Mindfulness is a step towards a harmonious life. Techniques for developing Mindfulness

Chapter Two

MINDFULNESS EXERCISES

MINDFULNESS AND RELAXATION

Usually in the morning, literally a few minutes after we get up, we have tension in our body here and there, and by the end of the day - everywhere. We often don't realize it, but we carry these tensions with us all day long. They feed on one another, reinforce each other, which is incredibly tiring for us and wears out our body and psyche.

Practicing mindfulness in pure form- this is the awareness that There is here and in the moment. In a formal mindfulness meditation practice like Vipassana, you are not trying to change or improve what is, you are trying to refrain from judgment. But if you are aware of the tension, which is maintained in some sense voluntarily, then in such cases there is a natural desire to relax. Mindfulness usually (though not always) leads to relaxation. It's hard to keep doing something stupid like straining unnecessarily when you know you're doing it. Pointless tension occurs until you remember about it or realize that you yourself have begun to tense up.

Student: I discovered that for a long time I was completely insensitive to my body and to the world around me...

Unfortunately, this is normal.

Student: And I really wanted to become sensitive. Now I can feel the cooling of my body, feel my feet. But it doesn't grab me, it doesn't seem like anything really interesting. Maybe that's why I don't pay attention to such things?

BOREDOM, SUFFERING AND AVOIDANCE

One of the disadvantages of everyday reality is that it is largely boring and monotonous, so we long ago decided to replace it with something more interesting.

Student: Yes, fantasies are much more interesting!

We escape reality for at least two reasons. On the one hand, reality sometimes seems uninteresting, on the other hand, it can be painful for us. In both cases, we escape, go into the fantasy worlds that exist in our heads, and this provides some relief. The trouble is that this withdrawal into the world of fantasy becomes automatic, so that when we try to be in reality, we have to fight against years of accumulated habit.

To live here and now, you need to learn to stay with what you have, even if it is not very interesting by the standards of your self. Of course, if you actually begin to deeply feel what is here and now, then it rarely turns out to be uninteresting. The whole question is in the depth of perception.

Sometimes it's a matter of being present: "I'm completely present, my body is uncomfortable, I'm bored, and that's just the way it is." The ability to be present in the present moment, to be attentive to it in these conditions, is an art necessary for deeper development.

It's another matter if you you know How to get into reality, you know how to be attentive to it, but you consciously decide to direct your mind somewhere else. This conscious withdrawal is different from the automatic behavior that causes us to run away as soon as a situation begins to seem boring or threatening.

Student: I still feel like there's something wrong with me because I don't notice anything interesting that should trigger an "aha" experience. So if it doesn't happen, it's my failure.

IT'S GREAT BUT NOTHING SPECIAL

I have felt something like this many times when I meditated. I sit, calm down, gain clarity and find nothing special about it. I think: “Look, God, I’m doing as You said, I’m meditating! Why, it turns out, is there nothing fantastic in this?” I complain that my experiences do not correspond to what seems to me to be the standard. However, in terms of real growth, the bell rings, after hearing this judgment of mine, one may ask why I am so demanding. Why should the Universe be somehow special for me, and the way it is? to me want at a certain moment?

When Lama Sogyal Rinpoche speaks about realization in Dzogchen, about the enlightened state of mind, he expresses his thought in two very different ways, which confuses me a little. In one case he talks about the wonderful, incredible state of rigpa, enlightened mind and so on. Hymns have been written about this state, poems have been glorified about it, special ceremonies have been dedicated to it, so it must be something special. Then almost immediately he notices that “rigpa” is something completely ordinary. How?! The part of my mind that wants something special asks, “What do you mean, something very ordinary? I'm not here for the "ordinary"! Where is the thunder and lightning? Where is the psychedelic brightness, fantastic insights, mystical insights? I want more!"

However, when I had suffered enough from my mind with its endless, habitual involvement in illusion and madness, and gained a moment of simply being present, what a relief it was! How natural, how easy it is to be present and not create dramatic scenarios every minute. How delightfully ordinary!

I don't want to say that it's wrong not to feel the world and your body every moment. When I read a science fiction novel, for example, I don't try to be aware of my surroundings at the same time. I'm going on my journey. Of course, I read in a situation where nothing else is required of me. And if the bell suddenly rings, I’m not so immersed in my fantasies that I won’t hear it. However, we need to develop the art of presence when we move in a world where something is happening, when it is impossible to act only on the surface of things as they appear to ordinary consciousness, but we need to somehow go deeper. Many situations in our lives require greater depth, but unless we have developed the ability to be more present, more attentive, we will not notice these situations.

And don't forget that there is an important ability to accept boredom at times.

HOW TO DEAL WITH PHYSICAL PAIN

Student: For a long time I simply could not help but be outside my body: there is pain there, I don’t want to be there!

I cannot blame you for wanting to leave your body.

Student: I feel the unfortunate irony of learning techniques to go into the body when what I really want to do is get out of it. Can a state of enlightenment help me with this?

Wait, I'm not talking about the state of enlightenment now. I don't know what enlightenment is. I'm talking about greater mindfulness, which we can achieve to some extent.

To learn it, try the body method. But if, due to illness or injury, your body is already long time is a source of pain for you, then this is not a very pleasant task.

However, some supporters of the purity of this method might say that one should be in the body, no matter what. As for pain, there is one curious detail: if you begin to get used to it more and more, it ceases to be pain and becomes feeling.

However, in my experience and in the experience of people I've talked to, this usually only happens when you have the opportunity to make pain the focus of formal meditation. If you have to do something else at the same time, delving into the pain and paying attention to it does not help. If you are in an in-between state where you are present enough in your body to feel pain, but do not have the ability or skill to undertake formal meditation, it can be extremely unpleasant.

Personally, I really don’t like this state of affairs. When I’m healthy and feeling good, I’m happy to talk about how good it is to concentrate on the body, the bell rings, to feel your sensations; but when I am sick or unwell, I naturally prefer to avoid it until I have an opportunity to do formal meditation.

STABILIZATION

Answering in more detail asked question, it can be said that using the body to learn to be present here and now is not the only path to greater mindfulness and stabilization.

Focusing on the body can lead to two significant results. One is being more present in the here and now (by paying more attention to sensory input, you can more accurately perceive the world around you, which is a significant benefit). At certain moments this must be done despite the pain, since there are external circumstances, which must be treated very carefully. Another important result of paying attention to the body can be the stabilization that I talked about this morning. A random thought can no longer carry you along, since the body becomes an anchor holding you in the present.

But other types of “anchors” are also possible. For example, there is a method of constantly repeating a mantra to yourself. In this case, the mind only has a certain amount of attention. Let's try to imagine that we can measure the amount of attention that we have, and at any given moment only ten units of it are available to you. If nine units are voluntarily focused on something, there is only one left for other stimuli, and they cannot do much harm to your psychological system. If someone tells you that you are an idiot, and you are busy with your mantra, then you will not take it at all: you do not have enough free attention to really feel offended.

Thus, constantly reciting a mantra is another way to stabilize the mind and, as a result, reduce suffering. At times this method turns out to be extremely useful. But it seems to me that it cannot be a method for all occasions, since there are times when it is very important to know exactly what is happening Now; for example, a truck may come around a corner at high speed, and if you do not hear external sounds or see anything around you, being immersed in a state of bliss as a result of repeating a mantra, it may run over you. Even if you want to distract yourself from your body because painful sensations, you need to be able to be in the present when you believe it is absolutely necessary.

IMAGINATION, PAIN, KUNDABUFFER

But even without voluntary practice of the mantra, simply withdrawing from body sensations can also reduce pain. I remember one story.

We've all heard about the mysterious kundalini, which yogis talk about, is a force that is supposedly located at the bottom of the spine, rises and activates chakras, which hopefully leads to enlightenment. Gurdjieff said that Western people do not understand what it is. His teachers explained to him that correct name this energy is a kundabuffer. Kundabuffer is an organ placed higher powers the Universe in people at a time when life on Earth was much worse than it is now. Gurdjieff has a kind of mystical cosmology that says that the position of our planet was extremely negative and it was exposed to harmful radiation, so pain was much more common. It was so strong that people often fell into despair and died, which caused great damage to the population of the Earth.

The Kundabuffer was implanted as a kind of imagination generator, so that people could escape into mental constructs and images, which automatically isolated them to some extent from the body, from pain, allowing them to imagine anything and giving them hope. It was a kind of first aid, a palliative for pain, because at that time nothing could be done about its true source.

According to Gurdjieff, our planet is now in another sector of the Galaxy, so we no longer need a kundabuffer. But they forgot to take it from us! And now it turns out to be the main obstacle to our true development.

From a psychological point of view, I understand this as follows. We have the ability to imagine vividly. This ability is a double-edged sword. It can significantly worsen our situation, and it can also become a source of our creativity. It can be used for both good and evil.

If, for example, you were walking down the street and someone suddenly looked at you and laughed, you might automatically react to this. Not that you chose negative reaction to the situation; it’s just that when situation A mechanically arises, reaction B automatically turns on. Your imagination reminds you of the boy or girl who rejected you, reminds you of how often you were rejected as a child, and of the depressed state as a result of this. And all because of one mocking glance. But you don’t even know whether it was intended for you; maybe the person just got a tingle in his side at the very moment when he happened to look at you, and your whole day was ruined because your imagination ran wild in response to this look.

The habit of relating to reality can stop this play of imagination and stop psychological projection. This goal is pursued, for example, by Vipassana instructions. You sit, trying to monitor your feelings, paying attention to your body. Suddenly you find that your imagination has run wild, that in your mind you are in another galaxy. Having discovered this, you try to stop it and return to the body, return to your feelings, to what is really happening in your real world at the moment. physical body and in your immediate environment. This is disidentification with the power of imagination. Using your body to be more mindful in your life Everyday life, also keeps you from playing with your imagination.

For physical pain, it can be helpful to learn to clearly sense your body and your presence for, say, five seconds at a time, several times an hour, and be able to do so at will, although, sparing yourself because of the pain, you don’t have to do this for a long time. It's good when you actually have a choice.

What else did you notice when you tried to take care of your body during your lunch break?

Student: I noticed something. It was not so difficult to follow the instructions as long as I was in the observer state. But it's hard now that I'm talking.

It’s as if the mouth is a big hole through which consciousness immediately flies out as soon as the mouth opens.

(General laughter as everyone has had similar experiences.)

Student: Besides...

But you can try it right now. Start paying attention to your body in the moment as you speak.

Student: Yes, yes, I didn’t do that. Also, I'm not really sure that when I enter a body, I actually physically incarnate and not...

Have you noticed a change in the way you feel in your body now that I have reminded you of this?

Student: Yes.

How would you describe it?

Student: I am more aware, I feel the body here (touches the part of the back on the right behind), I feel that my voice has sunk into the body.

Student: I'm not sure that my entry into the body is complete enough. It's a kind of mental embodiment, although I have a hard time putting it into words.

AM I SAYING THE TRUTH?

I'm somewhat worried that I might accidentally confuse you. You see, I can give you all these ideas about “presence,” but they cannot replace what you will learn on a deeper level through your own practice. However, I must warn you about my superficiality: I personally weak yogi, I am a person who knows more about the right words than about the actual depth behind them. At the same time, I am very convincing. I can be quite pleasant, and, worse than that, I I believe in what I say, so I have the opportunity to easily lead you to the wrong place.

I know I have this ability, so I try not to do it. For example, I try to talk only about what I consider to be the most true from my own experience, without getting carried away by theories and ideas that I have not experienced myself and do not understand deeply enough.

Of course, although I am aware that it would be good to be attentive, I am nevertheless not aware of the moment of falling asleep. I don't know when these fascinating ideas appear and hypnotize me, so that I begin to believe in them. They may be false. This is a warning: everything I tell you should not be taken as truth, but as a desire to experience something first-hand, in your own life, if it interests you. Not everything I say is true.

CONSTANT VIGILANCE IS THE PRICE OF FREEDOM

But let's return to your observations. Your ability to feel your body will change if you practice the exercise we did during your lunch break. However, I must warn you of one pitfall.

If at some point you had a particularly good experience, if you felt really in the body, really present, then your mind, unfortunately, will want to accept this as the norm. He seems to say: “Oh, so that’s what it means!” - and will refuse other experiences if they do not exactly correspond to this norm.

In reality, things change all the time. If you subtly move into a state where you want to repeat past pleasant experiences instead of feeling what is happening in currently, this could lead to trouble. As I have already noted, the price of freedom is constant vigilance.

While we're on the subject of the American Revolution, let me remind you of our constitutional right to the pursuit of happiness. But exactly pursuit happiness often leads to suffering. We all strive for happiness, we strive to arrange everything in our lives in such a way as to receive satisfaction from it. In some ways this makes perfect sense.

But we find ourselves attached to happiness, and when we are faced with situations in which we cannot force external reality to correspond to our desires (and this is inevitable), our mind, brought to automaticity, helps us by changing, adjusting, transforming our perception, so that things seem to us better than they really are, and this is the beginning of the fall. So I want to emphasize the difference between contact with reality and also reasonable the desire to organize it the way we want, and such attachment to happiness, conditioned by getting the things we want and the fulfillment of the desired events, that the mind begins to deceive us. He deceives us more and more, and eventually we find ourselves in a state called samsara.

SANSARA – ILLUSORY LIFE

Most Americans have a vague idea of samsara, even if they have ever heard of it. What do Eastern teachings mean when they say that samsara is life among illusions? Does that mean the world isn't real or something? This question doesn't get to the point. Different schools of Hinduism or Buddhism answer this question differently. But almost all of them agree that we have a largely distorted perception, so that the world as we see it based on my experience, is an illusion, and a dangerous one at that. And the real world is what it is. However, we often move away from it, and that is the problem. This creates unnecessary suffering.

It's funny that the idea of samsara as living in illusion belongs to the East, while Western psychology has a much deeper knowledge of what it means to live in illusion. For about a hundred years, research has been carried out in the field of experimental psychology, psychiatry, psychotherapy and general psychopathology, showing in great detail how the illusions in which people live are created. But Western sciences have never reduced their ideas to what is included in the Eastern concept of “samsara”.

Our Western ideas are based on the belief that there is normal, a healthy consciousness that we all, psychologists, possess, and these funny abnormal deviations belong to patients - completely different people, different from us. So although we know the mechanisms, all the nuts and bolts, so to speak, of how samsara is created in various ways, we do not have the concept of “samsara” that could tie it all together. This is why I am so interested in establishing close contact between Western and Eastern points of view, they have a lot to teach each other.

So what happened during lunch? Let's listen to one or two more reports.

IMPACT OF A MOCKING LOOK

Student: I noticed that I react unusually to random glances...

Did they really look at you?.. (Laughter in the audience.)

Student: But then it goes beyond speculation and into the realm of how I feel about it. It is feelings that take me away from reality. I found that I could linger on a thought longer without getting sucked into paranoia or anything like that.

This is again the same case as if we had ten units of attention available to us. You pay part of your attention to the perception of the world, the other to your thoughts, but when someone looks at you mockingly, ninety-five percent of your attention suddenly becomes captive of the mental machine that generates paranoid feelings. And at times we may need to do something violent to free ourselves from its grip.

You can get rid of this condition by learning to be present here and now. The ability to maintain attention on the body and the desire to accurately perceive the external world can be very useful.

MORALITY IS THE BASIS OF CAREFULNESS

Moreover, we in the West do not emphasize enough that spiritual growth presupposes high moral life. If you harm people in any way, you you're depriving yourself of the opportunity to find that inner peace that can grow from the practice of mindfulness. My friend the Buddhist teacher Shinzen Yang says that this can be seen as a moral problem, but it can also be seen as a technical problem: if you steal and kill all day, it is difficult to direct the mind to meditation at the end of that day.

At its core, this moral problem stems from the fact that on a spiritual level we are all interconnected. To harm others, consciously or unconsciously, is to harm one's self and hinder its future growth. Your self knows that harming others is bad. Your consciousness doesn't really want to be mindful of yourself when you're hurting others, so it prevents mindfulness from growing.

Student: I felt a lot of stress walking a block at lunchtime. Most of my body was tense. I struggled with it, but to no avail, and it only increased the tension so that pain developed.

FEEL THE BODY TO COME TO THE PRESENT

The pain seemed to help you become more aware.

Student: Oh yes, that's really true! But paying attention is painful! My shoulders and neck constantly hurt.

Let's try to do something. Close your eyes and focus on feeling the pain in your neck and shoulders as fully as you can. What's happening? How does the neck and shoulders feel? At the moment?

Student: Tension, but not pain.

Fine. Pay even more attention to this tension. Close your eyes and focus on him. Experience it as fully as possible.

Student: I feel a twitching in my muscles... and... (The quality of the voice changes, it sounds quieter and higher.)

Have you stopped following the sensation?

Student: Yes.

Try to continue to feel what is happening in your neck and shoulders.

Student: Hmm, warmth, twitching... vibration...

Yes, that's it, keep going. What's happening right now?

Student: The vibration is slowing down.

Is there any tension arising from my questions?

Student: Your hands get very warm when you talk. As I continue to feel my body, I relax.

Fine. I will not continue this work now, although in principle it may be useful for the group. All of this illustrates what we were talking about earlier: sometimes, if you go deeper into pain, a certain kind of natural relaxation appears. The sensations become more defined and richer, they are no longer just “pain”. This is worth experimenting with.

In general, you can use your body at any time for a greater experience of the “here and now.” To do this, it is enough to simply feel the body, but more specialized methods are often useful that can create appropriate motivation for you, overcome mental inertia, and remind you that you need such things; Concentration on specific bodily sensations is also useful. The “Musical Body” exercise we did is a special method of going quite deep into the body, but this exercise takes time. Maybe you can do it once a week, when you have a free half hour. If you are at work, stressed and tired and have a moment to relax, you will not use a half-hour tape. We need special methods that do not require such lengthy preparations.

BEGINNING OF THE DAY. MORNING EXERCISE

I want to show you one of Gurdjieff's exercises. Formally, it should be performed in the morning, as soon as you wake up. When learning, it can take 10-15 minutes, but gradually you can learn to do it in 2-3 minutes, although it is better to do it as long as possible. It can be used to relieve stress, establish contact with your own body and the situation “here and now”. Sometimes it is enough to close your eyes for a minute and quickly do this exercise. It refreshes your ability to concentrate and also reminds you that you have more important things to do in life than rushing. "Morning Exercise", as it is traditionally called, is not difficult in its technique, but like most other mindfulness exercises, it is not always easy to remember.

Ideally, it should be the first thing you do when you wake up. Most of us, before we even get out of bed, immediately focus on our worries: what needs to be done today, what problems need to be solved, what was accomplished yesterday, and what happened last month. It's no wonder that there are enough troubles throughout the day. We immediately fall into a mental web of worry. I don’t know if immediately automatically turning on thoughts about problems helps in any way, but they certainly increase anxiety.

Of course, this exercise can be done not only in the morning. It can be done at any time to put yourself in order and strengthen your contact with others. I often call him "launching exercise", similar to starting a pump before it starts working. In this exercise, you “launch”, turn on your focus and sense of contact.

The moment of starting the morning exercise, as I understand it, varies from person to person. If you struggle to think straight until you've had your morning cup of coffee, you may need to allow yourself one before doing the exercise. But if you are one of those who start worrying within two or three seconds of opening your eyes, you should start doing it before you start worrying. The task is to complete it before you have time to put on your usual mask and immerse yourself in everyday worries.

In some ways this exercise is similar to the Musical Body. Here, too, you need to systematically feel your body, but the method itself is somewhat simpler. This is a way to make yourself feel, firstly, that you have a body, and secondly, that your body is not only consciousness that you have it, but also the feeling of it, real contact with it. Third, the symbolic meaning of this is that you consider your self important enough to spend ten quiet minutes at the beginning of the day for it.

This exercise can be done while sitting or in some meditative position. If you are afraid of falling back to sleep, you can avoid going to bed and just sit in bed.

INSTRUCTIONS FOR THE MORNING EXERCISE

So let's do it. Sit comfortably, close your eyes, relax. I will give you a morning exercise.

(The reader may greatly benefit from reading this exercise slowly and perform it, despite the fact that your eyes are open.)

Focus your attention on your right foot. I invite you to open your awareness to whatever you may feel in your right foot in the moment... and in other moments.

There is no particular sensation that you should look for or try to create. You just need to focus on what is. You may feel empty, as if there is nothing there, or it may be tingling, warm, or cold. It can be painful, neutral or pleasant. Whatever you feel in your right foot from moment to moment is normal. Open your mind to feeling what is there as clearly as you can.

I offer you what is called savor sensations in the right foot. It's like it's a wine or something that a beloved friend offered you, saying, "Taste this, this is something special." You should stop thinking, open your feelings and "grok"– I’ll use a word from Robert Heinlein’s novel "Stranger in a Strange Land", which you may remember - your feelings.

Move your sensations to your right ankle. You can still be focused on the foot. But now also focus on what's happening in the ankle. If you are mentally carried away somewhere, then return to the sensations that are there.

(When you do the exercise yourself, when you reach good contact pause on each body part for a few seconds to get a feel for what's going on there, then move on to the next part.)

Now move to your right knee and hip and feel what you feel there. After this, move your attention to your right palm and record your sensations.

Now feel your right forearm, see what sensations or, perhaps, configurations of sensations take place there. Then savor, so to speak, the feeling in the upper part of your right arm. Remember that there is no “right” or “wrong” feeling; you just need to feel everything that is happening from moment to moment, without thinking about it.

Now move your attention across your body to the upper part of your left hand and feel what is happening in it.

Next, move lower to the elbow and forearm of your left hand. Feel it left hand and palm. When you focus on one part of the body or another, it does not matter that sensations appear in other parts. Don't give in to them and don't reject them, don't lose yourself in them. Just concentrate on the part you are currently occupied with.

Left hand, palm and fingers. Following this, move your attention to your left thigh. Note your feelings here. Now down to the left ankle, and even lower to left foot. Next, I suggest expanding your focus and feeling both feet and ankles at the same time... and both hips at the same time. Feel both legs completely.

Now expand your attention even more and, continuing to feel your legs, also feel your hands. So, you feel both your arms and legs at the same time.

Continuing to feel both, add active listening to the sounds in this room.

Hearing takes precedence over kinesthetic sensations, that is, sensations associated with body movements, so most of your attention is paid to listening. I invite you to listen and feel both your hands and your feet at the same time, to listen in the sense that you are open to hearing whatever sounds can be heard at the moment. You won't hear anything special here, and you don't need to listen in any special way, just listen and feel your hands and feet.

This listening and simultaneous feeling of the hands and feet (or the whole body) can be a useful formal meditation in itself, but we will make it a half-minute part of the morning exercise.

After a while, I will ask you to expand your attention span even further and slowly open your eyes while continuing to actively listen to sounds and feel your hands and feet.

Visual perception of the world is our dominant sense, so it will take up most of our attention, about 50 to 60 percent. Probably about 30 percent will be taken up by hearing and about 10 percent by sensations in the arms and legs.

So, slowly open your eyes, continuing to feel your arms and legs and listen to the sounds that are taking place here.

Now that you have opened your eyes, I invite you to look at everything actively. That is, not just stare at something, but actively, with curiosity, look at an object for a few seconds and then turn your eyes to something else for a few seconds.

I jokingly call this the “shifty eye technique,” which is essential when you begin the practice. If you look at something for a long time, a kind of fog appears in your mind. Look consciously, don't just stare in a certain direction. Look first at one thing, then after a few seconds at another.

TO BE PRESENT IS TO FEEL, LOOK AND LISTEN

(The seminar participants quietly and carefully look around the room. At the same time, a feeling arises that you need to experience yourself to understand it.)

Now you are in the body, you feel a configuration of sensations in your arms and legs. You are also listening, actively listening to the sounds that arise from moment to moment, including my voice. You actively look at various objects, absorb them, like curious children, perceive everything beginner's mind as if you are seeing these things for the first time in your life.

You are doing a quiet but very powerful mindfulness exercise - feeling-seeing-hearing. This is what Gurdjieff called self-remembering. It's a way to be consciously present. at this moment, 1) using kinesthetic sensations; 2) really listening; 3) looking at things, and 4) applying at the same time the small amount of willpower required to voluntarily divide attention. The fourth point is very important. You should not let your attention become completely absorbed in listening or contemplating; you keep it compartmentalized, somewhat in touch with bodily sensations, with arms and legs, and in some way with active looking and active listening. Feeling-seeing-hearing means be present.

If you suddenly find yourself thinking about something and being absorbed in these thoughts, then, as in formal meditation, simply return to the exercise. Then, without blaming yourself for anything, move directly to looking, listening and feeling your hands and feet.

You have done the morning, or starting, exercise. Now we are engaged in the main practice of Gurdjieff's work - feeling-seeing-hearing. You are actively, albeit effortlessly, present in the world around you. The details of this world, of course, change from moment to moment. Sometimes such an activity may seem like just boring sitting. But that is until you take a closer look and become more attentive.

THE INITIAL EXPERIENCE OF FEELING, SEEING AND HEARING

Student: I was very tense and anxious before we started the exercise. I often find myself in this state. But now I don’t know where my anxiety went!

Have you lost your anxiety? I'm sorry. Maybe you'll find it somewhere else. It's hard to be both anxious and pay attention to the real world around you. This is good.

Student: I began to realize that somehow I liked to be involved in thoughts and emotions.

Good insight.

Student: I like to get into strong emotions. But in this exercise it seemed to me that such an entry would be something like a truly altered state of consciousness, at times very strong.

Student: No, it seems there is.

Fine. I love descriptions in the present. If we talk more about being in the present and about what we are experiencing in the present, it is amazing how much more we will stay in the present. How does performing this exercise produce an altered state of consciousness?

Student: It’s like a balance, an equilibrium. This is a very rare condition for me.

Yes, this may be one of his qualities. I try to encourage you to discover in yourself the qualities that arise as a result of the exercise. I don't want to program artificial experiences, and I don't want feeling-seeing-hearing to degenerate into some kind of quasi-hypnotic technique. This is the method opening something new in yourself, as well as a method of staying in the present. What else did you notice?

Student: I felt something like, I would say, impatience, something like repulsion from each of these three worlds. Not that there was impatience, there was no room for that because the tension was gone; it is something calm, a bell tolls, a kind of wakefulness, and there is something exciting about it.

Yes, it's exciting to be alive.

Student: But this is calm excitement.

Yes, this is calm excitement. This practice does not lead to hysteria, but it has its own emotional quality. What else did you notice?

Student: When we started the exercise and I started focusing on various parts body, I felt thirsty. I had the idea that I needed to quench my thirst and put myself in a comfortable state.

Then I thought maybe I just felt like I needed water or something, so I concentrated on the sensations in my throat and mouth. So I moved between these sensations and focusing on the parts of the body that we were working with. It became clear to me that there was no need to quench my thirst; I could simply observe it.

POWER OF IDENTIFICATION

This is a good opportunity to show you another exercise. I don't usually give them both at the same time, so this will be a bit of an experiment.

Continue feeling-seeing-hearing throughout this exercise. Sit or stand so that you can see this glass.

(Places a paper coffee cup on the floor.)

Identification– one of the most important psychological processes. This is the process of giving something of our essence, our energy, strength. To show how quickly everything happens, I will ask you to identify with this glass. Look at it and feel it as part of you. Just remove the barriers between the glass and yourself, let your energy flow into it, let your mind flow into it.

(Suddenly steps on the glass, crushing it.) Did anyone feel any pain? (Many people raise their hands.) Good: you learned something at the cost of a little momentary pain.

It is incredibly easy for us to give away our psychological energy. It happened that people screamed loudly and jumped up when I gave this exercise. Imagine!

It's just a funny little exercise. The glass does not represent anything special, like, for example, a birthday gift from a loved one. We did not perform a prolonged hypnotic induction or any kind of meditation. I only asked you to identify with the cup for about thirty seconds, and yet many of you felt pain when I suddenly crushed it. You suffered. You have identified.

The process of psychological identification can begin and end almost instantly. It gives significant power to what you identify with. You can identify yourself with anything. If this simple exercise was so vivid, imagine what would happen if we were standing next to your car and I had a hammer in my hand and I hit your car! Or your wonderful anything else!

The worst thing about identification is that it is usually an involuntary and unconscious process. Our connections to things are established by our life history and cultural programming, so that we automatically identify with them. For example, some people become identified with their clothes. If someone tells you they saw this exact same sweater in a second-hand clothing store the other day, you might feel pretty bad about it, even though it's a completely mythical design. You become identified with something that is not really you, and when something happens to that which you have identified with, you suffer.

When someone in the group said they felt thirsty, they seemed to identify with it at first: I I want to drink, to me need water. When he talked about this, a resonance arose in me, I suddenly also felt thirsty. I was really thirsty! Then I thought about how the cup exercise could be related to this, and I forgot about my thirst. Identification can disappear, as well as arise, almost instantly when the situation changes, but when it is present, it drains your energy, makes you psychologically vulnerable, somewhat crazy. You suffer over completely symbolic actions. My a country, my flag, my religion, my That, my this, and so on.

(Reader, as you read this book, do you continue to feel, look and listen? This is difficult for most of us, but try to maintain at least a little arbitrary awareness of at least some parts of the body.)

FORMAL MEDITATION AS DISCONTINUATION

Formal meditation can be understood from a psychological point of view as a practice of disidentification. In Vipassana, you are asked to monitor everything - sensations, thoughts, and emotions - completely calmly, without following them, without analyzing them, without striving for some and not rejecting others. This is the practice of disidentification.

If, for example, during meditation you feel thirsty and if you have already advanced enough in Vipassana, then in thirst you see what it is: a certain set of sensations in relation to which the designation thirst is secondary. Our sensations come and go, that's reality. A feeling may come thirst, and we accept it for what it is, for a thought, and it goes away. The word may come "I", it is also considered as it is - as a thought, as a concept - and it also goes away.

When our mind is in its normal state, our thoughts run through many topics, and those with which we are automatically accustomed to identify take up most of our attention and energy, so that we live primarily in a mental-rational world. What we identify with often has strong emotions attached to it, so we often suffer from things that are not actually painful, that do not excite the nerve endings associated with pain, but are artificial, like a squashed paper cup.

The practice of self-remembering through feeling-seeing-listening is also an exercise in disidentification. The situation is no longer so easy to take hold of you if you decide to pay part of your attention to your body, and the other to attentive contemplation of things, attentive listening to the sounds that arise. Samsara is not easily activated. I don't know if it has anything to do with the outside world, but it has to do with projections, illusions and identifications. When all this happens involuntarily, samsara turns out to be the reality in which you live.

I'd love to hear what else you noticed while doing the exercise. I would ask you to continue this exercise until the end of today. It is important. It would be nice to do it all the time, but I know that I cannot demand this from you.

Student: When I did the exercise, I felt like a little child, which has not happened to me for a long time. As if more innocent, full of delight with which a child looks at things, perceiving them as they are, without reasoning or analyzing. It feels like great freedom.

BRIGHT COLORS OF CHILDHOOD

Yes, that's a good observation. Perhaps some of you remember William Wordsworth's poem "The Signs of Eternity"?

That was the time: when the meadow, forest, stream

Earth and the most ordinary view

I really thought

Cloaked in heavenly light

Glory and freshness of dreams.

And then he moves on to the adult's perception:

The light I have seen

Not anymore.

Growing up, becoming " normal people” is often due to the fact that this light disappears. The freshness of perception and the “nutritiousness” of sensations decrease. After all, while it's childish to enjoy a walk and stop to really look at and smell the roses, we adults have things to do more important! As we grow older, we begin to systematically deny ourselves these simple sensual pleasures. You're busy, aren't you? You don't have time to stop and look at the roses! You have a folder with documents with you, you need to go to the office, you live, like everyone else, in this artificial world.

LOSS OF THE DEEP SELF

The point is not only that true pleasure from perception, from being here and now, is less and less encouraged; We are expected to cease being sentient beings. So-called normal development often means that we increasingly lose sight of what is really real and important, and end up feeling guilty about enjoying simple pleasures. We are all neurotic to some degree because we are confused about how we really feel.

We are growing up in a strange and tragic situation. We come into this world inheriting the true buddha nature, our original purity, but this inheritance is quickly being forgotten. As children, we know little about and can do little. “God” and “goddess” appear - this is the only way to describe the child’s relationship with his father and mother. Their capabilities and knowledge are so different from the capabilities and knowledge of a child that it seems to him that they know and can do everything, have incredible abilities.

From the book Psychology modern woman: and smart, and beautiful, and happy... author Libina Alena

PART TWO – PERSONAL DEVELOPMENT AND PSYCHOLOGY

From the book Practicing Mindfulness in Everyday Life by Tart Charles

Chapter Four RESULTS OF MINDFULNESS PRACTICE First Extra Session Today and the next two Mondays we will have a rather rare opportunity to talk with people who are striving for greater awareness. Communication with a person working on

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Chapter Five RESULTS OF MINDFULNESS PRACTICE second additional lesson THINKING ABOUT MINDFULNESS DOES NOT MEAN BEING MINDFUL Student: Working with this technique, over time I began to notice that I often have the thought of feeling-looking-listening, but in

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Chapter Six RESULTS OF MINDFULNESS PRACTICE last additional meeting So, we meet today for the last time. Now we will use our stochastic teacher in a new way. We have become somewhat accustomed to the old method of use, and

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Mindfulness Formula I have the necessary acuity and sensitivity to notice whether what I am doing is moving me towards what I want. You must be very mindful of yourself. Listen to the voice of intuition and your feelings. Contact us often

From the book The Experienced Pastor by Taylor Charles W.

Two steps to mindfulness First step* End with “sins”, with separateness.* Realize: who am I really?* I am a perfect, immortal consciousness. I always have been and always will be because I am. I am myself, authentic, real, true. I am who I really am

From the book Foundations of Spirituality [Seven Practices for Awakening the Heart and Mind] by Roger Walsh

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Exercises to test and develop working memory 1. Carry out the “ruddy test” (for children aged two years) Place the child facing you under the pretext that he needs to wipe his nose. While wiping your nose, discreetly draw a small spot on your baby's nose with lipstick or

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Exercises to develop working memory 1. Method of fast mental multiplication The algorithm developed by Rudiger Gamm is to sequentially multiply numbers from left to right and then add the results. Example 1. Multiplying two-digit

The request for a conscious life is born only in a developed person who begins to feel his inner world and pay attention to his experiences, emotions, thoughts, desires and begins to trace the inexplicable relationship between his internal state and their results in outside world. This is a request from a person who not only wants to satisfy his basic survival needs, but also wants to develop and receive true joy and pleasure from life, from realizing himself, from interacting with other people.

Awareness allows you to act effectively and at the same time enjoy life, realizing your potential, noticing problems at the stage of their occurrence and resolving them quickly and effectively. You can only manage what you understand. Therefore, awareness is the key to managing your life! Mindfulness allows you to manage your body, emotions, thoughts, your attitude towards people and your life.

What is mindfulness?

Awareness is a total and non-judgmental immersion of attention in the processes occurring in our lives (physical, mental and psychological) and their awareness. Awareness is a spotlight of attention directed inward, which illuminates a problem or some process, making it clear, visible and understandable. At this moment, we do not condemn or evaluate a phenomenon, person, feeling, action, but simply observe. Conscious life- this is real life, life outside of conventions, imposed values, desires and patterns of behavior. To be aware means to see yourself and the world as they really are.

What you get by practicing mindfulness in life:

Health improvement. A conscious attitude towards the body will help prevent diseases and achieve health, because by listening to our body, we begin to give it exactly what it needs.
Inner balance and harmony. A conscious attitude towards your emotions allows you to manage them.
Realizing your potential. Realizing our desires, over time we learn to distinguish true desires from imposed ones. And by realizing true desires, we begin to reveal our essence and our uniqueness.
Freedom to be yourself. By becoming aware of our thoughts, desires, feelings and actions, over time we become free from embedded programs, patterns, negative attitudes and become more successful and happier.
Improving relationships with others. Awareness allows you to see a person as he is, and not interact with an invented image.
Opening of intuition. A conscious attitude towards your inner world opens up intuition. Often the body and nervous system give us signals, warning us of possible consequences.
Improving standard of living. A conscious attitude towards your thoughts will help create positive changes in your life, since conscious thoughts give rise to conscious actions.
Brightness and interest in life. Mindfulness makes life interesting, rather than boring and mundane. After all, every moment is unique and beautiful, but without noticing the beauty around us, we plunge into a series of endlessly stretching gray everyday life with dreams of a vacation.
Increased energy levels. By bringing our attention back to the present moment, we reclaim the energy that we previously wasted on replaying thoughts, situations and experiences from the past or fears for the future.

Thus, awareness allows a person to become alive and real, to do what comes from the soul, and not imposed by anyone, therefore, to realize oneself and experience true joy and happiness from this.

How to develop awareness?

On this path you can improve constantly, collecting threads of attention and realizing more and more over time. You can start with the simplest things, but it’s small but constant efforts that add up to big results.

The simplest practices to increase awareness

Breathing practice. Focus your attention on the inhalation and exhalation, without interfering, just observing. This practice calms, immerses in the present moment, and relaxes.
Conscious eating. When eating food, focus on its taste. Holding a piece of bread in your hands, try to realize how it came to you, how much effort and time it took to prepare it, grow the wheat, collect it, grind the flour, package it, bake it, how much effort and labor was put into this small piece. And what is its value.
Focus on your feelings. To have time to live your life, and not do everything automatically, you can dive into the present moment every hour or two. You can set a timer on the clock. And when the bell rings, leave what you’re doing and immerse yourself in the present moment, asking yourself “What am I feeling now?”, walk your attention through your body, relax tension, and follow your breathing for 5-10 minutes. This practice does not take much time and perfectly restores strength during a busy day and is refreshing.
Ball of awareness. Imagine a transparent sphere in the chest area and focus on it and ask yourself: “What do I really want right now and what will make me happy?” Then start filling this ball with pleasant images. This opens access to the true desires of our Soul. The same practice can be used to determine whether a desire is true or imposed. Place the image of desire in this ball of the Soul and listen to the sensations. If they are pleasant and joyful, then the fulfillment of your desire will bring you joy; if not, then most likely the desire was imposed by someone.
Conscious work with negative emotions. If you are overwhelmed by negative feelings, turn your attention inward and ask yourself, “What am I feeling, where in the body am I feeling it?” Then concentrate your attention there and begin to consciously exhale until the emotion dissolves. Over time you will be able to quickly dissolve negative emotions with your awareness.
Awareness of your thoughts. If you tend to get caught up in negative thoughts and scroll through them for hours, then try something simple but... effective exercise"Rubber band." Put a rubber band on your hand and as soon as you catch yourself getting involved in negative thoughts, not too much, but noticeably, pull the rubber band back and snap your hand. Consciously shift your attention from bad thoughts, as the famous Scarlett O'Hara said, “I'll think about it tomorrow,” but not now. Remember that thoughts are vibrations that form a field around you and what you think about is what you attract to yourself.
If any person annoys you. Any person responds within us with some feeling or state. For example, we read or listen to someone and feel how something inside us resonates and finds a response. We experience pleasant feelings towards a person. But it also happens that you look at a person, and something unpleasant and irritating is born inside, which does not resonate internally. Mindfully walking through this sensation, find and locate a place in the body and then begin to relax this tension until it goes away. As a result of practice, you will notice that the attitude has changed to neutral and no longer affects you. This works very effectively, and with practice it also works very quickly.
Body awareness. The body always begins to signal us about violations, but we are so absorbed in our own affairs or thoughts that we often do not notice it. Until the strongest signal turns on - pain, which indicates that the destruction is already serious. The main cause of destruction and disease is the compression of body spaces, which most often occurs during times of stress. Constriction does not allow energy to flow calmly and relaxed. This is the same as constantly walking with clenched fists. Blood and energy stagnate and over time problems begin. A very simple bodywork practice can be done before bed. You need to lie down comfortably and begin to slide your attention over your body, find areas of tension and consciously relax them. If the tension is very strong, then you can breathe it out, imagining how you fill this area with light with your breath. This promotes good sleep and health.

By improving in the practice of mindfulness, you can reach new level life. When you become aware of your body and its sensations, you understand that you are not the body. When you become aware of your thoughts, you realize that you are not thoughts. When you realize your feelings, you understand that you are not feelings. When you consciously relate to desires, you begin to distinguish the true desires of the Soul from those imposed by society. When you enter the observer state and begin to live in the present, then you become the master of your life, mind, body, thoughts and feelings.

The pages of this book will present a series of simple, practical exercises and techniques that combine the best of the ways of awakening with the best of the ways of growing up. This will enable you to grasp the prototype of what we believe is the most effective program for growth and development that can currently exist anywhere in the world. Again, if this sounds like too much of an exaggeration to you, please take a little more time to at least go through the first few steps, weigh it all, and come to your own conclusion.

What is the practice of mindful mindfulness (or mindful awareness) and how is integral mindfulness different from the mindfulness meditation I've read about in the media?

The practice of mindful awareness is a form of mind-body training that has been scientifically proven to dramatically reduce stress levels; increase feelings of calm, depth of relationships and harmony; reduce feelings of anxiety and depression; reduce discomfort from pain; lower blood pressure; increase learning ability, IQ and creativity; and awaken higher states of consciousness, sometimes called "further frontiers" human nature". Its effect is similar to that of steroid hormones in relation to various forms of human activity - from ordinary daily activities to processes spiritual enlightenment. This is a powerful practice whose history goes back at least 2.5 thousand years. Its effectiveness is the main reason humanity has continued to use it for so long (and mindfulness practice is a core component of many paths to awakening).

Most reports on mindfulness in the Western media are variations on the same theme, similar to what can be seen in Time magazine's 2014 issue on meditation. They focus on the wealth of scientific evidence supporting the many positive effects of mindfulness practice in virtually every area of human life. It is emphasized that this practice is especially recommended in today's unusually information-overloaded and chaotic world, in which distracting technologies make it incredibly difficult to focus on anything. When doing the basic exercises of mindfulness practice, all of the above actually occur positive effects, as well as many others.

Basic mindfulness practice. What exactly does this practice consist of? Essentially, all you need to do is sit in a comfortable position, relax your mind, and direct your attention to the contemplation of the present moment, no matter what arises in it. Start by sitting on a cushion on the floor, half-crossed, or in the lotus position, which is standard in yoga practice; put right hand to the left (palms up) and then place them on your hips or place your hands, palms down, on your knees; or sit in a chair with your feet on the floor, your back straight and your arms folded in one of the above ways. Then simply remain still, focusing your attention on the present moment, noticing with calm clarity everything that is happening both inside and outside. Usually you will be asked to pay attention to one thing, and, as a rule, this object of concentration will be the breath.

We'll go through these instructions in more detail later, but for now the basic idea is to be aware of your breath as you inhale, then notice the pause between inhalation and exhalation, then notice the exhalation, pause again, inhale again, etc. If you get distracted by something - if you catch yourself starting to think about the past, or the future, or your current life situation (some trouble happened at work last week; or something joyful is planned for tomorrow; or some difficulties in a relationship with someone close), just gently let go of your thoughts and return to tracking your breathing. Do this for 10-40 minutes once or twice a day.

Sounds simple, doesn't it? In a sense, this is true: everything is quite simple. Until you try it yourself. And then you will notice how unsuited your own mind is to perform this simple task and, in fact, how little control you have over your own thoughts. You will find yourself constantly losing awareness of the breath; uncontrollable thoughts and images will take over your awareness; sometimes powerful and unpleasant feelings will overwhelm you; at other times you will experience a series of incredibly positive and even blissful feelings. You will begin to develop a powerful understanding that if thoughts truly are what drive behavior, then these confused and disordered thoughts are your default state right now! – lead to confused, disordered and problematic behavior in life. In fact, all areas of your life are lived by you much smaller success, integrity, quality of life, harmony, achievement, care and mastery than what potentially available to you. And this concerns any spheres of your life, because this confused and disorderly “monkey mind” accompanies you in literally all areas, serving as the basis for behavior and controlling it.

As for the areas where you have actually been able to make significant progress, if you take a closer look at them, they will almost always turn out to be areas where you actually demonstrate the ability to focus clearly, steadily and freely - often while in conditions called streaming. These seamless and coherent flow states allow you to carry out your actions. in the best possible way possible (and therefore, as a rule, very successfully!). This may apply to both work processes and interpersonal relationships; both raising children and simply being able to relax. Well, mindfulness meditation is a way to transform your entire life into a state of flow.

The Integral Awareness Difference. So what is the difference between integral awareness and “ordinary” awareness? Integral mindfulness uses the standard practice of mindful awareness, but combines it with many of the innovative discoveries made by the above-mentioned cutting-edge model, generally known as “integral theory and practice.” This frame of reference is used here to make the practice even more refined and focused on the different areas of your life in which you can apply mindfulness. As a result, the number of areas in which you will be able to achieve states of flow will increase. Every person has all these areas, but most people are simply not aware of their existence. In fact, they are present in our lives right now, but few of us directly notice them. (Most importantly, this includes any of the stages of maturation - these stages are already present, but most likely you are not aware of their existence.)

Let me give you an example. Let’s take the linguistic environment in which you were born—let’s say it’s the culture of the Russian language. Any child who grows up in a Russian-speaking language environment, as a result, learns to speak Russian more or less correctly: he correctly connects the subject with the predicate, correctly uses adjectives and adverbs, correctly arranges words in a sentence, etc. In other words, he is quite correct follows grammatical rules. But if you ask him or anyone else to formulate what those rules are, almost no one can do it. Everyone follows the rules of grammar, but no one realizes them!

This is an example of the kind of things that integral theory points to in various areas of our lives. They are like basic maps that we use to make sense of the terrain in which we find ourselves - be it at work, in relationships, in creativity and art, in raising children, in taking new educational courses, in playing sports... in fact, in almost everything. whatever. We map these areas, and the resulting maps help us see and travel around the area. However, in most cases we are not aware that these cards are potentially available to us. (This is true for all stages of maturation; these stages are like hidden maps.) Like the rules of grammar, these maps are patterns that we follow without knowing it. To be honest, many of the maps are flawed and flawed: often they are inaccurate, infantile vestiges inherited from childhood. Or they simply give us the wrong idea about the territory. But since we cannot see them - we cannot discern these grammatical rules and hidden maps - it does not even occur to us that these maps can be corrected, more accurate drawn, or some kind of map that can be created more correctly created. will reflect the different territories where we live. The situation is similar to trying to drive a car from one city to another, guided by a very bad map; in this case, your journey will most likely turn out to be a failure, and you will not even get closer to your destination. Isn't this situation familiar to you? I really like it.

So these cards cannot be discovered by introspection alone, or by examining one's awareness. You won’t be able to discover the rules of grammar by simply observing your inner world. All we will see are individual words, images, signs and symbols, but not hidden rules which they follow. To find them, you will need to objectively study many speakers of a given language, find what they all have in common, and then figure out the actual rules that govern their speech. The same is true for our hidden cards that govern so many aspects of our lives. Looking inside yourself, you simply won’t see them. In fact, these cards - formally known as " structures consciousness" - were discovered by humanity only relatively recently. As noted above, we have been on this planet for at least a million years, but it was only a hundred years ago that we discovered these hidden maps (which is why the stages of adulthood are a relatively new discovery).

Compare this with " states consciousness” - above we talked about the structures of consciousness, and now we will talk about states. We have already discussed that meditation can give you access to higher states of consciousness, including “altered states” such as vast love and joy, deep insights, and an awareness or expanded sense of identity (including a sense of oneness with all that exists – Ultimate Identity), and also, in general, flow states. In other words, it provides access to the fundamental core of the paths of awakening. But all these states can be seen through internal contemplation. When you experience a feeling of intense love for all living beings and shout “I love everyone!”, you recognize this state immediately and directly, even if you still cannot formulate the grammatical rules that hold the sentence together. States, again, were discovered by people at least 50 thousand years ago, starting with the early shamans and healers who went on their “visionary journeys.” At the same time, the structures, these hidden maps, cannot be seen with the direct inner eye. This was the reason that they were discovered only during the period when developmental psychology was founded about a century ago.

That is why these hidden maps - discovered thanks to the efforts of a huge number of researchers who studied mental development man, and generalized in the integral theory, - cannot be found in any of the great meditative traditions of the world. Not one. That is, none none of these traditions, as brilliant as they were at creating awakening forms of meditation and contemplation (such as mindfulness), have used mindful awareness to identify these hidden maps and replace them with more refined versions (patterns of maturation). Most of the meditation systems in existence today are over a thousand years old, but because the maturation maps were only discovered a mere hundred years ago, they are too new a discovery to be included in any of the ancient meditation systems. Therefore, even if an individual had access to very high states of consciousness, including enlightenment or awakening (which is said to be the realization of the ultimate basis of all Being - that is, pure awakening), he was still, without knowing it, relying on the grace of these hidden cards (and stages of maturation). This is why we argue that even very advanced meditators can fall prey to serious misconceptions (from homophobia and authoritarianism to sexism and rigid hierarchy) because they are still controlled by these unconscious, distorted and hidden maps.

So the easiest way to remember the difference between “structures of consciousness” and “states of consciousness” is this: structures– hidden levels of grammar or hidden maps – underlie the process of growing up; in the same time state consciousnesses leading to awakening and enlightenment are at the core of the awakening process. In the process of growing up, we grow from less developed stages, or maps of our world, to more adequate, mature and developed stages-maps - this is what true maturation consists of. In the process of awakening, we move from less integral and less advanced states to the highest and most developed states imaginable, ultimately arriving at true transformative awakening, enlightenment, great liberation, metamorphosis, satori or the Supreme identity, as it is called -called differently in different traditions.

What is mindfulness practice and what are its benefits? A simple answer to this question is given by Renee Jain. She develops animated programs for children and sees every day that attentive children react very differently to everyday challenges. Now she teaches the practice of mindfulness, and in these drawings she shows what it is and what its benefits are.

IN adolescence I turned into a real fireworks display. She reacted too quickly to situations and expressed her opinion sharply and hotly. Of course, it hurt other people's feelings. I remember one time, after a heated argument with my brother, he asked my parents to put a coffee filter in my mouth to “keep all that nasty stuff inside.”

A little later, my father took me aside and said, “Rene, you need to think before you say anything. You have a sharp tongue, and this is how you hurt people. I want you to work on this."

I replied: “Sorry, dad. I feel something and then I just express it. Why don't you understand? Why doesn't anyone understand? And then I screamed, “I can’t do anything about it!”

Oops, I did it again...

My father looked upset but remained silent. It was so quiet that I could hear him breathing. Finally, he said, “Did you see what I just did? I was breathing. The next time something upsets you, just pause and breathe. Just inhale and exhale. And only then speak.”

What my father suggested was a form of mindfulness practice, a specific way of paying attention to what is happening in the present moment (as in this case, paying attention to how you feel).

Since then, in many situations, this “minute of mindfulness” has helped me filter the reactions that I give to others. And it has helped me build relationships with other people much better.

It took me a lot longer to learn that the relationship I really needed to take care of was my relationship with myself. My most violent reactions were provoked by my own internal monologue. A small fly (an upcoming exam, an anxious thought) turned into a huge, anxious elephant. If I had developed inner mindfulness earlier, I am confident that I could have prevented many situations in which negative emotions seemed to spiral and escalate.

While I can't go back in time to give little Renee these tools, I now have the privilege of working with amazing children and teaching them the skills of emotional resilience and mindfulness. What I know from my work is that mindful children respond differently to challenges. To show you exactly what I mean, I've made some illustrations.

First, what is mindfulness practice?

Before learning to practice mindfulness, difficult events could trigger a quick reaction.

After learning to practice mindfulness, you can pause between an event and your reaction to it. This is how an automatic reaction turns into a deliberate response.

Before learning to practice mindfulness, thoughts could control anxious feelings and actions.

By learning to practice mindfulness, you can stop your anxiety from growing to enormous proportions.

Throughout this article I have used the word “teaching” mindfulness. That's because mindfulness is a skill that a child or adult can learn (and hone) with practice. Research shows that this skill can improve impulse control, develop calmness, kindness, patience, compassion, empathy, and improve children's attention span and executive functions ( thanks to which we can plan actions in accordance with our goal, selectively pay attention to the necessary stimuli, change our reactions depending on what is happening. - approx. ed.). This is a skill we can give to the next generation of children. And it is needed not only so that children can establish deeper connections with the people around them, but also in order to develop a sense of self-respect and empathy for themselves.