featured

Spice Up Your Meditation Practice!

Spice Up Your Practice!-3Want to spice up your meditation practice?
Add one of these simple focuses to your practice to spices things up a bit. They help keep your mind interested (focused and willing)… and ultimately keep us motivated to practice!

1. Counting vs not counting breath: Exploring the advantages and challenges of both. Noticing what happens when you count vs when you don’t. (The bigger picture: This isn’t about one option being better, it’s more about noticing the differences between the two and playing with the effects.)

2. Noticing the variety of sensations in your body at any given time: Noticing different qualities of sensations in your foot like hot, cold, itching, tingling, etc. Next time you can notice all the different sensations in your foot again and notice how things have changed – to compare and contrast, or switch to noticing your leg or face or arm, etc. (The bigger picture: Focusing attention on noticing the different sensations increases your ability to sense them… This gets quite interesting as there are a wide array of ‘subtle’ sensations that most of us are not even aware of at first.)

3. Relaxing: Can you relax your face when you meditate? (Or your foot, or leg…). This is to play with consciously relaxing a part of the body and noticing what happens. (The bigger picture: This also helps you notice how tense you are – or aren’t – and to let go of unnecessary muscular tension that drains your energy! Often we discover that there are areas that we habitually hold unnecessary tension and we can begin to change that habit by relaxing those areas every day.)4. How big or small of an area can you pay attention to? Can you notice your whole foot for 3 breaths? Only 1 toe? (The bigger picture: This helps you break out of any patterns you’ve developed during your life or your practice that are restricting your ability to focus on larger or smaller areas/things.)

5. Length of focus: Can you stay present for one entire breath (inhale+exhale) with out losing focus and getting lost in thought? Two? Two and a half? Three? Can you build up to three and a half? Four? Four and a half? Ten?
(The bigger picture: This is to consciously lengthen the amount of time you’re able to stay present continuously. This isn’t about increasing to a specific number of breaths or certain length of time, it’s about exercising the muscle of focus and thereby learning and remembering how to grow and change and evolve… as we play with lengthening our focus we teach ourselves how, how to get better. This is not about numbers, it’s about getting to know ourselves and learning how to learn.)

 

Do You Have to Meditate to Be Present?

TheThreeMonksMy dear friend Christie and I met a monk in Thailand who said to us, “You can meditate anywhere. You don’t need to be in the meditation hall.” It was quite profound at the time because we were looking for a place to meditate. It hadn’t occurred to us to meditate on the sidewalk. I figured that if he said that it was ok, it would work.

I haven’t looked back since.

Recently, I’ve been thinking about meditation versus presence… If the point of meditation is to practice being present, to practice noticing what is happening right now, do I have to meditate to be present?

In other words, if meditation helps us focus on the present moment, if it helps us focus on something that is happening right now, do I have to meditate in order to do it?

Or really simply: Can I be present with out meditating?

YES, YES and YES!

In any given moment of my life I can take a moment to notice where I am and what I am doing. In fact I do this throughout my day. So do you. You do this when you pause for a brief moment and check to see if you have your keys when you leave. You do this when you pause to check if there is enough petrol in your car or money on your metro card. You do this when you look around at who is at work today. You do this when you glance at yourself in the mirror to check your hair or make sure that you’ve gotten your hands clean.

You do this multiple times a day.

You just don’t think about it this way.

And you can if you like.

As you go through your day, you can start to notice those moments when you’re naturally present.

You can also choose to be present for moments at random if you like. You can pause on the street corner and take a look at where you are. Even if you’ve been there a thousand times, it will be unique in this moment. It will never be the same way again. Something will have changed by the time you get there next. Can you see the differences? Are the sounds different? Do you feel different standing there? Things will change.

Of course, now I’ve created a practice out of it.

You don’t need to be this formal about it. You don’t have to turn it into a game or a practice. You can just pause and notice the street corner… And then go on your way.

Another friend of mine, Esther, introduced me to Kitchen Yoga. She said you could practice yoga in your kitchen while bending over to get a pan from under the counter, stretching up to get a plate, or twisting around to open the fridge.

I’m suggesting a similar kind of “non-practice” practice.

I’m going to start calling it Sidewalk Presence.

Yep, I can be present anywhere and anytime. I just notice where I am in this moment and voila, I’m present. And so can you. No practice needed.

Enjoy.

Creative Commons Photo License

How Is Mindfulness Made Easy?

symbol-Woman-MeditatingImagine hearing all of the wonderful things that you’ve heard about meditation and innocently sitting down to give it a try. You cross your legs, set a timer for 10 minutes and start counting your breath and calming your mind.

…And it doesn’t work.

You can’t sit still, your back hurts, your legs fall asleep, your nose itches, you keep checking your watch (“Is this over yet?!”) … As if that wasn’t bad enough, you’re mind races and you can’t even count 3 breaths in a row!

Maybe you’ve even had this experience yourself.

I certainly did. After about two weeks of this craziness, I quit.

And then started again… in a whole new way. Successfully this time. And much happier.

What saved my practice?

Well, I discovered that there are other ways to meditate. It turns out, in fact, that there are many, many other ways to meditate. On that day, 10 years ago, I did some research and found a way that I liked, that suited me, and along with a good does of determination I became a happy meditator with a regular practice that changed my life.

How did I do it? How can meditation be made easy?LOGO_3 resized 2

With two key steps: first, do your practice for a short amount of time, and second, chose a practice that you like, that suits you and your personality.

Step 1: As a beginner, practice for a short amount of time.

Just like fitness, as you exercise, your meditation ‘muscles’ will get stronger and you will be able to practice for longer and longer periods with ease. Start with 30 seconds or a minute, 3 breaths or 5; get good at that, and then add more. With daily practice you will find that very quickly you are able to build to a longer time.

If you start with something that you can do and build on that, you will feel successful from the beginning, you will feel encouraged to continue, and you will get the benefits of meditation by going from strength to strength.

It may help to realize that the benefits of meditation come when you practice every day. It isn’t so important that you practice for a long period of time, especially in the beginning, it is more important that you establish a regular habit. Start small, see if meditation helps you. If it does then you will be encouraged to keep building your practice. A good daily goal to aim for is 15 minutes a day.

Step 2: Chose a practice you like, that suits you and your personality.

Meditation is about learning to focus on something that is happening right now, in the present moment. Simply put, meditation has you pay attention to something in the here and now. Focusing on breath is the classic example: you pay attention to how you are breathing right now. Luckily, as well as breath, there are a lot of other things that you can focus on such as images, sounds, sensations, etc. If breath isn’t interesting for you you can choose something else!

If you are a visual person, someone who likes visual arts, design, esthetics, etc you can choose a practice that focuses on an image, like a painting, or what you can see in your environment right now.

If you are more auditory, someone who likes music, singing, soundscapes, etc, you can choose a practice that focuses on sound, like a song, or what you can hear in your environment right now.

If you are more physical, someone who likes athletics, dance, sensations, etc, you can choose a practice that focuses on physical sensations, like a movement, or what you can feel in your body right now.

As you can imagine from these suggestions, it is not necessary to practice meditation with your eyes closed or while seated. You can look, you can listen, you can move. In fact, you can choose any one of your five senses and do practices that utilize that sense. Even a combination of senses, like the practice of Mindful Eating in which you focus on how your food looks, feels and tastes as you are eating it, moment to moment.

Mindfulness Made Easy ClassesLOGO_3 resized 2

You can find lots of different kinds of meditation practices online, in books, at retreats and in meditation classes in your area. In my class, Mindfulness Made Easy, I teach 4 different practices, each one focusing on a different sense, so that you will have one to suit your personality. We practice these for very short periods of time so that you can get used to meditation and build your meditation muscles with ease.

You’re welcome to join Mindfulness Made Easy, as a great way to build a new practice or turn your existing one into a regular habit that’s easy to maintain.

One to one classes are also available upon request by emailing me at Elena at ElenaMariaFoucher.com.

And to receive free meditation tips and tools subscribe to my blog at ElenaMariaFoucher.com.

Image compliments of Pixabay.com

Meditation Practice Groups

HK Meditation PracticeMeditating in a group is a great way to support your practice! Groups provide support, encouragement, motivation and accountability.

Here are a three of the groups that meet regularly in Hong Kong as well as one on Skype that you can join from anywhere in the world:

Monday Mindfulness for Beginners at IMI, Central (Mondays, Various Teachers & Traditions)

Kadampa Meditation Centre, Causeway Bay (Tuesdays, Tibetan Buddhism)

Asian Institute of Applied Buddhism, Central and Lantau meetings (1st & 3rd Fridays in Central and every Sunday on Lantau; Zen & Mahayana Buddhism)

I lead the Monday Mindfulness group at IMI about once a month, and I also run a practice group on Skype that you can join from anywhere in the world! If you’d like to join the Skype group, email me for details.

Enjoy!,

Elena

Meditation Apps

MeditationApps

There are lots of meditation apps out there, and I get asked fairly frequently which ones I recommend.

Honestly, I learned to meditate in a jungle in northern Thailand, so my meditation aids came in the form of birds and mosquitoes, trees and humidity, ants and cicadas… It didn’t occur to me to use my phone.

Now that I’m here in the urban jungle of Hong Kong, using a phone makes a lot of sense!

Here are the apps that I hear the most about:

Calm.com

Headspace.com

SmilingMind (good for kids, too!)

Zazen Meditation Timer

 

Enjoy and happy meditating!,

Elena

Mindfulness Made Easy Practice Group

Marathon Finish LineDear Fellow Meditators,
It ​is a ​true ​joy to share mindfulness and I hope that you are gaining a lot from your practice.
To support you in continuing your practice, I’m offering periodic one hour group practice sessions over Skype.
What are these group practice ​sessions?
In these sessions we will all meet, do a practice together (that you already know) and you can share what’s happening in your practice. This is a perfect time for sharing insights and asking any questions that have come up.This group is to support you to practice what you’ve learned, so I will not teach anything new.
Cost?

They will be $200 HKD/session, payable at the beginning of the month for 1, 3 or 6 month packages. Discounts given for 3 and 6 month packages – to encourage you to practice!

How does this help you?
I ran the Standard Chartered Marathon two years ago with the help of a friend in Australia. Every Friday we exchanged emails about how far we’d run that week, any insights we’d had and any issues we’d run into. In these emails we gave and received companionship, advice, accountability and the encouragement to keep going! It was incredibly helpful as I train​ed​ a lot in order to run that race… and when I crossed the finish line, I thanked her for helping make that victory happen.

Why are practice groups important? The science says…
​S​tudies have shown that practicing habits with a group greatly increases our tendency to do them.
Why? Because groups provide support and accountability.
​They support us to grow and learn and encourage us to keep going. ​

They are wonderful ways to help ourselves instill and maintain habits.

Joining this group will help you practice regularly, giving you the most out of your investment.
Consider joining this group if you would like to have this support to continue your mindfulness practice.
Finally, there are other meditation groups that meet in person every week if you prefer to meet in person.
Happy Practicing!,
Elena

Tracking Your Meditation Practice

womanRunning2Hello Fellow Meditators,

In order to benefit from meditation we have to practice. Just like exercise, we have to do it to get more fit!

The key to your meditation practice is to remember why you want to meditate.
Take a moment to remember what you want to gain… is it calm? A better way to deal with stress? To be less anxious? Relief from physical pain? Inner peace? Self knowledge?

Whatever it is, take a moment to remember that now.

Your reason for meditating is very important because that is your motivation to practice.
Without it you will not practice. It is that crucial. It is the key to keeping your practice going on a daily, weekly, monthly, yearly basis. Keep your reason close to your heart, write it down and look at it periodically or review it in your mind every so often. It may change over time as your practice grows, which is wonderful. Whatever it is, keep it close.

Another helpful thing to do is to measure your progress.
It helps to measure whether you are you moving towards your goal or not.

How can we measure our progress?

We can do the very simple procedure of tracking our practice.

It works like this: get a notebook or a piece of paper and write down every day a few key items…

1. How often you practiced today (Example: Today’s Date: 0 or 20,000 times)

2. Any insights you had or questions that came up. (Example: I realized today that lack of sleep has a big impact on my ability to focus!)

3. Anything that changed today (Examples: Today it was easier to focus. or Today it was harder to be present.)

 

Start with these and see how it goes. I recommend doing this for at least a full week to see if it helps you or not. Over the course of your week, you may realize that you want to track different things than these. For instance, you may want to track how much sleep you’ve had or how easy it was to focus or how long it took you to get through your meditation.

Whatever you choose to track, I do recommend that you always track how many times a day you practice because it will encourage you to practice if you know that  you are writing it down. And it is wonderfully encouraging to look back after several weeks or months and see how much you have practiced!

Finally, you can track on paper, on your phone, on your computer… whatever is easiest for you.

I like paper for meditation because I like to journal about any questions that keep coming up. For running I use an app on my phone or a calendar on the wall if I’m doing specific training for a race.

Some people like to track on a spread sheet at their desk, or use their phone’s note app or a tracking app. You could send daily emails to yourself using the same or similar subject lines or use task management software if you wanted to get really fancy (esp if you already use it for work or other projects in your life). If you’ve tracked anything in the past, think about how it worked for you and whether you can use it for meditation practice now.

There are many, many ways to track, the most important way is the one that works for you. Choose the one that seems easiest at first, and experiment until you’re satisfied that you’ve found something that’s easy.

In case you like the app idea, here is a meditation app that says that it allows you to track your practice via iPhone: Equanimity, ‘easily log meditations not timed using your iPhone (at a class or retreat etc)’. And here’s a whole list of them, which may suit your needs. I haven’t tried any of them, so if you do, please let me know how it goes!

And feel free to put what works for you for tracking, including other apps below!

Enjoy,
Elena

Creative Commons Photo License

The Five Hinderances to Meditation Practice

Bruce Lee

Bruce Lee, master meditator.

This week the Five Hindrances to meditation practice keep coming into my consciousness. This is a Buddhist idea about the five most common kinds of thoughts and emotions that distract us during meditation practice.

Why share a Buddhist idea about meditation?
In my opinion, Buddhism offers a tremendous amount of academic knowledge about meditation. Even from a purely academic stand point, I feel that we can learn a lot from their 2,000 years of study of meditation practice! The amount of knowledge that they’ve collected and shared is a tremendous gift to meditation.
So, what are the Five Hinderances to meditation? What are the five most common mental-emotional distractions during meditation practice?
1. Desire (thinking about things that we want)
2. Rejection (thinking about things that we don’t want)
3. Tiredness (sleepiness, fatigue)
4. Anxiousness (frustration, anger, fear, etc.)
5. Doubt
Do you recognize any of these as distractions in your practice?
Whether you do or not, it can be fun to label your distractions as a way of letting them go… as a way of putting them down… as a way of practicing mindfulness by putting a bit of distance between yourself and any distracting thoughts and feelings.
In any case, if you find this helpful, please use it and if not don’t let it distract you!
Knowledge is power – and you know best about you.
Happy to help with any questions about this to the best of my abilities.
Happy Practicing,
Elena
From Wikipedia:

The five hindrances are:[1][2][3][web 1][web 2]

  1. Sensory desire (kāmacchanda): the particular type of wanting that seeks for happiness through the five senses of sight, sound, smell, taste and physical feeling.
  2. Ill-will (vyāpāda; also spelled byāpāda): all kinds of thought related to wanting to reject, feelings of hostility, resentment, hatred and bitterness.
  3. Sloth-torpor (thīna–middha): heaviness of body and dullness of mind which drag one down into disabling inertia and thick depression.
  4. Restlessness-worry (uddhacca–kukkucca): the inability to calm the mind from these emotions.
  5. Doubt (vicikicchā): lack of conviction or trust.

Acceptance: How can you accept things you don’t like?

Acceptance“I think that if you do spiritual practice correctly, it reflects and undoes your habits of closure so that when you stop doing those habits you are left in your natural state, which is wide open, loving, radiant, happy, sane.“ -David Deida

At some point I stumbled onto the realization that neither running away from my problems (suppression, denial, distraction, etc, etc) nor the opposite extreme of wallowing in the drama of them was terribly useful for making them any better.

What did and does help is first noticing that something is happening and then being in that objective part of me that can notice how I am in it – while I am also fully feeling it. The exact results of this are variable, from the thought/feeling passing quickly to a lengthy succession of difficult experiences happening one after the other… pain, crying, etc.

And it is not that these things go away and never come back. Indeed they are always available. The one thing that is consistent, though is that they get easier and easier to be with. I get more comfortable with them to the point that when they come I do not immediately react with running or wallowing, but have a choice about how to be in them… “Wow, I’m really frightened. My belly is a rock and my throat hurts. I can see an entire drama arising in my mind about this. I think that I will watch that drama like a movie playing in my mind and not act on it. I can see that it is not true, just what my mind is creating to make sense of this fear that I am feeling.”

This kind of liberation is an immense blessing. Not being ruled by fear, jealousy, greed, anger, pain, etc. is wonderful. And of course, sometimes I am able to notice and accept and sometimes I run or wallow long before I ever realize that something worth noticing is even happening.

In the mean time, I am reassured by the Buddhist idea of The Middle Way, which contrary to its name is not, as I understand it, about staying in the middle, but about balance, about allowing everything as it arrises. The Middle Way says that we should accept all parts of life, all ends of the spectrums; that sometimes you will need one extreme or another and sometimes you will need the paces in between. The Middle Way, or Middle Path does not embrace just one way, it embraces all ways, it stays at the centered in acceptance and accepts everything.

Acceptance is a big deal. It is difficult for me to do. It is hard to accept things that I don’t like or want and yet it is one of the best practices I have found for helping me deal with those things. Acceptance doesn’t mean I have to like those things, it just means that I acknowledge them (versus trying and ignore them) and then let my mind move on to something else (instead of focusing on them and creating drama). Acceptance means that when thoughts and emotions float through, I say hello and let them go.

One thing that you can try is something that I’m using a lot lately to get me through a really tough spot in my own growth. I’m struggling a lot with overwhelming thoughts and emotions about my own self worth and I remembered a Buddhist practice I learned a long time ago in Thailand.

In this practice, when you notice a thought or emotion you say what it is, you name it, and then let it go by actively looking for the next one. In this way you are first acknowledging and then letting go. This is a beautiful way to practice acceptance.

This time, I’ve been thanking what arises as well. A thought will arise and I realize, “Ah, you’re trying to protect me. Thank you for trying to protect me.” This little addition of gratitude makes a big difference. It helps me acknowledge the thought or emotion for the good that it is trying to do, which goes a long way towards accepting it and letting it go versus resisting it or wanting to dwell on it, figure it out or turn it into a drama.

Elena Maria Foucher writes about personal growth on ElenaMariaFoucher.com and teaches Meditation Made Easy, simple tools for relaxation, over Skype. Contact her at Elena@ElenaMariaFoucher.com.

(This article first appeared in the online magazine CoSozo.com.)

Abandonment: If You Always Have You, Can You Ever Truly Be Left?

AbandonmentAbandonment has been a strong fear of mine. I find it interesting that on a planet of 7 people that that would be a fear, but there it is. Fears are funny things.

Turns out quite a few of us share this one. Abandonment issues, the fear of lonliness, can feel insurmountable, like a huge obstacle blocking our path.

I used to spend a lot of time as a child unconsciously worried about who I was going to spend time with and for how long and when. Lots of planning and strategizing went into this, schedules and phone calls, conversations and the like. As I grew up and became an adult I started a long process of learning to love myself. I’ve found that one of the wonderful side effects of that journey has been that I don’t worry so much about being alone anymore.

I didn’t even know how I felt about being alone until it started to get better, until I had begun to love myself enough that the fear started to fade a bit.

Much of that fear was unconscious as was all of the things I was doing to avoid it. I would engage people in conversations longer than I needed to, listen to people that I wasn’t interested in listening to, hang out with people I didn’t really like and do things that I didn’t really want to do. I’d do all of this thinking that I was being generous and kind or at worst just filling free time, if I thought about it at all.

And why not? There’s nothing wrong with being with other people. With helping people by listening to their problems, supporting them with my time and energy and getting the same in return.

Except that the motives weren’t clean. What I didn’t realize was that I was doing these things not out of pure compassion or a clean and clear need for help. I was doing these things from an unconscious fear of being alone, of not being liked, friendless, lonely, unloved, abandoned. Icky.

These unconscious fears drove me, and since often I didn’t really like what I was doing or who I was with, I wasn’t giving the best of me nor able to receive the best from them. The whole situation was messy and unfulfilling for me and I imagine for them as well.

Until it all started to change. I didn’t make this change on purpose. I didn’t even realize it was happening! What I did do was slowly start liking myself more and more over time and that allowed me to see, “Hey! I don’t really want to do these things! I don’t really want to hang out with these people! I’m not really happy with these interactions!”

Shew! What a difference liking myself has made! As I like myself more, the parts that I don’t like become more clear. As I get more comfortable, the discomforts become more obvious to see and feel. And to stop.

I’m happy to say that I am much more conscious about how I spend my time and whether it’s fulfilling or not. At this point I don’t worry much about being alone on a social level, and the personal level is slowly unwinding itself as well.

How did I go about liking myself more? How can you go about liking yourself more? Those are great questions!

Honestly, I don’t know which of the things I did were a necessary part of learning to love myself. I’m sure that the people who’ve scaled that mountain all the way to the top can share a better overview of the process than I can. There are lots of books and courses you can take, so look out for those to inform your journey to self love.

One thing I can say for sure is that loving myself as much as I do now means that I have me and that I am enough.

What ever your journey towards self love, if you choose to take it, the view from the top will be worth it. I know because the view from here is totally amazing, and I’m only part way up!

(This article first appeared in the online magazine CoSozo.com.)