A short attention span, learning stress and anxiety, attachment to Googling and enticing apps rather than being present to the moment are by-products of our busy and fast-paced time. Mindful practices allow enhancing the very things UF is about – enjoying learning, increasing learning outcomes and well-being, and having open student-student and student-teacher interactions.

How to Practice:

Silence

Focus on Breath

Types of Meditation

Compassion

Creativity

Reflection

Types of Meditation

Concentrative Meditation. In this practice the objective is to cultivate a single-pointed attention on some object, such as a sound, an image, the breath, or a flame. Through the training of consistently returning to the object of focus, the mind develops the capacity to remain calm, stabilized, and grounded.

Open Awareness. The objective of these forms of meditative practices is to open the mind and rest in pure awareness and emptiness. The capacity to be present without judgement with whatever arises is developed through this practice. The Zen sitting practice zazen, or shikantaza, is an example of this form of meditation.

Somatic meditation. Somatic Meditation takes our body as the fundamental arena of meditation practice. Rather than trying to develop meditation through our left-brain, thinking mind in a “top-down” process, as is the case with most contemporary approaches, Somatic Meditation involves a bottom-up process, wherein we connect with the inherent, self-existing wakefulness that is already present within the body itself. It develops a meditative consciousness that is accessed through the feelings, sensations, somatic intuition, and felt sense of the body itself that is more direct than our conceptual mind. We are simply trying to tune into the basic awareness of the body. Put in Buddhist terms, the human body, as such, is already and always abiding in the meditative state, the domain of awakening, and we are just trying to gain entry into that. (See http://www.dharmaocean.org/meditation/somatic-meditation/ and Ray (2008).

Reflection

Deep reflection means looking thoughtfully at something for a long time. Contemplation involves opening to what is bothering us without being emotionally swept away, holding on to a belief. Instead we befriend it from different vantage points. Paradoxically, leaning into something instead of ignoring or rejecting it often dissolves the issue, event or relationship we have been ruminating.

Guided Meditation

Focus your mind like a laser beam

http://www.counseling.ufl.edu/cwc/relaxation-exercise.aspx

References

Csikszentmihalyi, M. (2013). “Creativity: The psychology of discovery and invention.” Harper Perennial Publ., New York, NY.

Runco, M.A. (2014). “Creativity: theories and themes – research, development and practice”. Academic Press, London, UK.

Scharmer, C.O. (2009). “Theory U – leading from the future as it emerges.” Berrett-Koehler Publ., San Francisco, CA.

Senge, P.M., Scharmer, C.O., Jaworski, J., and Flowers, B.S. (2008). “Presence: human purpose and the field of the future.” Crown Business Publ., New York, NY.

Whitelaw, G. (2012). “The Zen leader – 10 ways to go from barley managing to leading fearlessly.” Career Press Publ., Pompton Plains, NJ.