Mindfulness in Eight Weeks by Michael Chaskalson

Author:Michael Chaskalson
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers
Published: 2014-09-03T16:00:00+00:00

Each of these ways of reacting can cause problems, particularly the tendency to react to unpleasant feelings with aversion. The main issue is to become more aware of your experience so that you can respond mindfully rather than react automatically.

Meditation can be a kind of laboratory where, under the particular conditions you have set up, you can become aware of how you tend to react to things and also to begin to see how, instead of reacting, you might begin to do things differently.

Regularly practised, meditation gives you many opportunities to notice when you have drifted away from awareness of the moment and, with a friendly awareness, to note whatever it was that took your attention away, then gently and firmly bring your attention back to the object of that meditation, such as the breath. In this way, over and over you practise the process of losing and regaining your moment-by-moment awareness.

You can also begin to use the three-step breathing space to help you to deal with reactions. Whenever you notice unpleasant feelings, or a sense of tightening or ‘holding’ in the body, practising a three-step breathing space can help you to respond rather than react.

As we have seen, in order to respond rather than react, above all we need awareness. Our bodies, with all their present-moment feelings and sensations, are an invaluable anchor for our awareness. The body with all its various sensations is always there to return to when your thoughts and feelings become agitated, and a lived sense of what is going on in the body, in real time, can help you to stay focused in the present moment.

For that reason, part of the emphasis of this week’s practice continues to be awareness of the body in movement.

Walking Meditation

As part of this week’s home practice, you’ll have the chance to experiment with a walking-meditation practice. There are four traditional meditation postures: sitting, lying, standing and walking. So far we’ve done sitting meditation with the mindfulness of breathing, lying-down meditation with the body scan, standing meditation formed part of the mindful movement last week (just standing for a few moments, mindful of the breath and sensations in the body) and this week we complete the quartet with walking meditation.

For most of us, walking forms a huge part of our daily lives. Even if it’s just a walk from a train station to your workplace, or a walk from one room to another in your home or place of work, walking is something we do pretty much unconsciously and fairly often. When you’ve practised a bit of walking meditation, however, some of those short opportunities for walking can turn into great moments for mindfulness practice.

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