This page has the recordings from all of the sessions of the Developing Mindfulness / Advanced Mindfulness “course” held in the RNI Chapel in 2019. The intention of the “course” was to introduce participants to new meditation techniques so that they would be able to develop their own practice in ways that hitherto might not have been open to them. It wasn’t designed to be a course in the conventional sense of teaching and learning but was simply intended to introduce a variety of techniques that can be broadly categorised into calming meditation, insight meditation and compassion or loving kindness meditation.
Week 1 – Monday the 14th January 2019.
Practice 1 – Counting breaths. This is a 20minute practice in which participants are invited to bring attention to the breath and then to use counting techniques as a way of allowing the mind to stabilise and settle. It can be particularly useful when starting a period of meditation practice.
Practice 2 – Being with thought and seeing what arises. This is a 20minute practice in which participants are invited to settle into awareness of the body, the breath and the mind and to allow thoughts, feelings and emotions to arise and pass in and out of awareness. The invitation is then to observe what arises as these movements of the mind pass through and dissipate.
Practice 3 – Kindness meditation practice. A 17minute practice in which participants are invited to contemplate the needs of others in the room and to generate a sense of kindness and caring to one another and to themselves.
Week 2- Monday the 21st January 2019.
Practice 1 – Formal settling, grounding and resting practice. This is a 20minute practice which is designed to help settle the mind when it is very busy and stressed at the start of a meditation session.
Practice 2 – Conceptual proliferation. This is a 20minute practice designed to help us see and realise the nature of conceptual proliferation – meaning the web of thoughts, feelings, emotions, memories, associations and concepts generated by the mind – that continually distracts the mind as we try and settle into our meditations.
Practice 3 – The unacceptable thought. This is a 20minute compassion practice designed to help us acknowledge the presence of difficult thoughts and view them with loving kindness and compassion. It can be regarded as a form of self-compassion.
Week 3 – Monday the 28th January 2019.
Practice 1 – Settling, grounding and resting using a sitting body scan. A 20 minute practice designed to help release all tension within the body and the mind and allow the mind to come to rest with the body.
Practice 2 – The “Addictive behaviour” sitting practice. A 20minute meditation in which we practise sitting and observing an addictive or habitual behaviour trait of which we are aware.
Practice 3 – The “Yes” meditation. A 20minute self-compassion meditation in which we open our minds to everything that we are experiencing by saying yes to whatever arises.
Week 4 – Monday the 4th February 2019.
Practice 1 – Settling, grounding and resting through the breath. A 20minute meditation practice in which awareness of the breath leads to awareness of the body and allows body and mind to come to rest.
Practice 2 – Insight meditation – the sense of self. A 25minute meditation practice in which the sense of self is approached through the use of reflective questions dropped into the meditation. Participants are asked to feel the questions and the reverberations of the question in the mind rather than think about them.
Practice 3 – Compassion – breathing in the positive and breathing out the negative. A 20minute self-compassion practice in which participants are invited to use their breath as a way of feeling the positive in themselves and their lives through the in breath and releasing the negative through the out breath.
Week 5 – Monday the 11th February 2019 – Exploring compassion practice
Practice 1 – Universal compassion. A 20minute meditation in which participants are invited to breathe out their negativity into a space before releasing the empathic and compassionate energy into which it can become transformed. Derived from “The golden Light of Universal Compassion” meditation written by Akong Rinpoche in his book “Taming the Tiger”.
Practice 2 – Forgiveness. A 20minute meditation practice on the subject of forgiveness – forgiving others and self-forgiveness (with thanks to Stephen Levine).
Practice 3 – Taking and sending. Again a 20minute meditation in which the practice of breathing in difficulty (negativity) and breathing out relief and good wishes (positivity) is introduced. This meditation is derived from the practice of Tonglen.
Week 6 – Monday the 18th February 2019 – Insight practice and the process of realisation
Practice 1 – “Coming to our senses” – a 20minute insight practice in which participants are invited to experience the sense of touch and to move awareness to the sensations of the body without judgement and analysis.
Practice 2 – “Role playing” – a 20minute practice in which participants are asked to look at and reflect on, with the aid of reflective questioning, a role that they have in their lives.
Practice 3 – “We are all human” – a 20minute practice in which participants are asked to reflect on the feelings induced by someone who has caused difficulty or provoked negativity in their lives.
Week 7 – Monday the 25th March 2019 – Insight into impermanence and the nature of compassion
Practice 1 – “Insight into impermanence” – a 30minute practice in which participants are invited to notice the ever changing nature of their experience of both the 5 senses and the mind. In other words to begin to observe the impermanence of all phenomena.
Practice 2 – “The nature of compassion” – a 25minute practice in which participants are invited to experience and investigate feelings of caring, kindness and love and develop them into a sense of compassion for others.
Week 8 – Monday the 1st April 2019 – Integrating compassion with insight practice.
Practice 1 – Loving kindness and insight into the processes of the mind – a 30minute practice to illustrate how compassion practice can open the mind and facilitate the development of insight.
Practice 2 – Self-compassion – a 27minute basic self-compassion practice in which participants are invited to develop a sense of caring and kindness towards themselves.
Week 9 – Monday the 8th April 2019 – Impermanence.
Practice 1 – Basic impermanence meditation – a 30minute meditation practice in which the impermanence of all things is contemplated.
Practice 2 – Filling the world with kindness – a 30minute meditation in which participants are guided through the process of developing a sense of gratitude, caring and kindness and are invited to radiate that positivity to everyone around them.
Week 10 – Monday the 15th April 2019 – Looking into life, death and the nature of reality.
Practice 1 – “No boundaries” sitting practice – a 30minute practice in which participants are invited to bring awareness to the experience of their 5 senses, then look at the manner in which the mind processes the experience through the mechanisms of perception, and finally allow awareness to spread beyond the confines of their mind and body.
Practice 2 – “Letting go” – a 28minute practice about releasing and letting go of thoughts, concepts, moment by moment experience, of life and of death.
Week 11 – Monday the 22nd April 2019 – Clinging and the nature of mind.
Practice 1 – Clinging and clarity of mind – a 30minute practice of relaxation, resting and observing the mind.
Practice 2 – Self-compassion – a 25minute practice – learning to open and rest the mind with kindness, caring and compassion.
Week 12 – Monday the 6th May 2019 – Recognising clinging and how it can be released.
Practice 1 – Recognising conceptual proliferation and understanding exactly how it feels when the mind processes pleasant and difficult thoughts. This is a 25minute practice in which participants are asked to notice how the mind clings to thoughts and how this can lead to conceptual proliferation and how these processes feel.
Practice 2 – Learning how to rest the mind to allow engagement with thought and the clinging that results to be released. A 25minute practice of deep relaxation of body and mind.
Week 13 – Monday the 13th May 2019 – Levels of clinging.
Practice 1 – Recognising coarse and subtle levels of clinging. A 25minute process in which participants are invited to rest in open awareness and then release any sense of clinging that arises.
Practice 2 – Being compassionate towards clinging (compassionate clinging) – a 26minute self-compassion practice.
Week 14 – Monday the 20th May 2019 – Subtle clinging.
Practice 1 – Recognising subtle levels of clinging by using kindness and caring to help us open our awareness. A 27minute meditation in which participants are invited to use kindness to open their awareness and to express caring to what is being experienced.
Practice 2 – Clinging and the sense of self. A 25minute meditation practice in which participants are invited to notice how levels of clinging seems to lead to an expression of the sense of self – in other words how the sense of self underlies all clinging.
Week 15 – Monday the 27th May 2019 – the sense of self.
Practice 1 – Attitudes, judgements and subtle desires – a 30minute meditation looking at the manner in which we approach insight meditation practice and recognising the judgements that we make during meditation, the desire to achieve or for things to be one way rather than another and reflecting on how we can let go.
Practice 2 – Who am I – a 28minute basic meditation on the sense of self using reflective questions.
Week 16 – Monday the 3rd June 2019 – Generating positive feelings.
Practice 1 – How does happiness feel – in the mind and in the body. A 28minute meditation about generating a sense of happiness and feeling it in the mind and the body (as a way of helping the mind relax and be open).
Practice 2 – Looking at life’s events through the lens of happiness. A 27minute meditation practice in which we use feelings of happiness to help us approach some of the difficulties in our lives. What difference does it make to how we see things when we are in a positive state of mind?
Week 17 – Monday the 10th June 2019 – Positive mind states (and their use in insight meditation practice).
Practice 1 – “The smile meditation” (25minutes). Generating a sense of joy and happiness during sitting practice and feeling that sense flow through the body and the mind. Asking ourselves how does that feel?
Practice 2 – Using joy to help develop insight – a 28 minute meditation in which we practise allowing ourselves to come to rest with a sense of joy and then allow difficulties to arise. Asking ourselves how do our difficulties feel when we allow them to arise with joy?
Week 18 – Monday the 17th June 2019 – experiencing unconditional love.
Practice 1 – Developing a sense of unconditional love – a 30minute meditation designed to show the manner in which conditional feelings of love (that is love dependent on an external object) can become unconditional.
Week 19 – Monday the 8th July 2019 – insight through positive mind states 1.
Practice 1 – “Remembering the good that is within you” – a 25minute meditation in which we allow happiness to arise within us by recalling good things that we have said or done. Reflecting on and resting in that happiness allows insight to arise with particular regard to opening the mind and observing resistance and the self-critic.
Practice 2 – “The benefactor” – a 25minute meditation practice in which we visualise someone who has helped us in the past and who we respect. We rest with our feelings of gratitude and extend loving-kindness to them. The meditation ends with imagining ourselves doing good, helpful deeds to others and observing the feelings that arise.
Week 20 – Monday the 15th July 2019 – insight through positive mind states 2.
Practice 1 – “Conscious breathing” with thanks to Thich Nhat Hahn. A 28minute meditation practice in which breathing techniques are used to generate a feeling of restful contentment.
Practice 2 – “What do we truly need to make us happy” – a 25minute reflective meditation practice in which participants are invited to contemplate what they really need to help them find true happiness.
Week 21 – Monday the 22nd July 2019 – insight through positive mind states 3.
Practice 1 – “Resting in the energy body (Samadhi)” – a 25minute practice in which we scan through the body generating a sense of the “energy body” and feeling a sense of warm restfulness whilst remaining alert.
Practice 2 – “Love, hate and the energy body” – a 26minute practice in which we experience the response of the energy body to positive (love) and negative (hate) feelings and contemplate how negative energy can be integrated into the body.
Week 22 – Monday the 29th July 2019 – insight through positive mind states 4.
Practice 1 – Developing a sense of gratitude – a 29minute positive mind state practice in which we come to rest and allow ourselves to develop a sense of gratitude for our senses, for the people who are close to us and who help us, for our own lives and abilities and lastly for life itself.
Practice 2 – “Using gratitude as a state of mind to help us see the positive in all things including the negative events of our lives”. A 25minute meditation in which we first of all access our sense of gratitude and rest in its positivity before allowing memories of negative events to come to mind. We see if we can hold negativity and rest with it in an open, receptive and non-judgemental way.
Week 23 – Monday the 5th August 2019 – insight through positive mind states 5.
Practice 1 – Equanimity and the serenity prayer. A 26minute meditation practice in which we look for a sense of balance, calmness and ease amongst the difficulties of life through our natural desire to care for others.
Practice 2 – Equanimity and impermanence. A 30minute meditation practice in which we look for a sense of balance, calmness and ease through the ever changing nature of the experience of our external and internal senses.
Subsequent recordings in these sessions
can be found on the Positive Mind States page.
Highland Mindfulness Group 