December 23, 2014 By Admin

Mindfulness and Concentration – Body Awareness Activity

Mindfulness and Concentration – Experience Differences

In this post I will explain some basic differences between mindfulness and concentration, both of which are required for effective meditation practice. This will be the first of three posts dealing with what mindfulness and concentration are, how to experience them briefly in a body-based activity, and how to improve them in practice. We will begin with the body mindful awareness activity as outlined below.

Introduction to Mindfulness

First, a brief introduction to mindfulness. Mindfulness brings initial, usually neutral, attention to your awareness of some object, experience or phenomenon. It also signals you when your mind has wandered off the target or object of attention. When the mind wanders, gently bring attention back to the selected object of your attention. Mindfulness skills build the foundation for concentration skills, or the sustained strong attention of the mind on an object you have purposely selected to pay attention to. Mindfulness often includes mind-wandering with gentle return of attention back to the object, while concentration often includes stronger and stronger focus and attention on the object. There is less distraction in concentration, and usually more depth to your awareness.

Body Awareness of Mindfulness in Time and Space: Now we will use your body to become aware of a mindfulness moment in time and space. While standing or sitting in a state of gentle attention, place your hands in a prayer pose or mudra. Your initial intention is to observe and maintain attention on your hands in this pose. Now take a few deep, slow, cleansing breaths and pay full attention to your prayer-posed hands in front of you. You may also become aware of the interoception of how the hands feel to your body as they touch in prayer posture. Really focus full visual-mental attention on your hands and feel the sensation of them touching. Then open up your hands and break the prayer mudra; move your hands and arms upward and outward so there is no direct contact between the hands. Make a big circle with your arms. NOTICE what this change feels like; notice what is different once you break your focused attention on your hands in prayer posture. Repeat this movement several times – from prayer mudra to opening up the hands and moving your arms outwardly and upwardly in a slow but deliberate fashion. Notice carefully the differences in awareness in the prayer mudra versus the change in hand-arm position. This is an example of impermanence in awareness of hand postures. Be aware of the tendency to return your posture to prayer mudra each time you change it from still, prayer position to open moving position up and out. Continue for a few more minutes just to be sure you notice the differences in awareness.

Body Awareness of Concentration in Time and Space: Now we will practice concentration on prayer posture. Have an initial intention to place complete concentration on your hands in prayer mudra in front of you. Remain fixed on concentrating on your hands in this posture. Each time you notice that your attention has weakened or wandered off into some other awareness, simply place a slightly stronger mental focus on your hands in prayer posture in front of you. You may also want to pay more attention to the sensation of the hands touching each other. Do not change the position of your hands; remain in prayer mudra. Notice each time your concentration has weakened or moved away, and again place stronger more forceful effort into concentrating on your hands in prayer position. NOTICE the differences between your more stable concentration here and the flow of mindfulness above in the first activity. This is a more stable and forceful level of intense concentration. It feels quite different in the body; it has a more energetic feel to it. If you are experiencing difficulty maintaining a strong intensity of concentration, it may help to increase pressure just a bit stronger – one hand against the other hand in the prayer position.

Repeat concentration on your prayer mudra a few more times, and Notice!

By Anthony R. Quintiliani, PhD., LADC

From the Eleanor R. Liebman Center for Secular Meditation in Monkton, Vermont

Author of Mindful Happiness

CLICK HERE to Order!

The Principles of Nature and Natural Healing This is an advanced post on Eastern views of healing. From ancient shamanic traditions all the way to today’s AMA approved procedures in energy medicine, healers have been trying to discover and integrate the foundations of nature into healing. This reality exists from shamanic rituals all the way […]

Understanding Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy? Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy (or Cognitive-Behavior Therapy, hereafter CBT) has been noted as the most common evidence-based therapy approach used in the United States. That said, the most common “therapy” approach used here remains generic talk therapy with more or less psychodynamic characteristics. Given the absolute limited level of outcome-based evidence for effectiveness of […]

Money and Electronic “Friends” Are They Real ? The Sutta Nipata (4.15, Translated by Thanissaro Bhikkhu) noted “Seeing people floundering like fish in small puddles, competing with one another…fear came into me. The world was entirely without substance….Wanting a haven for myself, I saw nothing that wasn’t laid claim to. Seeing nothing in the end but […]

Mindful Loving Can Improve Relationships The 14th Dalai Lama (Tenzin Gyatso), Pema Chodron, David Richo and many others have provided us with helpful advice about improving the quality of our significant relationships. The Dalai Lama in various writings reminds us that to have true compassion for others – including those we love – we must […]

Yoga Nidra and Your Inner Peace Yoga Nidra will allow you to relax like you may never have relaxed before. Follow these modified instructions for your best relaxed state. If at any time during Yoga Nidra you feel uncomfortable, simply stop and breathe in a manner that restores equilibrium. Although this uncomfortable outcome is highly […]

Practicing Interoceptive Meditations Anthony R. Quintiliani, Ph.D., LADC The mindfulness-based process and intervention of interoception (also called neuroception) has slowly moved from meditation practice into clinical practice, now being part of the recommended MBSR, ACT, and more current CBT-based therapies. The three brief meditations below are presented to expand the use of interoceptive processes in […]

Mindfulness & Happiness – Tools In this post I will provide basic instructions for several mind-body practices that allow calm equanimity both at rest and in action. We will cover RAIN, RAINDROP, Cloud Journeying, Gratitude, Tapping, and other Body-Based practices. RAIN (Tara Brach) – This simple to use approach helps you to maintain a cognitive […]

Consciousness, Emptiness, and Well Being This is an advanced post on the complex relationship among consciousness (awareness), emptiness, and well being. Readers with advanced understanding of Buddhist Psychology will recognize the inherent relationships among consciousness, emptiness, and well being and interactions with core Buddhist concepts and experiences such as happiness and suffering, impermanence, non-dual nature, […]

Beyond MBSR – Quick Start Skills Self-calming for counselors and other helpers is one of the most important survival practices to master. Self-calming consists a set of basic mindfulness skills, all of which must be practiced regularly to achieve desired emotion-regulation effects. The utility of these skills is well established in clinical research, and not […]

The Deep Courage to Let Go Pema Chodron, now recognized as a world leader in the Chogyam Trungpa Shambhala tradition, has presented a wonderfully clear method for letting go of personal blockages and impediments to enlightenment, the bodhisattva way of life, and awakened bodhichitta (clear mind, soft heart). She teaches us how in “The Joy […]

Trauma Therapy: Basics from Some Expert Clinicians For many years trauma therapist have used many approaches in their psychotherapy. Most of these approaches lack strong empirical support for outcomes, and are often the “favorites” of these therapists. One might wonder what benefits therapists derive from using approaches that are not evidence-based. If an intervention fails […]

Breathing Practices and Emptiness Here I will introduce you to five breathing practices, each one moving progressively closer and closer to emptiness/no-self experiences. Do your best to remain open in these practices. Notice the feel of your posture. Once comfortable notice your breath as it is. Relax and close your eyes if ok. Rest your […]

Trauma Informed Care – Avoidance Process Although more and more clinicians are learning about and using principles/practices of Trauma Informed Care, too few understand the behavioral dynamics of negative reinforcement in the avoidance of trauma-related cues (people, places, things, internal sensations, emotions and images). This post will give a very brief description of negative reinforcement […]

Liberation of the True Self Socrates is reported to have noted that “the secret of change is to focus all of your energy, not on fighting the old but on building the new.” In Buddhism there are clear relationships between “no-self” and the force of impermanence, that reality that ensures constant change and thus personal […]

Pathways for Coping with Loss and Grief Jeanne Cacciatore, a Zen priest and bereavement specialist, offer sound advice on the process of loss and grieving. In her book, Bearing the Unbearable: Love and the Heart Breaking Path of Grief (2016), she presents the process as a series of contractions and expansions; contractions are the inward path of […]

Effective Clinical Supervision Perhaps other than the mental health status of the therapist and her/his ethical clinical skills, there is no more important variable in successful clinical work than effective CLINICAL supervision. I emphasize “clinical’ because in today’s bureaucratic systems, so much supervision tends to be about required procedures like utilization level, reporting requirements, and documentation for services […]

Stress in America – On the Rise – The American Psychological Association recently completed its national survey on stress in America. Stress in America for adults is on the rise! I will review below a selection of reported percentages from the 2015 survey (published in 2016). 1) Younger people are more stressed; Xers and Millennials […]

Three Meditation Practices to Further Your Expansion Based on the ongoing “bad news” about various domestic and world events, and the knowledge that people DO NEED more compassion and self-compassion in their hectic and challenging lives, I am writing three brief meditation practices on different aspects on compassion-wisdom as noted on my site. Hopefully, these […]

About Interoception and It’s Importance Interoception (some may also call it neuroception) is the conscious detection and perception of sensory signals in the body and on the skin. Most often these signals are processed as sensations. Sensation, as the foundation of emotional experience, is always there in our bodies; however, we are not always fully […]

Happiness Path – The 14th Dalai Lama His Holiness The 14th Dalai Lama has suggested, among many other important things, that humans may experience true inner happiness by regular practice on the path to enlightenment. In his 2012 book, From Here to Enlightenment, he noted that personal happiness may be attained via specific behaviors and ways of […]