Mindful Meditation for Duke Students
My experience with Duke students teaches me that students often feel very pressured by all their competing responsibilities. As the academic year progresses and the pressure increases, many students feel stressed. They may develop trouble concentrating, or lose their motivation for and enjoyment of their studies. They may find they have little pleasure or joy in their life at all. Fortunately, my experience with Duke students also teaches me that it’s possible for students to learn ways of reducing the pressure, creating a more satisfying and gratifying academic experience. Mindfulness meditation is one of the tools that students can use to facilitate this transformation.
Mindfulness meditation is simply a way of learning to pay attention. It is the practice of becoming more aware and engaged in every moment of your life. With this practice we learn to release our worries about our future, release our regrets about our past, and focus with a sense of calm, accepting relaxation on the present moment. As we practice this way of being in the world, we find that we gradually begin to experience more peace and joy in our lives. By practicing mindfulness meditation you can learn to see your life more clearly, and find ways to bring pleasure and interest back into your daily experience.
If you stop and pay attention for a moment, you will notice that there often is a disconnect between your body and your mind. Where is your mind when you’re taking a shower, brushing your teeth, driving to work and countless other times during the day? Your mind is probably off somewhere else- worrying, making plans, remembering some past problem, passing judgment on yourself or someone else. In this way, we go through life not even noticing the vast majority of our everyday experiences. We may only register novel or particularly unpleasant events. This approach to life can rob us of our experience of some of the best things about being alive. (Think about how wonderful a hot shower feels when you haven’t had one in awhile and therefore really pay attention to the experience.) Learning to wake up and pay attention is the starting point for reducing stress and creating an amazing variety of changes in your life.
This poem by Mary Oliver is a beautiful expression of how mindfulness might change our experience of something as routine as the rising and setting of the sun.
The Sun
anything
in your life
more wonderful
than the way the sun,
every evening,
relaxed and easy,
floats toward the horizon
and into the clouds or the hills,
or the rumpled sea,
and is gone—
and how it slides again
out of the blackness,
every morning,
on the other side of the world,
like a red flower
streaming upward on its heavenly oils,
say, on a morning in early summer,
at its perfect imperial distance—
and have you ever felt for anything
such wild love—
do you think there is anywhere, in any language,
a word billowing enough
for the pleasure
that fills you,
as the sun
reaches out,
as it warms you
as you stand there,
empty-handed—
or have you too
turned from this world—
or have you too
gone crazy
for power,
for things?
Although the formal practice of mindfulness meditation itself involves sitting or walking in a meditative state, the point of the practice is to develop the skill of paying attention to your experience as you go about the daily business of your life. An important aspect of the skill is learning to notice your thoughts, feelings, and perceptions without judgment, without automatically labeling everything as good or bad. As you practice this way of being in the world, you will find that you gradually begin to feel less pressured and stressed.
The meditation practice itself is quite simple, but paradoxically often quite hard to do. Given the pace of our society and the busyness of our lives, it can be extremely difficult to make time for something as simple as sitting and breathing. However, if you persist with the practice, you will feel your motivation grow as you notice the positive impact on your life.
To begin to learn mindfulness meditation, one needs only to begin practicing these basic instructions:
1. Find a chair, bench, or cushion upon which you can sit comfortably. If you are sitting in a chair, choose a chair that is firm and allows you to sit upright. Sit with your feet flat on the floor, your hands resting comfortably in your lap, and your back straight and strong.
2. Close your eyes, and allow your attention to focus on your breathing. Breathe naturally without trying to force or change your breath. Try to find the one place where you can best feel your breath. Some people can best feel the rising or falling of their chest or abdomen. Others more clearly can feel the air as it moves in and out of their nostrils or over the back of their throat.
3. Once you’ve identified the one place you can best feel your breath, allow your attention to gently settle there. Begin to watch that spot as you feel your breath move in and out of your body. See if you can notice the beginning and end of each inhalation and each exhalation. See if you can notice the pause between your breaths.
4. As you sit and focus on your breath, you will fairly quickly notice that your mind starts to wander. When you notice that your mind has wandered, very gently let go of whatever thoughts you are having, and bring your attention back to the breath. Try to bring a quality of warmth and compassion to your attention as you refocus on your breath. The practice of mindfulness meditation is the practice of noticing what arises, accepting without judgment whatever comes, and letting go, returning to the breath. There is no expectation that one will become so focused on the breath that the mind doesn’t wander.
Try to make time to practice these simple steps everyday. The longer you sit in practice the more quickly you will begin to experience the benefits of meditation. Initially though, you may find that you need to start with very small increments of time, like five or ten minutes. If you can find 45 minutes each day to sit, all the better. For most of us, there will be days we can sit for long periods and other days where we’re lucky to find five minutes free. On your busiest days try to at least sit down momentarily in your designated meditation chair and observe a few breaths. This will help you to stay in touch with the practice, and may help you to feel more centered during your busiest times.
There are many wonderful books written about mindfulness meditation (also known as Vipassana or insight meditation). It can be very helpful to read books about the practice as you try to implement it in your own life. Here are a few titles to start with:
1. Full Catastrophe Living by Jon-Kabat Zinn.
2. Wherever You Go, There You Are by Jon-Kabat Zinn.
3. Mindfulness in Plain English by Henepola Gunaratana.
4. Seeking the Heart of Wisdom: The Path of Insight Meditation by Joseph Goldstein and Jack Kornfield.
Mindfulness meditation itself is fairly simple, but for most people finding the discipline to pursue the practice is in fact quite challenging. You will see that practicing mindfulness requires that we completely shift the way we normally experience and think about our world. The good news is that these shifts occur slowly and gradually, and the only real work required of us is making the commitment to practice on a regular basis.
Most people find that having a group for practice and support, dramatically increases their ability to stick with meditation. Also, as you begin to practice you will naturally find you have many questions about the process. It is for these reasons that we have started our meditation group for Duke students. Please feel free to attend whenever you can, for whatever part of the hour you are free.
For more information please call Holly Rogers at 660-1000