Meditation and Mindfulness

We argue that a denatured mindfulness divorced from

its soteriological context reduces it to a self-help technique that is easily misappropriated for reproducing corporate and

institutional power, employee pacification, and maintenance of toxic organizational cultures.

Intensive meditation, even after only one day, can also affect gene regulation in your brain through similar mechanisms. Attending a monthlong meditation retreat reduces the expression of genes that affect inflammation, and experienced meditators can reduce inflammatory genes after just one day of intensive mediation.

Contemplative dyads, in particular, represent a deep interpersonal meditative practice carried out in pairs with a witness who engages in active listening while the other person reflects on a question or topic.

In the case of a monk who has attained the cessation of perception and feeling ... his vitality is not exhausted, his heat has not subsided, and his faculties are exceptionally clear.

We’re following instructions that weren’t meant for us, weren’t taking our phenomenology into account, weren’t a good fit for the composition of modern western bodyminds.

the most fruitful exercise seems to be when you’re able to rest your awareness in your torso (especially the gut and the heart) and simply stay there. Be with the gut. Be with the heart. Allow whatever wants to happen to happen.

in the end, your own soma is the best and only resource. Anything and everything else is just helpful ways of getting you in touch with the soma, and putting you in a position to listen clearly and without interference to what it’s telling you.

In a phrase: somatic meditation offers depth. Spending time in the body without agenda or expectation, listening to it, sensing it, letting go of the habit of experiencing it as “it”—there’s something in the experience that builds over time, it grounds you into a firmness of being.

Tactical Mindfulness allows me to pick out attributes that I want to develop in my life—like focus, equanimity, or compassion—and intentionally build my meditation practice around them. This helps me move through my life more effectively and compound progress over time.