The OneMind Meditation Podcast with Morgan Dix: Meditation | Mindfulness | Health

Guest Bio Brad Kershner is a school leader, philosopher, and longtime meditation practitioner. He earned his MA in Philosophy of Religions at the University of Chicago, and is completing his PhD in Education at Boston College. He has studied with Buddhist teachers in zen, vipassana, and mahamudra lineages. He is currently Head of the Early School at Carolina Friends School in Durham, NC, where he incorporates the practice of meditative silence every day with students and teachers. His recent writings and presentations have addressed topics such as: complex systems, mindfulness and meditation in schools, childhood development, integral theory, racism, and the (mis)use of technology. You can follow him at brad@bradkershner. Key Links 10-Day Silent Retreat A Brief History of Everything by Ken Wilber A Theory of Everything by Ken Wilber Zazen The 10 Oxherding Pictures Zen Mahamudra Meditation with John Churchill States and Stages of Development with Ted Saad The Religion of Tomorrow by Ken Wilber Episode Quote When someone insults us, we usually dwell on it, asking ourselves, ‘Why did he say that to me?’ and on and on. It’s as if someone shoots an arrow at us, but it falls short. Focusing on the problem is like picking up the arrow and repeatedly stabbing ourselves with it, saying, ‘He hurt me so much. I can’t believe he did that.’ Instead, we can use the method of contemplation to think things through differently, to change our habit of reacting with anger. Imagine that someone insults you. Say to yourself, ‘This person makes me angry. But what is this anger?’ It is one of the poisons of the mind that creates negative karma, leading to intense suffering. Meeting anger with anger is like following a lunatic who jumps off a cliff. Do I have to go likewise? While it’s crazy for him to act the way he does, it’s even crazier for me to do the same.    -Chagdud Tulku Rinpoche More here… The post OM076: Brad Kershner on Integrating Meditation & Your Life appeared first on About Meditation.

Mahamudra Meditation with John Churchill Born in London, England, John Churchill’s interest in meditative and contemplative studies began as a teenager. After leaving high school, he joined Samye Ling Kagyu Monastery in Scotland where he began his studies in Mahayana and Mahamudra Buddhism. He came to the United States to study at Naropa, a Buddhist University where he majored in Contemplative Psychology with a specialization in mind/body health. During his time at Naropa, he studied with American philosopher, Ken Wilber, and was a founding member of Integral Institute. John received his Master’s degree from New England School of Acupuncture and practiced psychosomatic acupuncture for a decade. He is currently studying for a doctoral degree in Clinical Psychology at the William James College, Massachusetts, integrating Western and Eastern approaches to psychology. Since 2007 John has been the close mentee and apprentice of Dr. Daniel Brown, psychologist, translator, meditation teacher and founder of the Pointing Out Way. John’s study, practice, and research have been in the area of the Buddhist non-dual Essence practices Gelugpa and Kagyu Great Seal (Mahamudra) and Nyingma and Bon Great Completion (Dzogchen). Since 2014 he has been actively teaching Mahamudra retreats. During the last decade John he has also developed and taught a non-dual approach to awakening, ‘Embodying the Open Ground’, that integrates non-dual Buddhist psychology, somatics, and psychodynamic/attachment work. John lives in Massachusetts with his wife, Nicole, and his children,Trinity and Bodhi. Follow Up http://www.samadhiintegral.com/ https://pointingoutway.org/ Transformations of Consciousness by Ken Wilber, Dr. Dan Brown, Jack Engler The post OM075: Dr. John Churchill on Mahamudra Meditation & A Vision For Enlightened Culture appeared first on About Meditation.

Kenzo An is a successful marathon runner, a long-time meditator, and a thriving salesman in the Fintech industry. He’s also a regular contributor here at Aboutmeditation.com. In this episode of the One Mind Podcast, we unpack the core themes from some of Kenzo An’s most recent blog posts including: The transforming power of meditation. How solo retreats (and spiritual practice in general) offer you perspective in your darkest nights. The surprising freedom and strength we can find when we embrace a deeper form of renunciation. Here are some quotes from the respective articles that we unpack in the podcast. Losing Is Good for the Soul It’s interesting to look closer at what’s actually motivating us to meditate. Whether we desire a clearer mind, a wider heart, or a transcendence of self; we feel called towards some deeper sense of wholeness. At this time, I decided I wanted all aspects of my life to transform – including my body. I had been a long distance runner for 10+ years as part of my spiritual practice. Now in the dark of the night and my dissolved dream, I had no idea what was supposed to happen next. I was alone with myself in tenderness and openness.  Losing is good for the soul were the words that came to me. I suddenly felt more intimate with the calling towards wholeness I experience in meditation. While winning in life is exciting and invigorating, losing is actually what draws us closer to ourselves. When we lose, we can win new ground in our soul to stand on. Everything Fell Apart. Here’s How Meditation Helped Me Turn It Around I concluded that if I was going to do any truly fresh thinking, it was essential to have more space inside me. I permitted myself for that first day (of five) to let go of the whole world. Near the end of that day, I struck gold as I was meditating. What became crystal clear was that I would never have anything of real value to offer the world if I continued to deny my love for God. The Joy of Breaking Bad Habits By being resolute that this was no longer an option, my awareness has been liberated to flow into other areas that beckon my consciousness. Most importantly: my love for God. I believe this inner irrigation is the essence of the time immemorial spiritual practice of renunciation. In the context of giving up bad habits, I don’t think it works to say “no” to something we typically enjoy unless it’s in service of something more profound that we’re saying “yes” to. What we are saying “yes” to needs to be big and important to us. In this light, it is a joy to not drink or smoke because I’m reaffirming in my being that I am committed to my higher potential. It is so much more than just making healthier choices for my body. It is about tapping into my resolve for a greater life. The post OM074: Kenzo An – Transforming Through Marathons, Meditation, and Solo Retreats appeared first on About Meditation.

Have you ever paid attention to the way you think? Have you ever noticed that your thinking is often repetitive or unoriginal? One of the biggest things meditation can help you with is becoming aware of your habits of thought. Through regular and consistent practice, we slowly but surely lift up and out of the stream of thought that runs through our minds like a hypnotic river of glittering gold. Meditation gives you space from that thought stream. It helps us release our mostly unconscious and tenacious grip on our thoughts. And for most of us, we are deeply identified with what we think. And that’s not inherently a bad thing. It’s just that when we are not conscious of it, we tend to act and respond to life in ways that are not as conscious as we think. So meditation can help us identify deeply ingrained patterns of thought. How? Well, at its core, meditation is about letting go of everything…including our thoughts. In the process, we gain perspective on them. Like an aerial map, over we can start to discern patterns and habits. But why is that even important? It may be completely obvious to you. But let’s just be clear upfront. For one thing, what you think about every day has a huge effect on you. What you think affects your moods, your behavior, your choices, your emotional bandwidth, your outlook on life, your decisions. But the thing is, we are often blind to the deeply patterned and conditioned nature of our own thinking. And that’s one reason it can be hard to make big changes in our lives. In  this episode, we explore how meditation can help to free you from deeply ingrained habits of mind and why that’s so important. The post OM073: Do You Know What You’re Thinking? appeared first on About Meditation.

How do you start your day? Do you take time to cultivate the conditions for success and thriving, whatever that looks like for you? It’s an important question and one that I think about a lot. I am a huge fan of morning routines. And the thing is, if you’re interested in change. If you’re interested in making your days richer, more, productive, and more meaningful overall, there is probably no greater simple change you can make to your life than optimizing your morning routine. See here’s the thing. I lived in a meditation ashram for 14 years. Everyday we started out with 2 hours of meditation. For some years, before the meditation we might would also do 15-45 minutes of prostrations. On Sundays we’d often meditate all day from sunrise to sundown. But the point is, the religious traditions of the world figures this out eons ago. Religious or not, spiritual or not, how you start your day has a huge impact on everything that comes after. You Are Like An Archer Think about an archer. When she notches an arrow in her bow and lifts it to the sky, everything matters. The slightest shift up or down, left or right, can dramatically alter the course and distance of flight. How far she pulls it back and how smoothly she releases it. All these factors fundamentally determine the arc and trajectory of the arrow through space. Likewise, when you and I start our days, how we emerge into each day as we transition from slumber to activity makes a huge difference. This is why so many meditation teachers recommend that you start each day with practice. Aligning your mind and being first thing in the day has a huge effect on your day. You see, we are the arrows and the archer. I use my mornings to read contemplative passages, then I pray, then I meditate, then I exercise. If I have time, I also journal. The thing is, once you start doing something like this, you start to see very quickly the impact it has on your mind. What kind of impact? The Impact Of Your Morning Routine You feel more focused in your day. Your more centered. You feel the dignity and satisfaction of accomplishing something first thing in the morning. If you include meditation, you taste the silence and that brings peace into your being. If you’re very still, that will enhance the quality of your attention throughout the day. If you relax, that will affect your equilibrium in the face of inevitable adversity. All of these things enhance your experience of life itself and they support you capacity to respond to life more fully. The thing is, your morning routine can be a simple discipline which will quickly evolve into a habit. And this is so good for your mind. Start your day with discipline, and you’re tending the garden of your soul and spirit. We all need discipline. That’s how we grow and thrive. Think of a garden. The plants need pruning. They need to be watered. You need to weed the soil. It’s a constant effort, but it yield the most amazing fruit if we attend to it. It’s the same with your mind and spirit. We need to nurture and attend to it every single day so we continue to thrive and attend to the things that are most important. Meditation, is one of the very best ways to start your day and establish the kind of routine that will change your life for the better. The post OM072: What’s Your Morning Routine? appeared first on About Meditation.

In the spirit of the New Year, here is a new year guided meditation on mindful presence. Mindfulness is all about paying attention. We all have these wonderful and rich organs of perception. Our senses. Mindfulness is about getting out of your head and into your world and we do that through paying attention. Your five senses are your probes and your receptors. They are constantly receiving information from within and without. I think of paying attention as a sort of prayer to the community of life and being. Mindfulness is the act of waking up to life again and again. It allows you to attend to your life, your relationships, and your world with all your faculties. This guided meditation will bring you into a state of deep ease and presence. If you find you get lost, come back to the inner warmth or to listening or to complete presence. Allow yourself to be here, relaxed and without judgement. Savor this space of inner quiet and stillness. You can think of this guided meditation as a moment of deep pause. It’s like the eye of a storm, filled with perfect peace and quiet. At a certain point in this guided meditation, towards the end, I’m going to ask you to pause for a moment, and think about this question. How are you going to be more mindful in the year to come? What will you do? You don’t need to answer this question right away. Instead, allow yourself to sit with the question. Enjoy! New Year Guided Meditation: 2016 Show Notes If you enjoyed this podcast, you may also like the Meditation for Life Mini Course Learn more about free awareness meditation with How To Free Your Mind & Discover Deep Peace Take a self-paced introduction to Meditation and explore theMeditation For Life Core Training Program Leave us a rating & review on iTunes The post OM044: New Year Guided Meditation on Mindful Presence appeared first on About Meditation.

It’s been a challenging few weeks here in the United States. There’s been a surge of violence on a number of fronts. Because of social media and our 24 hour news cycle, we are all a lot more exposed to the violence and trauma of these events. If you’re like me, it hits you right in the gut and knocks the wind out. When that happens, it’s important to find ways to mourn and grieve. So this week I’m sharing a wonderful and insightful interview with neuropsychologist and professor Dr. Jennifer Wolkin. She lays out 5 essential steps in the process of mindful grieving. And one thing that amazed me about this interview – and about grieving in general – is how ultimately life positive it is. As Dr. Wolkin says, we all need to grieve to move forward. It’s not always easy, but it’s important for the health of our heart, mind, body, and spirit. The 5 Steps To Mindful Grieving Learn more about the work of Dr. Jennifer Wolkin and BrainCurves Email Dr. Jennifer Wolkin Download this mp3 audio of Ram Dass on grief and loss The post OM071: The 5 Steps To Mindful Grieving appeared first on About Meditation.

iRest is a research-based transformative practice of deep relaxation and meditative inquiry that: releases negative emotions and thought patterns, calms the nervous system, and develops a deep capacity to meet any and all circumstances you may encounter in life. -Dr. Richard Miller Healing Emotional Trauma With iRest Meditation You can read the full writeup on the show from the original episode here. If you enjoyed this podcast, you may also like the Meditation for Life Mini Course Learn more about free awareness meditation with How To Free Your Mind & Discover Deep Peace Take a self-paced introduction to meditation and explore the Meditation For Life Core Training Program Leave us a rating & review on iTunes The post OM070: Dr. Richard Miller On Healing Emotional Trauma With iRest Meditation appeared first on About Meditation.

This podcast is based on an essay from meditation teacher Jeff Carreira. You can read the original article as well as previous articles and podcasts with Jeff at the links below. Enjoy! A Meditation On Falling In Love With The Present Moment We understand everything through metaphors and falling in love is the perfect metaphor to understand the practice of meditation. Language is a system that uses metaphors to clarify and reveal different aspects of reality. Words point to things or experiences. Generally we assume that the language we use to describe things doesn’t affect what they are. But when we use words to describe something as subtle as meditation, the metaphors actually shape our experience of it. (Read more at the link below.) Read How To Meditate Like You’re Falling in Love Listen to my interview with Jeff Carreira The Two Miraculous Gifts of Meditation with Jeff Carreira Listen to this guided meditation with Jeff Carreira The Present Moment: This Is It Read: Love, Healing, and the Spiritual Journey Home Read: Tantra, Non-Duality, & The Practice Of No Problem The post OM069: A Meditation On Falling In Love & The Present Moment appeared first on About Meditation.

Let me ask you, what do you think of when you think about summer? For a lot of us, that word evokes feelings of warmth and comfort and happiness. For me, summer is all about meditation. Guided Meditation For Summer Abundance I think of the magical twilight in summer. The pink, red, purple, and blue skies. The mysterious and stirring feeling of twilight, when a hush settles over everything. You hear the sound of crickets and frogs. All the sounds of the night reverberate under the dome of the summer sky. I’ve always felt that in the summer, I get to actually hear the interconnection of everything. All the creatures sending up their songs into the ambient soundscape. In that way, hearing is a bit like seeing. You get to perceive the whole symphonic cacophony of life. It’s glorious and it melts away your stress. It’s hard not to feel at home in the universe and in yourself when you tune in to that chorus of life. It ebbs and flows. And at certain moments it all goes quiet. There’s a pause in the whole movement, and in that fraction of time, the cradle of silence comes welling up and swallows everything. That silence is pervasive under the night sounds. The first time I every perceived the living quality of silence was on a summer night at twilight in Georgia sitting on the stoop of my Atlanta home. I was just sitting there listening and then I became aware of the silence. It was like a sound beneath all the other sounds. And I felt it calling to me. I became absorbed in that silence. Summer is a time for easing into the warmth and the song of life. It’s a time for paying attention and celebrating the rich fertility and abundance that’s exploding all around us. If you let yourself become quiet, if you settle yourself and listen carefully pay attention and you’ll feel that abundance in the silence. You’ll feel energy pouring through that silence. I’ve never felt that silence is empty. On the contrary, when you really let go into it, it’s full and it fills you like a tap filling a pitcher with cool and refreshing water on a hot day. It’s the kind of cool drink that keeps you coming back for more. When you drink that silence, you can feel yourself being washed clean from the inside out. For me, meditation is like summer. It’s the release. The letting go. The relaxing into the ecstatic flow of life with a capital L. It’s sitting on the shady riverbank watching the sun-soaked water roll on by. It’s the dipping, soaring, swooping dance of the barn swallows. And all of this in perfect stillness and perfect silence. It’s coming to the table and the communion of all life. Meditation is partaking in the magic and the mystery of this moment without hesitation or judgement or separation. Can you relax completely and let yourself slip into this stream of silent communion with life. It’s that moment I woke up with my head on my lover’s lap on a picnic afternoon when I was 15 and there was no end to the future. Everything was perfect and my heart was full and still unbroken. And even now, in this moment, in this endless summer of meditation, everything is perfect. Even with all the scars, the broken hearts, the challenges, it’s all part of the pageantry of life. In this moment, right now, with the song of creation all around me, all the wounds fade into the background and it’s just the pure pulse of life. The goodness. The continuity. The unspeakable peace and silence that is always here. The conviction that nothing was ever wrong. This summer, let yourself fall more deeply into life and see what you find. Take a vacation from your mind and it’s constant rumination. Let yourself relax and be attentive to the miracle of life. Because, after all, that is what meditation is all about. Show Notes If you enjoyed this podcast, you may also like the Meditation for Life Mini Course Learn more about free awareness meditation with How To Free Your Mind & Discover Deep Peace Take a self-paced introduction to meditation and explore the Meditation For Life Core Training Program Leave us a rating & review on iTunes You might also like: Guided Meditation For Stress Relief Guided Meditation For Deep Sleep The post OM068: A Guided Meditation For Summer Abundance appeared first on About Meditation.