Session Four#

Home practice#

How was is: unguided meditation, yoga (mindful movement), bodyscan, informal practice during daily activities.

  • What did I learn about myself?

  • Did self-judgment arise at times? Could I acknowledge that and come back to the “anchor”?

  • In approaching the home practice, what did I learn about discipline? Do I see some analogies in daily life?

  • How do I experience boundaries? What is the reaction? How do I know I am approaching one, in terms of sensations, feelings, thoughts?

Sitting meditation#

We tried a shorter (20 minutes) structured sitting meditation, where the anchor was changing:

  1. breath;

  2. body as whole (i.e. when something else comes, I notice that and come back to the body as whole);

  3. individual body sensations.

THe mind learns to be flexible (much important also in daily life) so that it can be both concentrated and mindful at the same time. Concentration has the quality of collectedness of attention on one object (ignoring the rest) whereas mindfuless brings in open and expansive awareness.

In this type of meditation, the concentration is changing objects from one moment to the next — not trying to wring out more from the moment, just that one object which is the most prominent; simply ignoring the other senses which are active as well.

The attention is put to what is in the foreground of attention (e.g. hearing when I hear) even though there are also visual, olfactory, bodily, thought, feeling sensations …: they just happen to be less important, not being in the foreground of attention. What is in the foreground in the moment is not my choice, it “happens” by itself. I don’t know what will happen in the next moment (anything can happen), but I also don’t need to know.

Concentration is much different from effort, though there can be some relationship. Concentration often appears spntaneously, effortlessly, though we often don’t notice it — e.g. when watching a thrilling movie: I don’t see, hear, think etc.

(shorter guided sitting meditation with 3 anchors: not recorded in English)

Unpleasant events calendar#

One of the key practices of the course. Often the subject of self-love or self-compassion comes up, though a unavoidable gateway to it is opening to the totality of experience, including the unpleasant. Heartfelt understanding (being repeatedly and consciously exposed to it, rather than understanding from the head) is an important resource — understanding how the mind is not in my control dissolves significant amount of stress of trying to control (I should be happy, I should love myself, I should not be tired, sad, calm; I should be more concentrated etc.).

The theologian Reinhold Nieburh’s Serenity Prayer (often misattributed to St. Francis of Asissi): “God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, Courage to change the things I can, And the wisdom to know the difference.“

Experiencing stress#

Absenteers, do this exercise alone at home! Take a piece of paper and set a 5-minute timer for each of the following tasks.

  1. Write the beginning of the sentence “I get stressed when …” — and then finish it in all ways you are familiar with from your experience. (It can be body sensations, feelings, thoughts, actions: whatever you do voluntarily or involuntarily).

  2. “When I am stressed, then …” and finish it in all ways you know from your experience.

After you finished, continue reading.

Let’s call the answers “stressors” and “stress reaction”.

One is likely to see a wide range of stressors: physical, body, situational (e.g. time pressure), inner, social (relationships, group/peer pressure, offense), both acute and chronic. Similarly, stress reactions are of different type: body, feelings, thoughs, actions.

  • You might find one thing to be both stressor and stress reaction — those can create positive feedback loop.

  • Feelings can be both stressor and reaction: e.g. fear can be (especiaelly if chronified) a significant stressor.

  • Think of some typical stress reaction in the body you are familar with: headache, back pain, dry mouth, sore throat, stone in the stomach, stiff shoulders, cold hands/feet, sweat, tremor in hands or voice etc.

On stress#

(see also **What is stress?* in the workbook)

Stress is biologically given mechanism activated when a situations is evaluated as unfavorable. The evaluation is (likely given by evolution) rather fast (amygdala) and short-circuits higher cognitive functions, i.e. is unrelated to reasoning. You might have the experience that having entered a room, the mind gets startled about someone being there, and it is only after a moment that the recognition of no-one being there comes and the mind gets back to functioning; the first evaluation is amygdala kicking in, then higher cognitive functions came back online.

Stress is mediated by stress hormones, with two distinct phases of stress:

  1. “quick”: adrenalin (administered during cadiopulmonary resuscitation): ↑ muscle tension, ↑ heartbeat, ↑ blood pressure, ↑ breath.

  2. “slow”: cortisole: ↑ glucose level in blood, ↑ fat level, ↑ blood coagulation; ↓ immunity (anti-inflammatory reaction).

Stress hormones are usually remove by movement (fight or flight). Stress uses neural, hormonal and immune systems. Chronic stress leads to e.g. ↓ sleep, ↓ sexuality; ↑ risk behaviors; exhaustion or depression, burn-out.

There is no problem in stress being available, though it is problematic if activated too often (in our society) without being discharged (fight/flight). Stress hormones are addictive (the feeling of aliveness, brightness, concentration — as bodyscan/yoga practice reveal, it is difficult to te relaxed yet bright) and the organism has ways to maintain the stress level without any external inputs (restlessness, worries, work busy-ness, mental agitation, …).

Stress is comprised of two poles: trigger (stressor) and stress reaction (which are mutually dependent). The evaluation is very quick; the mind reacts the strongest to negative inputs (source of threat; aversion as reaction), less strongly to positive inputs (source of pleasure; greed as reaction) and to neutral inputs (irrelevant; switching off, or moving attention to something more interesting).

Stressor and reaction are like key and lock; reactions are individual, though for a given individual typical (“temperament”); within one individual, different stressors trigger different reactions.

How the stressor and reaction feel like exactly is the home practice: watching stressful situations without reacting.

Conclusion#

(TODO: translate)

Abychom se naučili zacházet s nepříjemným, musíme mu být otevření, vědět o něm; hodnocení, myšlenky, analyzování, smutek, jsou jen další věci, které přicházejí do mysli a odcházejí. Dalajlama: „happiness is a skill“ – „štěstí je dovednost“. Pokaždé, když něco potkáváme s všímavostí, učíme se z toho (ať už je to nepříjemné, příjemné či neutrální), učíme se o svých autopilotech a vyježděných kolejích a tím je oslabujeme. Když všímavost nemáme, navyklé koleje se vyjíždějí víc. Svoboda znamená nejezdit podle kolejí, ale podle moudrosti, tj. podle náhledu na situaci, který není zakalený cirkusem automatických reakcí.

Pokračujte v denním cvičení podle kap. 4 v pracovním sešitě (bodyscan/jóga plus meditace denně, všímat si automatických stresových reakcí), přečíst si texty v této kapitole. Denní meditaci můžete dělat buď (a) s pozorností na dech / tělo v celku / tělo nebo (b) jen s pozorností na dech, jako dosud.

V případě pochybností/otázek/nejasností nás kontaktujte mailem či telefonicky.