The Chance Encounter

2 broad categories

• concentration, a narrow focus

• insight/investigation, a broader focus

This is simply paying attention, or being aware.

You are mindful of something.

Paying attention to the body, or paying attention to an external activity like a cherry blossom viewing.

Meditation is a practice that builds concentration and your ability to be mindful and serves as a basis for insight in to your life.

The word Zen -> Jhana -> Meditation

Zen has roots that go back 2500 years ago, from Japan, through China, back to India.

Rinzai Zen has a hundreds-year long tradition of teaching meditation for wellbeing.

"A painting of a rice cracker can't satisfy hunger"

Meditation is similar to music practice. It's like physical exercise. Slow and steady with long-term multiplicative gains.

Can you commit 30 minutes each day for the next 8 weeks?

Daily meditation gives you insight in to

• The good days and the bad days

• The very resistance to looking at yourself mindfully

• The changing nature of the world.

Keeping a meditation diary or journal gives you the ability to reflect on these insights.

[25 minute guided meditation and ~5 minutes of journaling]

I undertake for the duration of my meditation course to faithfully practice to the best of my ability for thirty minutes a day. I will do my best to practice all of the subsidiary exercises. I make this undertaking of my own free will.

[break, reconvene and be ready to lie down]

• Posture

• Breathing

• Thoughts

Welcome back.

Stress: "the non-specific response of the organism to any pressure or demand" Hans Selye

Stressors: the things that cause stress

Some stressors:

• pets/animals

• job sccheduling

• compassionate response

• social planning/pressures

Outer resources:

Inner resources:

How will meditation and mindfulness will help you?

• change is universal

• there are no things, just processes in motion

• start to find a different relationship with change

Occur in three stages

• fight or flight reaction

• resistance action

• exhaustion

physiological response to even social or psychological danger

the body releases stress hormones including adrenaline

• heightened sense perception

• heart rate increases

• digestive and reproductive systems shut down

we have no inherent way to deal with hyper-arousal

awareness of our stressors is a critical element of freedom from them.

In awareness, you are

• remaining centered and aware even under stress

• recognizing the whole reality of the situation and your response

• able to be with thoughts, feelings, sensations

• more able to react to stresses in a natural, positive way

This takes time and practice!

Discussion and Feedback from Week 2

Two options:

• Tune out: put your attention elsewhere

• Tune in: put your attention on pain

Meditation allows you to relax more deeply

When you pay attention to pain, you can watch it change.

With pain comes a story and mental commentaries.

Mindfulness and awareness of yourself makes this distinction more clear.

From the Sallattha Sutta:

When touched with a feeling of pain, the uninstructed run-of-the-mill person sorrows, grieves, and laments, beats his breast, becomes distraught. So he feels two pains, physical and mental. Just as if they were to shoot a man with an arrow and, right afterward, were to shoot him with another one, so that he would feel the pains of two arrows.

Sensing a feeling of pleasure, he senses it as though joined with it. Sensing a feeling of pain, he senses it as though joined with it. Sensing a feeling of neither-pleasure-nor-pain, he senses it as though joined with it. This is called an uninstructed run-of-the-mill person joined with birth, aging, & death; with sorrows, lamentations, pains, distresses, & despairs. He is joined, I tell you, with suffering & stress.

n=90 statistically significant reductions in

• Present moment pain

• negative body image

• inhibition of activity by pain

• mood disturbance

• psychological symptoms such as anxiety and depression

[ DOI: 10.1007/BF00845519 ]

n=13 highly trained meditators, 13 matched control volunteers

"This study was a first step in determining how or why meditation might influence pain perception."

Zen meditators had a lower pain sensitivity even without meditating

[ DOI: 10.1097/PSY.0b013e31818f52ee ]

This study shows how even small amounts of mindfulness training (three 20 minute sessions) can reduce pain sensitivity

• Meditation is more effective than distraction

• Effect of meditation continues after active period

• "A lessening of pain" not "A lessening of sensation"

[ DOI: 10.1016/j.jpain.2009.07.015 ]

Break for sitting meditation

Last time: mindfulness and meditation with respect to physical pain. This week: look at the emotional level.

Like physical pain, we can't deal with emotional pain in the abstract.

Presence & awareness in the moment it arises.

This work is:

• Gentle

• Compassionate

• Patient

Zen Master Obaku:

That which sees suffering is not itself suffering.

When our relationship with pain changes, the pain itself changes, but we can develop a fuller insight into who we really are.

Calming a scared animal

We want so much for things to be different that we're unwilling to admit things as they are.

We construct walls of the mind

Consider adopting a stance of awareness and accepting, even and especially of these feelings of unwillingness.

• Mindfulness of the body

• Mindfulness of the sensations

• Mindfulness of the mind

• Mindfulness of mind objects/experience

See Lion's Roar

Any of these can be cultivated with practice, and lead to enlightenment, but it's easiest to stay in the body.

Chasing/untangling storylines of suffering are not a foundation of mindfulness.

The situation and your reaction to it are two different things! Leave a little space between them sometimes.

↑ as we become intuitively better at this, we learn to respond more appropriately to the world

• Neither suppressing nor acting

• Fear might be warranted!

• Gentle, curious, patient

• Depression has different causes

• Some are from prolonged exposure to stress

Responding to stress more w/ meditation and mindfulness may be effective in helping with depression.

I am depressed -> I'm feeling depressed -> This feeling is depression

123 person study comparing antidepressants with mindfulness-based cognitive therapy

After 15 months 60% on antidepressants had relapse, compared to 47% who had mindfulness training.

[ doi: 10.1037/a0013786. ]

130 person study comparing MBCT to a control group found a 30-35% reduction in residual depression symptoms (fatigue, anxiety, low mood, trouble sleeping) compared to 10% in the control group.

[ DOI: 10.1192/bjp.bp.111.104851 ]

The more practice you build up in good times, the better shape you'll be in for the hard times...

• several hats, several roles

• we can fix our views and behaviors of our roles

• the roles we play can become rigid and out of sync with reality

Being mindful in your roles can reveal these tensions

role stress is typically a problem of identifying too strongly with our roles

it's easy to become addicted to your roles and impossible to play no roles at all

success and failure both bring their own stressors as does boredom. so then what?

being mindful, aware, and compassionate toward the feelings of stress

take a few minutes to note down the roles you play in the different relationships in your life. which do you find most stressful?

Tell us about the roles you play.

• son to my mom, son to my dad

• meditation student teacher shoji

• tea brewer

• project manager @ work

• fixer/hero @ work

• open source/emacs contributor

• makerspace/hacker person

• never seem to have enough time?

• time seem to drag on?

• every week feel like a month, while every month flies by like a week?

what sort of situations have you felt like time was no problem?

in the zone? locked in?

Csikszentmihalyi calls this experience flow state

The ego falls away. Time flies. Every action, movement, and thought follows inevitably from the previous one, like playing jazz. Your whole being is involved, and you're using your skills to the utmost.

Share a few examples of when you've experienced flow.

A key aspect of flow: nearly all of the brain's available energy is devoted to one activity.

• look at your expectations honestly

• take time for timelessness

• look at how to simplify things

• consider your timely demise

This week we'll be practicing in a chair

awareness and resilience provide clarity and insight

but that's not enough on its own for a good life

what nourishes you?

what depletes you?

what can we do about those things?

we become like the people we spend time with.

who do you spend your time behaving like?

who can you help?

who can you forgive?

what can you be grateful for?

sing, smile, laugh, dance

tetsuharu kawakami, baseball batting record holder and team manager

lady gaga uses it to recover from ptsd lena dunham oprah huge jackedman 50 cent steve jobs the beatles jonathon rowson

valentine & sweet, 1999, Mental Health, Religion and Culture n=19 showed increasing ability to sustain attention

MacLean et al., 2010, Psychological Science tested visual attention during a long meditation retreat

Sridevi, Rao & Krishna, 1998, Psychological Studies tested short vs medium vs long term meditation practices; more exerience more confident, relaxed, satisified, conscientious, and less anxious

Mavardhana & Tori, 1997, Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion improvement in overall self-esteem, benevolence? feelings of worth, and self-acceptance after 7 day retreat

Shapiro, Schwartz, & Bonner, 1998, Journal of Behavioral Medicine n=78 medical and premed students showed increased levels of empathy and decreased anxiety, even during stressful exams

guts. vigor and groundedness. rest and digest.

Wallace et al., 1982, International Journal of Neuroscience physiological signs of aging (blood pressure, vision, hearing, etc) imrpoved 12 years in people who had meditated more than 5 years.

Alexander et al. 1989, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology elderly people shown meditation lived longer and better on average

So & Orme-Johnson, 2001 showed increased practical intelligence, independence, creativity, information processing, in high school students

heightened senses, social pressure and anxiety, sexual dysfunction, joy, metaphysical/magical things

how was open awareness?

• occaisional participant

• regular meditator

• professional-level

• champion-level

temporary and permanent effects

Altered Traits by Daniel Goleman

• retreats

• sangha

• working with a teacher

• teaching

• boddhisattva way

Break and one last group practice together