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compassionate acceptance body scan

Vidyamala Burch co-founder of Breathworks Mindfulness tells her moving and inspiring life story. She sees her life living with a painful body as having four phases:

Denial
Bargaining
Accepting
Flourishing

Vidyamala Burch's Life Story

A monk asked Joshu: ‘Has a dog Buddha-nature or not?’
Joshu answered: ‘Mu’.

Hearing and sound depend on each other and heal each other each, each disappears into the other in the very act of listening. That is what is so lovely and useful and skilful about the practice of listening, that is the offer it makes. Our eyes far more powerfully go out and grasp and name and discriminate and discern things. Sound reaches us, when we are lucky, before thought can arise, and then we become just another movement of this golden wind, golden wind. So Mu is the practice of not identifying phenomena, not measuring, comparing, judging, not finding mine, yours, this, that, all those other illusions and phantoms. Listening is a word that can gradually become the whole of practice. Listening in the eyes: we call it seeing, really seeing, without that movement of the mind to grasp and take hold. In the skin it’s called touch. Just-sitting is full of touch: your weight on your cushion, your confirming weight, the way the earth calls you to it, you can call it gravity, but it’s a constant call, a confirming call, that you are here, you belong, you are welcome. The weight of the hands in each other, resting: bones, tendons, energy. The energy in your hands, feel into that, that’s the touch that is the deep listening of the skin. And in the heart listening is called loving, recognition, that kind of recognition that arises before thought. You’ll be sensing more and more of this as Sesshin deepens, the ways that things reach you and light up recognition which has no content, no neediness. When it reaches you in that state of nothing needed now it is loving. In the belly, in the Hara, listening is called knowing it’s an even quieter form of recognition. It truly needs nothing. So all of these forms of listening, in a way, you could say they are identical at the root but different on the surface just like us. What we are doing when we practice with Mu, and the deep listening that Mu asks of us, is turning our hearing faculty towards the source of hearing, towards the one who hears, and turning towards it as a question, not a knowing. Mu is great because it makes us dumb, not so quick to know everything. Slowly it just shaves those knowings off us. None of them stick to Mu. So they are no use if you are focusing on Mu, if you are focusing on the open state that has nothing put upon it. Whether you call it Mu or call it just-sitting doesn’t matter. Knowings drop off like leaves of a tree in autumn.

For more information about the Zen Open Circle Sangha please visit: www.zenopencircle.org.au 

1. Listening to Mu - Susan Murphy Roshi, Sesshin April 2013

Meditation from the book 'Mindfulness for Women' by Vidyamala Burch and Claire Irvin. This meditation accompanies Chapter 11 ‘Less Stressed For Ever’. It is a Three Minute Breathing Space meditation.

Mindfulness for Women Track 8 Three Minute Breathing Space

This guided mindful drawing meditation is the first practice I teach on all my mindful creativity classes. It's simple, enjoyable and relaxing and can be used as a daily mindfulness practice. This meditation is suitable for you if you've never meditated or drawn before - or if you have lots of mindfulness and drawing experience.

This meditation is featured in my book, Mindfulness & The Art of Drawing: A creative path to awareness - you can find many more mindful drawing exercises and reflections there. 

Finally do come and say hello to me on Facebook: Art of Mindfulness  Instagram: @artofmindfulness or Twitter: @_wendyann - and let me know how you got on. You can share your mindful doodle using the #stoplookbreathecreate and see my own mindful creative practice on the same hashtag.

Art of Mindfulness

Guided Mindful Drawing Meditation 15 Minutes

Michael uses an old Zen tale, a troubled story about him falling in love with his wife, and quotes from Shunryu Suzuki, to describe the practice of not-knowing and not holding onto anything. He ends with a very interesting and subtle meditation instruction on breathing. Chapin Mill, New York. Recorded December 31, 2016.

Not Picking & Choosing

How to not leave your body, even when it feels untrustworthy. We can always turn to the body in pain, grief, and even in altered states of consciousness. Anxiety, compassion, and equanimity always play out in your body. Victoria, B.C. Recorded January 19, 2017.

My Body is My Teacher Now

ⓒ Louisa Tomlinson 2020 
Catch the Lightning

Soul Retrieval by Louisa Tomlinson - Recorded by Champion Fever / Steve Baker

(Recorded in Japan, February 1964)

Clarinet - Tony Scott
Koto - Shinichi Yuize 
Shakuhachi - Hozan Yamamoto

A1	 	Is Not All One	3:50
A2	 	The Murmuring Sound Of The Mountain Stream	8:05
A3	 	A Quivering Leaf, Ask The Winds	2:30
A4	 	After The Snow, The Fragrance	7:00
A5	 	To Drift Like Clouds	1:38
B1	 	Za-Zen (Meditation)	2:05
B2	 	Prajna-Paramita-Hridaya Sutra (Sutra Chant)	7:10
B3	 	Sanzen (Moment Of Truth)	6:45
B4	 	Satori (Enlightenment)	5:25

Music for Zen Meditation - Toni Scott (1965)

This is a recording of a set of singing bowls.  The root bowl is C#, the Aum tone or Earth tone.  The other bowls are harmonized with the Chakras in this scale.

These types of singing bowls have been used since ancient times in meditations and healing work.  They are traditionally made with 7 metals representing the 7 planets that the tibetan monks were aware of at the time.  The bowls produce monaural beats and harmonic overtones that affect body and mind on a deep level.  The bowl set here is based on the Earth tone.  This is also known as "Om" and is the calculated sound signature of the Earth as it travels around the sun. In Indian music this is also called the Sadja. The corresponding bowls were matched according to the Chakra system in Ayurvedic medicine.  This also corresponds roughly with the western major scale.

BUY track: https://sonicyogi.com/track/1282599/root-chakra-tibetan-singing-bowls-with-nature-sounds
http://sonicyogi.com

Tibetan Singing Bowls - C# Root Chakra Earth Tone - Relaxation and Meditation

Tibetan Singing Bowls - Chakra Set C# Earth Tone

Wendy Ann Greenhalgh is an artist, meditator and creative mindfulness teacher. She's the author of Mindfulness & the Art of Drawing: A creative path to awareness (2015) and Stop Look Breathe Create: 4 steps to mindfulness through creativity (2017)

Guided Mindful Drawing Meditation 15 Minutes

Mindful Art & Drawing - Wendy Ann Greenhalgh

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