Body scan 20 mins

Basic meditation focusing on breath and then sound

Basic Meditation: breath and sounds

This is a led meditation practice, as taught at the City Lit and the West London Buddhist Centre.

I encountered this meditation for the first time when I was finding life a little stressful, and there is no doubt that it has helped me immensely since 2007. I would heartily recommend anyone to have a go.

You could start right now, but you might like to read this introduction that Jinananda once wrote:

The first thing is to find a quality of stillness.  It is possible to move or walk with this quality of stillness, but in this practice, you can start to develop it by being physically still.  You can move during the practice, but the invitation of the practice is not to fidget. 

If you need to, you can lie down to do the practice, but if you can, you should sit up, in a chair or on the floor, either kneeling astride cushions, or if sitting cross-legged, sitting high enough on cushions so that the knees are lower than the hips. 

The aim of the practice is to cultivate a concentrated appreciative attention to our moment-by-moment experience of the breathing process. 

There are four stages, or approaches, to the practice.  Each of these stages represents a slightly different way of being aware of the breath, of being aware of in the breath.  Starting with the easiest, and working towards the stage requiring the most delicate focus of concentration. 

Mindfulness is not about closing down or cutting off our thinking, it is not an exercise in fixing or forcing the attention.  It simply provides our thinking with something to come back to when it becomes aware of what it is doing. 

We are being mindful at the very moment that we realize that our mind has been all over the place.  Coming home to the breath, we are coming home to ourselves.  Without trying to stop the mind doing what it wants to do, we are centring the mind, settling it.

You can find other meditations of Jinananda's on jonfrewin's soundcloud page.

A guided Mindfulness of Breathing meditation for beginners, by Jinananda

These programs constitute the core practice curriculum of mindfulness-based stress reduction (MBSR) in the Stress Reduction Clinic. They are meant to be used in conjunction with Dr. Kabat-Zinn's book, Full Catastrophe Living: Using the Wisdom of Your Body and Mind to Face Stress, Pain and Illness. https://www.betterlisten.com/collections/jon-kabat-zinn/products/guided-mindfulness-practices-with-jon-kabat-zinn-series-2

Guided Mindfulness Practices with Jon Kabat-Zinn- Series 2 Preview

Kabat-Zinn makes it clear that the essence of meditative practice lies in how one lives one's life from moment to moment, in all its aspects and relationships, and not merely in formal meditative practices. This program offers an experience of mindfulness that is entirely congruent with our lives in the 21st Century: it is effective, portable, and easily adopted -- a perfect antidote to life in the fast lane. The full download and CE credits are available at https://www.betterlisten.com/collections/continuing-education-credits/products/mindfulness-meditation-in-everyday-life-exercises-and-meditations

Mindfulness Meditation In Everyday Life

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Mindfulness Meditation In Everday Life & Exercises and Meditations Preview

Self - Compassion break with Dr. Kristin Neff

Three minutes breathing space

This is Alistair Appleton's guided meditation 'Polyvagal Tuning' based on the neuroscientific work of Stephen Porges. It's 25 minutes long.

Mindfulness Meditation In Everday Life & Exercises and Meditations Preview

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