How Meditation and Mindfulness Work Together.

Mindfulness (attention) and Meditation (awareness) come together to align our outer space - Life and all that is happening in time - with inner space - the compassionate YOU that you have always been. Meditation is included in the practice of Mindfulness and Mindfulness is inclusive in the practice of Meditation.

Meditation is the science of training the mind to pay attention. As an objective, it is the deliberate practice that gets us out of our heads and free from the grip of thoughts, and into the body - to rest. In this way it’s ‘non-doing’ - listening to the available rhythm of breath, feeling the gravity of experience as a whole. It’s spiritual plyometrics training the muscle of attention.

Meditation is practiced in many ways - through the Breath, Mantras, Guided Visualization & Movement (including dancing and other modes). It is integral to the Progressive Practice which inquires into the direct nature of this experience.

In contrast, Mindfulness is a practice of compassionate and intentional awareness in everyday ways with all of life - observing and appreciating life from inner space and responding to life in ways that support values and needs through gratitude and acceptance; it offers us the skills to address the way life feels and the relationships we form, with ‘self’, community and the natural world.

In this way, Mindfulness allows us to wake up from the autopilot that often highjacks our feelings, thoughts, emotions and beliefs. It helps to put the power back in our hands by training the mind to pay attention to the present moment, to not get caught up in limiting beliefs and habits, and to respond to life in ways that you can trust and which feel real, authentic.

Mindfulness is not a religion, a panacea or a magic pill. It is a contemplative practice - cultivating inner stillness, and direct awareness of experience. It is a curriculum - a training - designed not to make us happier, but to radically shift our sense of self and perception of the world.

The fact that so many Wisdom traditions — religious and secular, spiritual and philosophical — cultivate these fundamental practices of compassion and awareness, speaks to our shared human experience. It’s is known by many names: The Tao, Presence, Loving Awareness, Chi, Shakti, Prana, Persistent Non-Symbolic Experience, Consciousness, the Zone, Awakening, God .

Indeed! It is the very nature of Being Human to search for a word to describe this expansive feeling of Love, Happiness & Freedom. What all languages are pointing toward, is integral to Identity, and to the Meaning and Purpose of Being Alive.