to you and is either shiny or translucent. This isn't essential, but it is helpful.
As we rest our awareness on the object, thoughts and memories and sensations and the sense of the object itself, or whatever your mind associates with it, arises in your experience.
These associations will, as you continue to patiently observe the object, arise and subside. Eventually, the essential visual elements of the object come more clearly into focus and the mental noise subsides.
Finally, the mind will select a visual element of the object and all of the mental noise will diminish and finally subside entirely. What this exercise does, is to help us to become aware of how our minds project onto our environment almost all of the attributes of any object or person or experience or phenomena of any kind.
Clarity meditation separates the common observable reality of colours, textures, shapes, contrasts, reflections and patterns from all the attributes that our minds project into our experience such as memories, thoughts, and sensory experience that is brought to the experience by our memory and programming.
Clarity in meditation is the realization of the actual reality and what we personally bring to our experiences.
This is a recording of a live-streamed class from The Loving Awareness Meditation Course - Three live-streamed classes each week.
You can subscribe to The Loving Awareness Meditation Course website for free to be updated with new podcast episodes, offers and information on training. https://lovingawareness.fm/
If you want to just listen to meditations without the guidance, visit The Meditation Course Podcast here: https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/the-meditation-course/id1549271245
At the heart of all meditation is Focus.
Our awareness and where it is focused is everything.
Focus in almost entirely unconscious so we can often only work with it by influencing future focus having learned where out minds take our attention. Mindfulness is essential for this. If we are not aware that our attention is being taken and where and how we can't train ourselves to change it to a more helpful point.
This meditation takes the meditator on a journey through focused attention, single point focus, open awareness and open focus meditation, a practice in the open awareness category is a useful practice and the meditations will be centred around it.
This is a recording of a live-streamed class from The Loving Awareness Meditation Course - Three live-streamed classes each week.
You can subscribe to The Loving Awareness Meditation Course website for free to be updated with new podcast episodes, offers and information on training. https://lovingawareness.fm/
If you want to just listen to meditations without the guidance, visit The Meditation Course Podcast here: https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/the-meditation-course/id1549271245
Human beings are genetically programmed from 2 billion years of evolution. Physiological and psychological responses are fine-tuned for the threats that have been predominant throughout this 2 billion years. Often these threats are existential. They are threats to our life such as predators, venomous insects and snakes, precipices, hazards and hostile competitors. The system that has evolved to negotiate this landscape of threat is unconscious and uncompromising in its response to a potential threat. When your mind or your physiology perceives a threat, it switches on a system known as the sympathetic nervous system. The sympathetic nervous system elevates your heart rate and blood pressure and pumps stress chemicals into your body to keep you alert and awake and prepared to fight or run. This is also what happens when you notice an unexpected sum of money missing from your bank account. Your body is kicking in to protect you from a physical threat when to resolve the issue all you normally need to do is make a phone call. When we multiply that unconscious physiological response by the multitude of potential threats to our financial security, our personal integrity, our personal security, our relationships, and threats to whichever groups we identify with, what can result is a thing called chronic stress. Chronic stress consists of a negative feedback loop of stress, anxiety and often worry. These three elements feed into each other maintaining the levels of stress chemicals in our body and keeping us alert so that we can deal with the threat that our physiology is designed to respond to. I teach many ways of intervening with this system and one of the most useful is to re-learn relaxation. I say re-learn, because we literally unlearn it as we grow up. In the modern world, relaxation is having a glass of wine and watching the TV. Relaxation is actually a process of releasing the musculoskeletal tension from our bodies. One of the many things that we lose due to her modern lives, is a connection to our physiology. By connection, I mean the capacity to be aware of things like tension. Re-learning relaxation is a slow process of reconnecting with our bodies and gently, patiently, and over time, training ourselves to be able to relax. I teach a number of practices that assist in relaxation. In this class, the meditation combines two of the other meditations into a relaxing 35 minutes which will assist you with calmness, relaxation, and sleep.
This is a recording of a live-streamed class from The Loving Awareness Meditation Course - Three live-streamed classes each week.
You can subscribe to The Loving Awareness Meditation Course website for free to be updated with new podcast episodes, offers and information on training. https://lovingawareness.fm/
If you want to just listen to meditations without the guidance, visit The Meditation Course Podcast here: https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/the-meditation-course/id1549271245
Healing is a process of reconnection
Human suffering arises from a sense of disconnection of rejection.
I am not keen on the concept of 'advanced' meditation but you will probably need to have meditated for some time to be comfortable with this meditation.
Humans
We are adaptable and resilient. We inhabit the most hostile places on our planet, and the inhabitants can thrive there.
We can endure cruel and inhuman punishments just so long as we have a sense of purpose and meaning.
Connection to a higher purpose is the key to resilience.
What we cannot cope with is rejection. Rejection is a significant trauma that destroys lives and undermines happiness.
We need to learn how to come home to our entire human family and reconnect to the natural world.
Healing is learning how to reconnect
Empathy is a big step forward in healing our personal and collective trauma.
Empathy is how we share our suffering, learn from each other, and grow together. Words are meaningless if we avoid allowing ourselves to feel. We then become incapable of feeling how others feel, and conflict becomes inevitable.
The Karma Yoga Meditation helps us to reconnect. To the present moment. To our bodies. To our minds and finally to nature, to others, and all other beings.
The meditation brings us as close to our bodymind (subconscious mind or namarupa as the Buddhists describe it) as we can be because we become aware of the nature of choice and we can observe how it arises in our minds.
This is a recording of a live-streamed class from The Loving Awareness Meditation Course - Three live-streamed classes each week.
You can subscribe to The Loving Awareness Meditation Course website for free to be updated with new podcast episodes, offers and information on training. https://lovingawareness.fm/
If you want to just listen to meditations without the guidance, visit The Meditation Course Podcast here: https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/the-meditation-course/id1549271245
A meditation for the moment that we find ourselves in.
Right now, we need to find practices to restore some balance to our lives.
For most people, for most of the time, the present moment is overwhelmingly good. It is the contents of the mind as it searches for potential threats that pollutes our present moments.
Gratitude in the context of meditation is actually a translation of Metta Bhavana, a Pali word which is actually a collection of practices that use positive emotions to help us understand our relationship to the world, and to ourselves and which help us balance our lives in a way that is more helpful for our happiness.
Gratitude meditation helps us to find balance and enables us to become familiar with our emotions and inner experience without difficulty.
I learned this particular practice at the London Buddhist Centre in Bethnal Green and I have used it ever since and teach it reasonably regularly. I am not a Buddhist but I have great respect for them curating these practices over thousands of years.
Gratitude practices are the most transformative that I can widely teach and this practice is part of the backbone of my gratitude practice repertoire.
The modern mind, led by the common narrative, inserts what it learns into all of our experiences until every experience can become one of comparison and judgement. This is why people can change so deeply when they learn the gratitude practices, literally at least half of their universe becomes free of the sense that it isn’t good enough.
This is a recording of a live-streamed class from The Loving Awareness Meditation Course - Three live-streamed classes each week.
You can subscribe to The Loving Awareness Meditation Course website for free to be updated with new podcast episodes, offers and information on training. https://lovingawareness.fm/
If you want to just listen to meditations without the guidance, visit The Meditation Course Podcast here: https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/the-meditation-course/id1549271245
Sitting in meditation, what arises most commonly in our experience is sound, physical sensations, thoughts and emotions.
In this meditation, Robert guides the student through the process of allowing ourselves to be aware of these phenomena (As they are called) while they arise in our awareness, to acknowledge them, to note them, and to witness them passing out of our awareness to be replaced by another phenomena.
Noting, or labelling, is one of the most frictionless ways to deal with these experiences that we encounter during meditation and which are most likely to intervene in our practice, draw us out of our awareness of the present moment and into the inner narrative, which of course, is fed directly from the external narrative that is so divisive and fear-driven.
By connecting to the present moment and allowing the thoughts and emotions and sensations and sounds to pass we train ourselves to let go of the fear and anxiety that this narrative brings.
This is a recording of a live-streamed class from The Loving Awareness Meditation Course - Three live-streamed classes each week.
You can subscribe to The Loving Awareness Meditation Course website for free to be updated with new podcast episodes, offers and information on training. https://lovingawareness.fm/
If you want to just listen to meditations without the guidance, visit The Meditation Course Podcast here: https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/the-meditation-course/id1549271245
Noting or labelling practice was developed by Mahasi Sayadaw, a Burmese Theravada Buddhist monk and meditation master who had a significant impact on the teaching of Vipassana (Insight) meditation in the West and throughout Asia. Labelling practice brings a number of benefits: - It provides a relatively frictionless focus for a distracted mind which is calming and relaxing. - It helps us to become more aware of our present moment sensory experience which is particularly useful with walking meditation. - It helps us to identify and separate all of the individual experiences (the phenomena) that we experience. This separation is critical in helping us to learn how to work with internal experiences such as emotion and thought.
Noting or Labelling is both a great way to begin meditation and a soft and easy way to return to our practices.
This is a recording of a live-streamed class from The Loving Awareness Meditation Course - Three live-streamed classes each week.
You can subscribe to The Loving Awareness Meditation Course website for free to be updated with new podcast episodes, offers and information on training. https://lovingawareness.fm/
If you want to just listen to meditations without the guidance, visit The Meditation Course Podcast here: https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/the-meditation-course/id1549271245
This podcast is largely a talk on, yoga, choice, action, mindfulness and meditation but includes some meditations designed to help us to become aware of choices arising.
Karma Yoga is described as the yoga of action. It is an ancient Hindu philosophical concept explained in the Bhagavad-Gita and the Yoga Sutras of Patanjali. Both of these are ancient texts, written hundreds of years before the time of Christ, are deeply involved with the issue of choice, decision, action and discipline.
Choice and action has become a focus for many researchers as they try to get to the bottom of why we make the choices we make. This has gained significant funding and If an active area of research on behalf of commercial enterprises, political parties, and various other organisations seeking to benefit from an understand of the nature of choice.
It is now possible to take this ancient wisdom and this research, much of which is largely accepted by the scientific community, to understand the interaction of thought, emotion, habit, and instinct in modern human experience.
It is entirely possible to observe this process of choice operating while meditating as you can see if you listen to this episode.
This session was recorded at one of my Tuesday afternoon Meditation Classes in Bromley in July 2019
This is a recording of a live-streamed class from The Loving Awareness Meditation Course - Three live-streamed classes each week.
You can subscribe to The Loving Awareness Meditation Course website for free to be updated with new podcast episodes, offers and information on training. https://lovingawareness.fm/
If you want to just listen to meditations without the guidance, visit The Meditation Course Podcast here: https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/the-meditation-course/id1549271245
This Walking and Labelling Meditation introduces 'Noting' or 'Labelling' practices into the walking meditation training.
Noting or labelling practice was developed by Mahasi Sayadaw, a Burmese Theravada Buddhist monk and meditation master who had a significant impact on the teaching of Vipassana (Insight) meditation in the West and throughout Asia.
Labelling practice brings a number of benefits:
- It provides a relatively frictionless focus for a distracted mind which is calming and relaxing.
- It helps us to become more aware of our present moment sensory experience which is particularly useful with walking meditation.
- It helps us to identify and separate all of the individual experiences (the phenomena) that we experience. This separation is critical in helping us to learn how to work with internal phenomena such as emotion and thought.
This session was recorded in a park (courtesy of coronavirus lockdown stage 4) on The 18th of May 2020.
This is a recording of a live-streamed class from The Loving Awareness Meditation Course - Three live-streamed classes each week.
You can subscribe to The Loving Awareness Meditation Course website for free to be updated with new podcast episodes, offers and information on training. https://lovingawareness.fm/
If you want to just listen to meditations without the guidance, visit The Meditation Course Podcast here: https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/the-meditation-course/id1549271245
This meditation is a favourite among my student base and has evolved over the time that I've been teaching it.
It originally began as the typical and famous mountain meditation and developed over time because I needed a metaphorical illustration to contrast the experience of focused awareness of something that is static and seemingly unchanging in nature against the experience of the awareness of the continuous flow of time past the seemingly static observer.
The sense of the static nature of the observer and the rock and the space between the eyes helps to illustrate a continuous flow of life and change through time and past the awareness.
Each element highlights the other.
This meditation was taught in a livestream video I broadcast on the 16th of May 2020 in the Mindfulness-Based Resilience Course Group.
This is a recording of a live-streamed class from The Loving Awareness Meditation Course - Three live-streamed classes each week.
You can subscribe to The Loving Awareness Meditation Course website for free to be updated with new podcast episodes, offers and information on training. https://lovingawareness.fm/
If you want to just listen to meditations without the guidance, visit The Meditation Course Podcast here: https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/the-meditation-course/id1549271245
The Modern Mind Meditation is a mediation that I teach that helps us to become aware of the modern mind working - by it's absence...
This practice is a set of ancient techniques taught in a modern way and designed to create a frictionless experience.
You will be able to find the stillness and space that is in the present moment that allows you to leave the chattering of your modern mind behind. It is an experience without comparison and judgement and boredom and frustration and all of the multitude of experiences that fill our minds and our lives in the modern world.
This meditation was taught in a livestream video I broadcast on the 9th of May 2020.
You can find the video that this came from on The Meditation Course YouTube Channel here: https://youtu.be/G8a3u9YeohY
This is a recording of a live-streamed class from The Loving Awareness Meditation Course - Three live-streamed classes each week.
You can subscribe to The Loving Awareness Meditation Course website for free to be updated with new podcast episodes, offers and information on training. https://lovingawareness.fm/
If you want to just listen to meditations without the guidance, visit The Meditation Course Podcast here: https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/the-meditation-course/id1549271245
Welcome to the Sleep Meditation. An evidence-based practice designed to enhance your sleep.
I have taught many meditations in the past that help with sleep.
I have taught them on the basis that everyone is different and what works for one person doesn't work for another.
There are many meditations that purport to assist in sleep but they are actually more like adult bedtime stories that are actually visualisations rather than meditations.
That is of no benefit for the 50% or so of society that find visualisation difficult. They also rely on the listener actually listening to the visualisations.
The purpose of this practice, as with all of my meditations, for you to become independent of the guidance. I want you all to become independent of guided meditation. Not reliant on it!
The Sleep Meditation is a combination of the practices that I have taught and had positive feedback from my students on.
You will soon discover the ones that work for you and you will be able to utilise those practices when you need to sleep.
This meditation was taught in a livestream video I broadcast on the 3rd of May 2020.
You can find the video that this came from on The Meditation Course YouTube Channel here: https://youtu.be/vJXw0SH9qMM
There are two Podcasts on Sleep. This one and Episode 14 of The Meditation Podcast published on 18 November 2018. the link is here: https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/2020-meditation/id1434349351?i=1000424703294
This is a recording of a live-streamed class from The Loving Awareness Meditation Course - Three live-streamed classes each week.
You can subscribe to The Loving Awareness Meditation Course website for free to be updated with new podcast episodes, offers and information on training. https://lovingawareness.fm/
If you want to just listen to meditations without the guidance, visit The Meditation Course Podcast here: https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/the-meditation-course/id1549271245
Episodes 19 and 20 of Series 3 of the Meditation Podcasts are dedicated to teaching mindful walking.
In the previous podcast, number 18 we learned walking meditation which consisted of three practices, focusing on the breath, focusing on our feet as we walk, and allowing ourselves to be aware of our present moment experience.
That final element of last week's practice is expanded for these two podcasts into a mindful walking practice.
Episode 19 consists of a short introductory talk explaining mindfulness and mindful walking followed by a guided mindful walk.
Episode 20 is the same as Episode 19 but without the introduction and just the guided mindful walk.
I have used this format for what would normally be one episode so that for your very first few times practising the technique you can listen to the introduction and the walk, and from then on, no longer needing the introduction, you can just listen to just the walk in episode 20.
These podcasts have been produced in collaboration with St Christophers Hospice to support their Step Up Programme and also for Dartford & Gravesend NHS Trust.
St Christophers are running what they called a step up for St Christopher's challenge where supporters are walking 5,000 steps per day to reach 50 million steps. To find out more visit this link:
https://www.stchristophers.org.uk/stepup
This is a recording of a live-streamed class from The Loving Awareness Meditation Course - Three live-streamed classes each week.
You can subscribe to The Loving Awareness Meditation Course website for free to be updated with new podcast episodes, offers and information on training. https://lovingawareness.fm/
If you want to just listen to meditations without the guidance, visit The Meditation Course Podcast here: https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/the-meditation-course/id1549271245
Episodes 19 and 20 of Series 3 of The Meditation Podcasts are dedicated to teaching mindful walking.
In the previous podcast, number 18 we learned walking meditation which consisted of three practices, focusing on the breath, focusing on our feet as we walk, and allowing ourselves to be aware of our present moment experience.
That final element of last week's practice is expanded for these two podcasts into a mindful walking practice.
Episode 19 consists of a short introductory talk explaining mindfulness and mindful walking followed by a guided mindful walk.
Episode 20 is the same as Episode 19 but without the introduction and just the guided mindful walk.
I have used this format for what would normally be one episode so that for your very first few times practising the technique you can listen to the introduction and the walk, and from then on, no longer needing the introduction, you can just listen to just the walk in episode 20.
These podcasts have been produced in collaboration with St Christophers Hospice to support their Step Up Programme and also for Dartford & Gravesend NHS Trust.
St Christophers are running what they called a step up for St Christopher's challenge where supporters are walking 5,000 steps per day to reach 50 million steps. To find out more visit this link:
https://www.stchristophers.org.uk/stepup
This is a recording of a live-streamed class from The Loving Awareness Meditation Course - Three live-streamed classes each week.
You can subscribe to The Loving Awareness Meditation Course website for free to be updated with new podcast episodes, offers and information on training. https://lovingawareness.fm/
If you want to just listen to meditations without the guidance, visit The Meditation Course Podcast here: https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/the-meditation-course/id1549271245
This podcast is designed for you to listen to while on your walk. There are places where I suggest you pause the recording and where it cycles, and can be repeated, so you can make the walk as long as you wish.
Here is the link to a video explaining the walking meditation and a meditation you can do to prepare for it on my YouTube channel: Click here to view the YouTube video.
Here is the link to the blog entry for this podcast on the podcasts page of my website: Click here to visit the podcast entry of my blog.
This is the first in a series of podcasts that I'm delivering on the subject of mindful walking and walking meditation in collaboration with St Christopher's Hospice, whose good work is needed now as much as it ever has been.
St Christophers are running what they called a step up for St Christopher's challenge where supporters are walking 5,000 steps per day to reach 50 million steps. To find out more visit this link: https://www.stchristophers.org.uk/stepup
Walking meditation, like whole meditation, is thousands of years old. Once we've learnt to meditate in formal practice (sitting), any activity can become a meditation.
Famously, Thich Nhat Hanh, The famous Vietnamese Buddhist teacher and activist, taught the dishwashing meditation.
This practice is the technique that I use when I do walking meditation. It consists of cycling through these practices, focusing on our breath, focusing on our feet, and open awareness of our surroundings.
This cycling process assists the practitioner to stay present and allows them to have a varied experience rather than, for instance, just focusing on the sensation of the feet on the ground, or trying to stay present.
This is from a session I taught in The Meditation Course. Details are here: https://www.meditationcourse.live/
This is a recording of a live-streamed class from The Loving Awareness Meditation Course - Three live-streamed classes each week.
You can subscribe to The Loving Awareness Meditation Course website for free to be updated with new podcast episodes, offers and information on training. https://lovingawareness.fm/
If you want to just listen to meditations without the guidance, visit The Meditation Course Podcast here: https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/the-meditation-course/id1549271245
There is a set of practices that I teach which are largely based on the wonderful Buddhist tradition of Metta Bhavana which is the practice of Loving Kindness. These practices are the ones I am teaching this month in #LovingKindness month. Essentially they are meditations in these areas: appreciation, gratitude, compassion, self-compassion, and connection. In this weeks meditation I have added all of these into one single meditation that I am calling the #LovingKindness meditation. This is from a session I taught in the 2020 Meditation Online Course. Details are here: https://2020meditation.com/courses If the course isn't for you but you would like to contribute to keeping this Service online then you can make a payment of any amount here: https://2020meditation.com/coffee
Support the show (https://2020meditation.com/payments)
This mediation was taught in one of The Meditation Course Group’s Private training sessions which is part of the benefits of joining the course. Visit https://www.meditationcourse.live/ to learn more.
Loving Kindness (Metta Bhavana) is the Buddhist tradition of engaging with our comfortable emotions and using them as a way of making progress in our personal development.
This includes gratitude, appreciation and compassion. All of this is deeply connected to Mindfulness.
This mediation was taught in one of The Meditation Course Group’s Private training sessions which is part of the benefits of joining the course.
This practice is part of the core training of The Meditation Course and is fully supported for course members with additional content, training and personally coached support.
To find out more about the course, visit our website at: https://www.meditationcourse.live/ You can also just subscribe to our mailing list and get updated regularly with new sample content and offers.
This is a recording of a live-streamed class from The Loving Awareness Meditation Course - Three live-streamed classes each week.
You can subscribe to The Loving Awareness Meditation Course website for free to be updated with new podcast episodes, offers and information on training. https://lovingawareness.fm/
If you want to just listen to meditations without the guidance, visit The Meditation Course Podcast here: https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/the-meditation-course/id1549271245
The Appreciation Meditation
This practice is part of the core training of The Meditation Course and is fully supported for course members with additional content, training and personally coached support.
To find out more about the course, visit our website at: https://www.meditationcourse.live/ You can also just subscribe to our mailing list and get updated with new sample content and offers.
The modern mind is culturally conditioned to focus on lack. So much in our lives becomes 'not good enough' including, very often, our perception of ourselves.
This is how the economy operates and is its main focus. Notice how, with the lockdown in place, people are responding by simplifying and minimising their lives. There is a recognition that the excess is not helpful.
The marketing that causes us to believe that we need more than we actually really need is falling on deaf ears.
Modern humans can easily become bored. The neutral present moment becomes insufficient, and this simple experience, which forms the vast majority of our lives, becomes unsatisfactory.
Our minds are trained to be directed towards tasks and expectations, desires and perceived needs. People need to constantly find 'something to do' to calm their minds. Appreciation, gratitude, acceptance, mindfulness, and the recognition of impermanence all work together to rebuild the experience of the neutral present moment into a totally fulfilling experience.
I will be covering Acceptance and Impermanence in the Mindfulness-Based Resilience Course Group.
This is a recording of a live-streamed class from The Loving Awareness Meditation Course - Three live-streamed classes each week.
You can subscribe to The Loving Awareness Meditation Course website for free to be updated with new podcast episodes, offers and information on training. https://lovingawareness.fm/
If you want to just listen to meditations without the guidance, visit The Meditation Course Podcast here: https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/the-meditation-course/id1549271245
On Saturday, the 28th of March 2020, I ran an online training class entitled the Two Wolves.
There is a Native American tradition which says we all embody two wolves that are constantly fighting for control over our attention, actions, and choices - I call these The Wolf of Fear and The Wolf of Freedom.
There is a story that a wise man once taught his grandson that... "The wolf that wins is the wolf that you feed".
The previous episode (Episode 15, The Two Wolves Meditations - The Meditation of Starving The Wolf of Fear), is a meditation from that live online class that is practice for trying us to learn to return to the present moment from the Narrative of Fear.
This episode includes that meditation, but is also an edited version of the talk that precedes it, including the following topics:
About the story of The Two Wolves Starving The Wolf of Fear
Portals to find your way into the present moment:
- Sound
- Nature
- Photography!
- The Breath
The two mediations in the session are:
- The Meditation of no meditation for the breath.
- The Meditation of Starving The Wolf of Fear which includes returning to the breath and Intervening in the Narrative of Fear.
If you find this training useful, I would really love you to check out my website where you will find the following:
- The LiveStreaming Schedule for my online meditation classes
- Details of my course
- Information and links to my online resources
https://www.meditationcourse.live/
This is a recording of a live-streamed class from The Loving Awareness Meditation Course - Three live-streamed classes each week.
You can subscribe to The Loving Awareness Meditation Course website for free to be updated with new podcast episodes, offers and information on training. https://lovingawareness.fm/
If you want to just listen to meditations without the guidance, visit The Meditation Course Podcast here: https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/the-meditation-course/id1549271245
In response to the onset of the current crisis, on the 28th of March 2020, I ran an online training class entitled the Two Wolves.
There is a Native American tradition which says that we all embody two wolves. The wolves are constantly fighting for control over our attention, actions, and choices.
The Wolves represent our better nature and our tendency to be selfish and greedy. I call these The Wolf of Fear and The Wolf of Freedom. The Wolf of Freedom, in my mind, represents freedom from fear.
There is a story that a wise man once taught his grandson that the wolf that wins is the wolf that you feed.
In these difficult times, Fear becomes a very real thing and the stress, worry, and anxiety that it creates can cause us as many problems as the adversity itself.
In this training session I taught a meditation design to help us notice the narrative of fear taking our attention and gives us an alternative to it.
If you find this training useful, check out my website where you will find the following:
- The LiveStreaming Schedule for my online meditation classes
- Details of my course
- Information and links to online resources
This is a recording of a live-streamed class from The Loving Awareness Meditation Course - Three live-streamed classes each week.
You can subscribe to The Loving Awareness Meditation Course website for free to be updated with new podcast episodes, offers and information on training. https://lovingawareness.fm/
If you want to just listen to meditations without the guidance, visit The Meditation Course Podcast here: https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/the-meditation-course/id1549271245
This practice is part of the core training of the 2020 Meditation Online Course and is fully supported for course members with additional content, training and personally coached support.
This is a meditation that I devised to help calm stubbornly busy minds
Ideally, use it as a precursor to following the breath and not as a replacement for it.
Or use it to calm your mind if your mind is stubbornly busy.
• Begin by focusing on the breath for about five or ten breaths.
• Construct the image of a candle. Notice that the flame flickers in time to your in and out breaths. Add as much detail as possible to the candle. If the image collapses, reconstruct it.
• Return your focus to the breath and keep moving the focus between the candle and the breath until the thoughts have quieted.
If the mind continues to wander add more detail to the candle.
If the mind is still busy, you can count breaths while you are meditating both while you are focusing on the breath and on the candle.
Want to Learn More? https://2020meditation.com
Want to Learn about me? https://bromleymindfulness.org.uk/about/robert/
Want to Support my work? https://www.paypal.me/bromleymindfulness
Support the show (https://2020meditation.com/coffee)
This practice is part of the core training of The Meditation Course and is fully supported for course members with additional content, training and personally coached support.
To find out more about the course, visit our website at: https://www.meditationcourse.live/ You can also just subscribe to our mailing list and get updated regularly with new sample content and offers.
Labelling the Quality of Thoughts is a meditation that I have devised. It is possible that I heard it somewhere but if so I have no recollection of that. It is an extension of the brilliant ‘noting’ or labelling practices devised by the great mediation teacher Mahasi Sayadaw.
It is an extension of the Labelling the Thoughts Meditation in which the mind needs to choose which of two categories the thought resides in. The categories are arbitrary and are designed to make the choice a frictionless experience as if there is any relevance or importance the minds of many students become bogged down in a spiral of choice.
When the technique is practiced as designed the choice is almost a guess. A light and frictionless decision. The meditation is designed to bring our attention to the point where a thought arises in the mind.
This is a recording of a live-streamed class from The Loving Awareness Meditation Course - Three live-streamed classes each week.
You can subscribe to The Loving Awareness Meditation Course website for free to be updated with new podcast episodes, offers and information on training. https://lovingawareness.fm/
If you want to just listen to meditations without the guidance, visit The Meditation Course Podcast here: https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/the-meditation-course/id1549271245
This practice is part of the core training of the 2020 Meditation Online Course and is fully supported for course members with additional content, training and personally coached support.
To find out more about the course, visit our website at: https://2020meditation.com You can also just subscribe to our mailing list and get updated regularly with new sample content and offers.
Compassion isn't an emotion, it is a basic drive for social animals. Chimpanzees for instance, consistently display compassion. I define Compassion as: "The drive to alleviate the suffering of a being that we identify with".
Compassion allows us to connect, understand and forgive. It is an essential social lubricant that can overcome the friction of living in a complex world with conflicting loyalties, ideologies, beliefs, perspectives and behaviours.
Compassion needs to be practiced. We can easily fall into an unhelpful cycle of being protective and avoidant. Compassion practices can help us to connect and form the important fulfilling relationships that are essential to growth and healing. There has been a significant amount of study into compassion and the effects of a compassionate outlook resulting in the formation of a therapeutic practice known as Compassion Focused Therapy. This has a promising degree of success in some difficult areas such as psychosis and eating disorders.
For the rest of us, developing compassion through practicing the Compassion Mantra will help to build a compassionate response in our interactions. It is particularly useful for defusing potential unhelpful angry or resentful responses.
May you be well, may you be happy, may you find peace of mind.
Support the show (https://2020meditation.com/coffee)
This practice is part of the core training of The Meditation Course and is fully supported for course members with additional content, training and personally coached support.
To find out more about the course, visit our website at: https://www.meditationcourse.live/ You can also just subscribe to our mailing list and get updated regularly with new sample content and offers.
It is traditional in secular mindfulness courses to teach the body scan.
The body scan was popularised by Satya Narayan Goenka (1924 – 2013), commonly known as S. N. Goenka, a Burmese-Indian teacher of Vipassanā meditation.
The body scan consists of focusing on the body as you move your awareness over it.
I also taught the body scan in my early days as a meditation teacher but soon realised that it wasn’t delivering as a practice because it takes at least 25 minutes. Most people come to mindfulness because their busy minds and lives are overwhelmed. They are among the last group to dedicate that amount of time to a practice that takes so long to benefit them.
My focus has always been on accessibility and inclusivity. If a practice doesn’t resonate with my students and it doesn’t benefit their lives then I will find a replacement that will deliver the same benefits.
That replacement is the Destress Meditation.
We hold stress as muscular tension in our bodies in the same places: the hands, shoulders, back of the neck and from the forehead down to the abdomen.
In this meditation, we move the focus of our attention through only these high stress places on the body, but with the focus on relaxation. We relax the area of focus with the outbreath.
The order is: hands, shoulders, back and sides of the neck, down the face starting from the forehead and finally relaxing the throat, chest, upper back, areas around the pelvis, abdomen, lower back slowly then back again.
This is a recording of a live-streamed class from The Loving Awareness Meditation Course - Three live-streamed classes each week.
You can subscribe to The Loving Awareness Meditation Course website for free to be updated with new podcast episodes, offers and information on training. https://lovingawareness.fm/
If you want to just listen to meditations without the guidance, visit The Meditation Course Podcast here: https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/the-meditation-course/id1549271245
Labelling the thoughts is one of the key mindfulness meditation practices that I teach as a foundation for mindfulness meditation in The Meditation Course.
For information on how and when to use the practice and how you can benefit, join our course by subscribing from The Meditation Course Website.
To find out more about The Meditation Course, visit our website at: https://www.meditationcourse.live/
You can subscribe to our mailing list and get updated regularly with how to join the course, notification of new content and offers.
This is a recording of a live-streamed class from The Loving Awareness Meditation Course - Three live-streamed classes each week.
You can subscribe to The Loving Awareness Meditation Course website for free to be updated with new podcast episodes, offers and information on training. https://lovingawareness.fm/
If you want to just listen to meditations without the guidance, visit The Meditation Course Podcast here: https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/the-meditation-course/id1549271245
The Meditation of No Meditation is partly a meditation and partly an experience of Mindfulness. It is a window into a present moment that isn’t crowded with repetitive thoughts, memories, anxieties, tasks, priorities, worries and all the other baggage of the 21st century.
Mindfulness is “The undistracted awareness of the experience of the present moment.” - My definition.
The attributes of the Meditation of No Meditation are:
-
It is entirely frictionless for most new meditation students.
-
It can be done almost anywhere and at any time.
The Meditation of No Meditation is a simple listening exercise that has elements of meditation in it, along with elements of mindfulness.
The Meditation of No Meditation isn’t a traditional mindfulness meditation and it won’t build mindfulness like the key mindfulness meditation practices such as 'following the breath' do, but if we follow the Way of No Meditation, practicing it the way I will explain, will help you to build a regular practice! Once you have a regular practice, adding to it becomes possible for even the busiest people. This is a science backed habit formation technique known as Habit Stacking. Once we have one good habit in place, we can amend it or add other new habits to it.
To find out more about The Meditation Course, visit our website at: https://www.meditationcourse.live/ You can subscribe to our mailing list and get updated regularly with new content and offers.
This is a recording of a live-streamed class from The Loving Awareness Meditation Course - Three live-streamed classes each week.
You can subscribe to The Loving Awareness Meditation Course website for free to be updated with new podcast episodes, offers and information on training. https://lovingawareness.fm/
If you want to just listen to meditations without the guidance, visit The Meditation Course Podcast here: https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/the-meditation-course/id1549271245
We all have a collection of memories of our difficult past experiences. These can stay with us for a lifetime. Sometimes these experiences can build up and become a very real burden that is unhelpful for our happiness. There are a number of ways that students of meditation can release their emotional baggage. Compassion, gratitude and self-compassion are key practices that I teach regularly. At the heart of these practices is the self-compassion meditation which consists of three statements.
- May I be well
- May I be happy
- May I find peace of mind
Be aware that this is not a magic practice designed to make you feel great about yourself and the rest of the world. It is a gentle mindfulness technique that helps to balance the negative self-talk and criticism from self and others that is part of our lives. Also be aware that for some, this may bring uncomfortable emotions into your experience. If that is the case, do this when you are feeling powerful. If it feels overwhelming, stop and either come back to it at some future point or find another gratitude practice that works for you.
This is a recording of a live-streamed class from The Loving Awareness Meditation Course - Three live-streamed classes each week.
You can subscribe to The Loving Awareness Meditation Course website for free to be updated with new podcast episodes, offers and information on training. https://lovingawareness.fm/
If you want to just listen to meditations without the guidance, visit The Meditation Course Podcast here: https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/the-meditation-course/id1549271245
Counting the breaths is an ancient mindfulness meditation technique. It's a practice where we count each breath using the inner voice. The way I teach it is to count each in and out breath. This engages the mind in an activity that helps to calm the mind. It is the single mindfulness meditation practice that is most helpful for most students.
To find out more about The Meditation Course, visit our website at: https://www.meditationcourse.live/ You can subscribe to our mailing list and get updated regularly with new content and offers.
This is a recording of a live-streamed class from The Loving Awareness Meditation Course - Three live-streamed classes each week.
You can subscribe to The Loving Awareness Meditation Course website for free to be updated with new podcast episodes, offers and information on training. https://lovingawareness.fm/
If you want to just listen to meditations without the guidance, visit The Meditation Course Podcast here: https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/the-meditation-course/id1549271245
A guided version of the following the breath meditation. The following the breath meditation teaches us two things:
We have an alternative to being ruled by random thoughts.
There is a neutral place, the breath in the present moment, where we can find a refuge from the stresses of everyday life.
We learn all of this in the best and simplest way. Gentle repetition trains our mind to return to the present moment from wherever it has taken us.
This is a recording of a live-streamed class from The Loving Awareness Meditation Course - Three live-streamed classes each week.
You can subscribe to The Loving Awareness Meditation Course website for free to be updated with new podcast episodes, offers and information on training. https://lovingawareness.fm/
If you want to just listen to meditations without the guidance, visit The Meditation Course Podcast here: https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/the-meditation-course/id1549271245
This is an example of the sort of content I will upload into the Meditation Course. I have added it to the Meditation Podcast so that the course students can listen and practice. Visit https://www.meditationcourse.live/ for more information.
The following the breath meditation is an ancient practice that was taught in India about 2500 years ago. The way I teach it is essentially the same. Following the breath is the key mindfulness meditation training practice that helps us learn how to return our attention to the present moment in our day through the gentle repetition of returning to the breath in our practice. Following the breath also becomes the practice transforms into the silent meditation of open awareness where we allow ourselves to experience all of the internal and external phenomena that we can be aware of as part of our sensory present moment.
This is a recording of a live-streamed class from The Loving Awareness Meditation Course - Three live-streamed classes each week.
You can subscribe to The Loving Awareness Meditation Course website for free to be updated with new podcast episodes, offers and information on training. https://lovingawareness.fm/
If you want to just listen to meditations without the guidance, visit The Meditation Course Podcast here: https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/the-meditation-course/id1549271245
You can practice the Four Tens Meditation to help you to learn to relax.
It is also a mindfulness practice as when your attention wanders, you return yourself to the present moment by starting again.
- Focus your attention on the area of your eyes: forehead, eyebrows, eyes and cheek. Relax this area on ten successive out-breaths.
- Focus your attention on the area of your jaw: mouth and lips, jaw and throat. Relax this area on ten successive out-breaths.
- Focus your attention on the area of your shoulders: shoulders and the back and side of your neck. Relax this area on ten successive out-breaths.
- Focus your attention on your hands. Relax this area on ten successive out-breaths.
If you lose where you are, just go back to start again with your eyes. The practice takes around four minutes.
This is a recording of a live-streamed class from The Loving Awareness Meditation Course - Three live-streamed classes each week.
You can subscribe to The Loving Awareness Meditation Course website for free to be updated with new podcast episodes, offers and information on training. https://lovingawareness.fm/
If you want to just listen to meditations without the guidance, visit The Meditation Course Podcast here: https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/the-meditation-course/id1549271245
The first meditation taken from The Meditation Course.
This training is from Month 1, Unit 1 - 'How to Meditate - Building the Foundations of a successful practice'
When we breathe in, we are activating the sympathetic (fight and flight) nervous system.
When we breathe out, we are activating the parasympathetic (relaxation) nervous system. By increasing the ratio of time spent in the out-breath (relaxation) we relax the body. This sends a much-needed signal to the brain that all is well.
By breathing regularly and smoothly we are sending signals to the brain that all is well. This results in a state known as Coherence. Our heart and breath become synchronised.
The 4-6 Breaths Practice is something we can do anywhere. It takes two minutes and is useful for rebalancing our physiology in stressful situations.
This is a recording of a live-streamed class from The Loving Awareness Meditation Course - Three live-streamed classes each week.
You can subscribe to The Loving Awareness Meditation Course website for free to be updated with new podcast episodes, offers and information on training. https://lovingawareness.fm/
If you want to just listen to meditations without the guidance, visit The Meditation Course Podcast here: https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/the-meditation-course/id1549271245
First of all I’d like to say thanks to all the supporters of the restful mind podcast and the More than just mindfulness podcast. It’s been a source of constant inspiration to me to check my stats and discover people all over the world listening to the podcast, some of you quite regularly.
I want to explain my plans for future podcasting, and also, for future meditation training online.
Throughout 2020 and beyond, I will be offering the following things:
- Free of charge, an online meditation class that you can attend real-time, and which will be broadcast once or twice a month.
- And also free of charge is access to some sample content from my new Meditation Course.
Don’t be concerned if you’re a regular listener though, as the meditations on the podcast will be added to at the rate of about one per week.
The purpose of the Meditation Course is to provide the consistent level of support that meditation students need throughout an entire year. To discover how to join the Meditation Course, or access any of the free resources, visit https://www.meditationcourse.live/. From there you can subscribe to our mailing list and you will be updated with information on how to join the course, how to access the free resources, the free online classes, and the free sample meditation class from the course that I’ve made available.
You’ll also be updated when a new podcast episode is published.
This is a recording of a live-streamed class from The Loving Awareness Meditation Course - Three live-streamed classes each week.
You can subscribe to The Loving Awareness Meditation Course website for free to be updated with new podcast episodes, offers and information on training. https://lovingawareness.fm/
If you want to just listen to meditations without the guidance, visit The Meditation Course Podcast here: https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/the-meditation-course/id1549271245
Human beings are creatures of habit. To build a new practice such as meditation, it is necessary to do two things. We need to build a habit, and more difficult, we need to intervene in the habits we already have.
Intervening in our habits is difficult because they become combined. One habit brings another and this fills our day with a subconscious process I call the Autopilot. The Autopilot consists largely of instinct and habit. Throughout most people’s days in the modern world, control of their actions is passed between these subconscious processes which is why we can have a day that we get to the end of to discover we can hardly remember any of it. It becomes like a Groundhog Day.
In addition to instinct and habit, we also have awareness. When we are experiencing mindful awareness we can observe these systems operating through our actions, thoughts and emotions.
The process of building a meditation practice supports itself by returning us to awareness so we can intervene in the Autopilot and make conscious choices.
This is the process of meditation:
We somehow find the time to repeat the basic practices.
They consist of us training our subconscious to return control to our awareness.
This allows us to consciously initiate further practices that reduce our stress, intervene in unhelpful thought patterns, calm the mind and allow us to relax.
Robert provides insight into this in this podcast.
Meditations:
15:13 - A guided meditation on sound, time, the mind and the breath.
27:35 - The Four Tens Meditation
41:17 - The 4-6 Breaths
44:45 - Tactical Breathing
49:15 - Counting the Breaths
This is a recording of a live-streamed class from The Loving Awareness Meditation Course - Three live-streamed classes each week.
You can subscribe to The Loving Awareness Meditation Course website for free to be updated with new podcast episodes, offers and information on training. https://lovingawareness.fm/
If you want to just listen to meditations without the guidance, visit The Meditation Course Podcast here: https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/the-meditation-course/id1549271245
The Yoga of Meditation
References: The Yoga Sutras of Patanjali - Swami Satchidananda Bhagavad Gita - Stephen Mitchell Inner Engineering - Sadhguru
This is a recording of a live-streamed class from The Loving Awareness Meditation Course - Three live-streamed classes each week.
You can subscribe to The Loving Awareness Meditation Course website for free to be updated with new podcast episodes, offers and information on training. https://lovingawareness.fm/
If you want to just listen to meditations without the guidance, visit The Meditation Course Podcast here: https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/the-meditation-course/id1549271245
I recorded this episode at a global corporation in the City of London that I have been teaching at since 2014. For them, and for most people working in the square mile, this is the busiest time of the year. Many projects and deadlines finish at Christmas as does accounting periods so the stress is on. My students here also have extremely busy lives and so fitting in a meditation practice can feel like a bridge too far. Because of this, I taught a class that is partly stress-management and also meditation for beginners. Stress is one of the things that gets in the way of us building a regular meditation practice. This is one of the Catch-22s of meditation. Because of this I teach stress-management early in my courses and regularly in my classes. Practices are: The Bell Meditation The 4-6 Breaths Exercise The Four Tens Meditation Meditation of no Meditation
This is a recording of a live-streamed class from The Loving Awareness Meditation Course - Three live-streamed classes each week.
You can subscribe to The Loving Awareness Meditation Course website for free to be updated with new podcast episodes, offers and information on training. https://lovingawareness.fm/
If you want to just listen to meditations without the guidance, visit The Meditation Course Podcast here: https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/the-meditation-course/id1549271245
In the Modern World, our minds have been captured by a narrative that also runs in the minds of many others around us. With variations, this is true for almost all of humanity. This incessant train of repetitive thought rationalises and justifies and rehearses and reconstructs our pasts, our futures and our life situations. All in an attempt to make sense of it. To try to explain this complexity, we all construct a narrative. This personal explanatory narrative is not helpful for our happiness. It is a reflection of our society, our culture and our economy. It is not unique to us as we discover when we share it. The sense that something is broken or something is wrong with us and/or with the world is almost universal. In addition to our shaky internal world, the external world, for many of us, is completely artificial. We work in boxes, travel in boxes, meet in boxes and live in boxes. Nature becomes something we use as an antidote to the inevitable consequences of living in our crazy artificial world. In this episode, Robert teaches some practices that are designed to bring our awareness to our bodies with the breath and relaxation and help us to learn how to focus our minds. This is the essential first step in releasing the unhelpful narrative that has captures so many of us in its grip. These are the foundations of the practices build help us to rebuild our connection to the world, to each other and to our selves. Practices: 4-6 breaths Four tens meditation The bell meditation Following the breath
This is a recording of a live-streamed class from The Loving Awareness Meditation Course - Three live-streamed classes each week.
You can subscribe to The Loving Awareness Meditation Course website for free to be updated with new podcast episodes, offers and information on training. https://lovingawareness.fm/
If you want to just listen to meditations without the guidance, visit The Meditation Course Podcast here: https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/the-meditation-course/id1549271245