Kim Eng Method

This method combines an element of Qigong with mindfulness. I think if you have trouble with traditional meditation, the body involvement could be helpful.

The basic instructions are as follows:

• Sit or stand with your palms in front of you, facing each other but not touching
• Feet approx hip width apart
• Breathe as you would in meditation – slow inhalations and exhalations, following the breath
• As you inhale, move your palms away from each other
• As you exhale, move your palms toward each other
• You should feel the chi between them
• Imagine breathing through every cell and pore in your body

Rick Hanson Method

Rick Hanson, PHD and psychologist studies and writes about the brain and its relation to happiness, mindfulness etc.

He explains why this kind of breathing practice helps – it activates and stimulates lateral networks in the brain which give you more of a sense of the whole and less of a sense of self.

Here are a couple of audio-only versions of the practice:

• https://insighttimer.com/rickhanson/guided-meditations/whole-body-breathing
• https://www.rickhanson.net/guided-meditation-mindfulness-body-whole/

The general guidelines are as follows:

• Be aware of the sensations of breathing in your chest as a whole
• Imagine receiving the breath
• Expand your awareness of the breathing sensations to larger parts of the body

• Include the diaphragm along with the chest
• Include the lungs
• Include the belly
• Include the back
• Include all sensations of the torso while breathing, together at once as a unified experience
• Include the throat
• Include the nose, lips, face
• Include the neck and head, shoulders and arms
• Include the hips, lower back
• Include the legs
• Be aware of the body as a whole, breathing

You may notice that the sense of self falls away but you recognize that you continue going on being a person.

“Most people think that happiness is about gaining something, but it’s not. It’s all about getting rid of the darkness you accumulate.”

What could you let go of that would make you happier?

• A victim mentality?
• Criticism of others?
• A need to be right?
• A negative outlook?

Find the blocks in your thinking and conditioning that keep you in your current state, and work on letting go of them. The ego will try to make you feel that you shouldn’t let them go, that you need them. But consciousness doesn’t need them, they are only getting in the way.

The usual flow is:

1. Recognize negative thought
2. Replace with positive thought
3. Repeat positive thought
4. Profit!

If you’ve ever tried to use this technique you have probably encountered mixed results. It’s just not that easy to transform a negative mindset to a positive one.

I personally sometimes had the sensation of being a “fraud” when trying to focus on positive thoughts. The gap between what I was feeling at that moment, and what I was trying, or supposed, to feel, seemed insurmountable.

The reason for this was quite simply explained by Eckhart Tolle in this video mini-series about conscious manifestation.

Thoughts and emotions are of course closely intertwined and feed each other. We have to recognize their connection to transform them.

Basically, he describes 4 steps:

1. Awareness of the negative thoughts and emotions.
2. Recognition of the futility and destructive nature of the negativity, so that we want to let it go.
3. Awareness of these sensations in the present moment.
4. Ultimately replacing them with a positive thought, but not immediately.

The key point is that, even if you recognize and stop the negative thought, the negative emotion with all its power and energy, is still there.

This is why you can’t simply replace a negative thought with a positive thought. You’re fighting the reality and power of the underlying emotion. This has to be neutralized, or at least disengaged first, (steps 2 and 3 above) before you can move to the positive state.

This is reminiscent of Abraham Hicks’ emotional guidance scale which recognizes that you can’t leap from the bottom to the top in one step. You just try to move a little up the scale at a time:

1. Joy/Appreciation/Empowered/Freedom/Love
2. Passion
3. Enthusiasm/Eagerness/Happiness
4. Positive Expectation/Belief
5. Optimism
6. Hopefulness
7. Contentment
8. Boredom
9. Pessimism
10. .Frustration/Irritation/Impatience
11. Overwhelment
12. Disappointment
13. Doubt
14. Worry
15. Blame
16. Discouragement
17. Anger
18. Revenge
19. Hatred/Rage
20. Jealousy
21. Insecurity/Guilt/Unworthiness
22. Fear/Grief/Depression/Despair/Powerlessness

What have your experiences been in trying to manage your negative thoughts, and think positively?

When you forget your own scheming,
happiness will come to you from your spiritual guide.
When you forget your self,
you are remembered by God.

When you have become His slave,
only then are you set free.

Do not be daunted by the enormity of the world’s grief. Do justly, now. Love mercy, now. Walk humbly now. You are not obligated to complete the work, but neither are you free to abandon it. ~ The Talmud

This one lands pretty well with me because I am often daunted by how screwed the world seems to be and how little I can do about it. In fact, that thought is paralyzing and keeps me from doing anything, and often, from allowing myself to take in the sadness of some things.

This quote reminds me that we have small opportunities each day to be, at the very least, kind to other people.

In this video he explains how simply focusing on a positive thought or experience for 15 seconds or more can help create beneficial pathways in the brain:

Goals, which are inherently future-centered, can make you painfully aware of the gap in reality between your current state and where you want to be. That can lead to feeling even more discontented with the current moment, which is no way to go about life!  The trap is that you can end up feeling that you’ll only be happy when you’ve achieved x, y and z, and therefore, you stop being happy now.

For some people, discontent may be a motivator, but it doesn’t have to be. You can still achieve things and work toward different outcomes while remaining present, mindful, and at the very least, content.

Mostly we have goals because we think they will make us happier, more free etc. You know, “I’ll be free when I make x amount of money per year”; “I’ll be happy when I get a promotion”, and so on. This type of thinking implies that where we are right now is not good enough. So the more you think of your goal, the more annoyed you become with the present.

So I think the key is realizing that everything is now.  That in this present moment, you can choose to feel happy, liberated etc, no matter your life circumstances. In one of his audio programs,(I think it’s Living The Liberated Life)  Eckhart Tolle says that the quickest way out of your current situation is to actually more fully and deeply present to it, to bring a new consciousness to it. You won’t get trapped in this problematic moment, but rather you will connect with a deeper power and be able to transform the circumstance. As you think about your goals, you have to see and feel yourself living that reality as if it were now. If you are always striving for something, the reality of having it will always seem elusive. Having determined what future outcome you would like, and what steps you can take that will help you get there, you must then take those actions, but with mindfulness and presence, so that they are infused with real power.

Do you find goals helpful? Or distracting? How do you balance present moment happiness with creating change for the future?

Useful reading:
Illuminated Mind – Do Your Goals Improve The Present?

Our motivation can be to awaken and cultivate beautiful qualities of the heart and mind—love, peace, courage, compassion, insight, understanding, the pursuit of the truth and liberation. Developing these qualities does not need to be for oneself. Sometimes my primary motivation to practice has been not for my own sake but for other people. In fact, I believe that if you do it only for yourself, you are unlikely to sustain your motivation over many years. A significant way to fuel meditation practice is to do it with the wish that it will somehow benefit others as well as yourself.

There are long-term and short-term motivations. Experiences of realization may be worthy long-term goals, but in the short term it can be useful to have modest aims such as cultivating small but noticeable improvements in concentration, nondistraction, compassion, or patience, as well as small, immediate movements toward letting go and experiencing freedom. I have found there is a beautiful way in which practicing with immediate, realistic goals allows for a steady maturing into some of the more developed areas of meditation practice.

Read the full article here

For a long time I think I was under the impression that happiness meant that everything in your life was perfect. You had the right job, a comfortable amount of money, friends, a partner etc etc.  So naturally, happiness felt like an elusive concept. Or like somehow I was doing it ‘wrong.’ Now I realize that perfection is not the goal, or the point. In fact if you stop looking for everything to be perfect I think you will find more contentment – a general ‘ok-ness’ with the way things are.

I think that everyone has a different baseline for what happiness means and feels like for them. I think we have a natural pre-disposition to a certain level of happiness, or lack thereof, which constitutes a comfort zone, regardless of whether or not we’re truly happy.  As with many other personality traits, this is probably mostly conditioned by family, society etc. This is not to forego responsibility, but more to realize that our default mood or level of happiness is not intrinsic to our nature, but just like anything else, we can work with what we’ve been given. Like other of our thought patterns, I think happiness must be cultivated and practiced.

What does happiness feel like?

For me this is a chicken/egg scenario. When I’m more content I have less negative thoughts and judgments. When I have less negative thoughts the world seems a little better, brighter, kinder, lighter.  Is the contentment causing the change in thought patterns, or vice versa?  I can’t say, but I know that when these moments happen I know that nothing in reality has actually changed – only my outlook has changed. I like to refer to this as feeling moments of happiness for no particular reason. If you are struggling with being happy, liberating yourself from the notion that things in your life must be a certain way for you to be happy, is perhaps the biggest step to take.

Let me know in the comments what happiness means to you? Are you happy? Does it come naturally or is it a learned habit?