“Meditation for the Modern World” courses are suitable for both beginning students and for more advanced practitioners.
All meditations focus on the mindfulness, ie. training the mind to reside in the present moment with spacious clarity, concentration and curiosity.
Each week a new meditation will be introduced so that students can acquire a rich resource for their home practice. There will be time for feedback in class.
Tibetan Buddha statue
Dyana explains: “The meditations will be introduced in the context of the yoga and Buddhist tradition. Meditation is understood as the state of resting in our natural mind. All the techniques and tools of our training have this focus in mind. Calming, purification and insight are the main practices we will be engaged in. These practices free the mind from its relentless thinking, remembering, worrying and planning. They enable us to experience our natural state and it qualities of luminosity, intelligence and loving kindness.”
Meditation is a journey of transformation, its starts to transform the way we are in the world. When the connection to the heart is established, the radiant qualities of our true nature start to reshape our values and activities. Life becomes fresh, open and complete.
Guru Rinpoche statue
Meditations used in the courses are drawn from the rich mandala of the yoga tradition and will include:
- Shamatha practices for calming the mind
- Vipassana practices for exploring the nature of mind
- Practices for exploring difficult emotions
- Body awareness based practices for recognising the body as the vehicle for meditation.
- Earth based practices to re-establish our connection to the earth
- Meditations on the elements –earth, water, fire, air and space.
- Meditations of the brahma viharas – loving kindness, compassion, sympathetic joy and equanimity
- Meditations on the pranas – prana, apana, udana, samana, vyana.
- Hindrances to meditation and the factors of the enlightened mind.
- Creative visualisation for tapping into our inner resources.
- Pranayama for balancing the energies and calming the mind.
Dayana says: “Meditation is not an exercise to escape from life and from our unruly minds, a temporary distraction from the turmoil of our modern lives; it is a journey into the heart of ourselves, a quest of self discovery, a way to reap the riches that belong to us as our birthright, eg happiness, joy, wisdom, kindness. To understand this precious journey, we need teachings and support.”
For more information about these meditation course contact Dyana: dyanawells@gmail.com
