Mindfulness

Full-Episode-Oprah-and-Jon-Kabat-Zinn-Video
Live streamed on 12th April 2015

JON KABAT – ZINN – Interview on SupersoulSunday live streamed on 12 April 201

“Oprah and Jon Kabat-Zinn, PhD, offer an introduction to mindfulness meditation and the benefits it can bring to our everyday lives”


Read more: http://www.oprah.com/own-super-soul-sunday/Full-Episode-Oprah-and-Jon-Kabat-Zinn-Video#ixzz3Xo5WBF2L5

He entered Harvard Univerity at age 16. 

He heals chronic illness through practice of mindfulness.  Book  – Mindfulness for beginners  is his latest book.

He sees mindfulness as a love affair with life, with reality and imaginative, with the beauty of your own being and with the world. 

What does it mean to cultivate mindfulness?

It is a way of having a relationship with your life, as we are alive for only this moment, the past is memory and over and the future has not come.  Most time we obsess about the future and think about the past.  So mindfulness is about paying attention to the present moment and the awareness that comes with paying attention.  It is purposeful.  It is a form of meditation.  It is an easier glide path.  Most people want to be in the present moment, and they think they are just breathing and nothing is not happening.  Yet they are present which is equal to awareness.  The simple way to think of it is it is just a simple practice of talking and being present at the moment and being awake and willing to be in that moment t the degree that they can. 

E.g when cooking just stir the pot. It has indefinite depth  in it.  The more you let that run in you the more it transform who you are.  To be mindful means being fully in the moment of now, in  awareness. (eg knowing that you are having a conversation).

Your kids know when you are present and there is no greater gift than being there for them.  Parent pay lip service and they know that and can feel when you are present and there is no greater gift than being present for them. 

PRACTICING MINDFULNESS

To calm down take deep breath – break

Meditation is not a weird thing, there are many misinterpretation about what it is eg becoming a zombie, cabbage.    It is about being your-self and knowing something about who you are.  You can be yourself 24 hours.  Helps you know how you are out of your way most times.

 

It about knowing how we are out of our way as we take life for granted.  During the hunter gathering there was more mindfulness. 

Distruction is due to the ever increasing pace of everything.

How do we balance out being and doing?.    Mindness is about finding your own way and finindig your own longing, Fnd your own way, listen to your heart and to your yearning.  What we are trying to do if life matters, it is more than you can and more than you can think.  Thinking only takes us a certain far and the body is left out in a certain position with lack of wisdom.  The world is getting busier and compounded by stuff and the only way to get out of it is to get mindfulness.

He gives people homework and tell them mindfulness is a practice eg:

Mindfulness is a practice.  Eg when you are in the shower check  if you are in the shower – feeling in the water etc or you are in the future or in the past.  The more you realize am in the shower and I am in the shower it takes a fraction to get your awareness.  If you are worried about how things are going to be that day it is ok knowing is enough, it is awareness and laugh about it. 

How does mindfulness help your pain.

It empowers you to investigate your experiences in your own mind and get to know the emotional experience of it.  It is finding if there is something one can do for themselves.  It is finding out where the pain is and welcoming it as much as you don’t want to. It is knowing that you rare and are more than your pain and that you can you can leave with it or accommodate it.

It relieves stress

Stress is wanting the current moment to be something which is not.  The moment can only be what it is now.  Take a break and accept the moment as it is.  People don’t think not being accepted  mean – you can either stress yourself out.  Listen how it works in your body  or think -  even if you are late you can relax as it is not the end of the world.  Accept and do not resign to the situation, and find relieve.  It is wisdom, there is stillness as oopposed to being hyper about all.  This is what we crave and we are yearning for a moment of well being.  

We are all seeking to be at that peaceful place which you can be 24/7 where ever you are.  As long as you are breathing, there is more right with you than what is wrong.  As long as you are living there is more right with you than is wrong with you.  Lett he doctors worry .  Pour energy to what is right with you.  Instead of sustaining it for a day capture it brief moment per day.  When picking your child from school be present there.  If cooking be there and cook.   So that you are with who you are and life becomes a meditation.

If you miss looking into your child in the eyes and if you miss it who will you blame it for?.  The perfect moment is this one.  Do what you have to do now as you might miss it as one time we will die.

If you start to befriend your mind and the metaphor  of the ocean it is always wavy or harricanne or waves, strorm but it you drop down the ocean.  It is calm.  Drop down underneath your anger, anxiety and you find the alm and it is what is connected to all of us.  Drop down beneath.   It invites compassion,

Most of the time we are out of our awareness and heart,

Most times we think we know who we are but we don’t.  How much is the story about how your heart or at its happiest is. We write how unhappy we are , how much money we need it may be true. But there is not story about how beautiful, radient we are.  Are we designed to judge ourselves negatively.  It has to do with our upbrining and education.  We are now taught about how to be but about what we get and acuire.  And hence we get into anxiety.  Depressive rumination and deeps you into a dark nothing and it becomes a pattern and you can write yourself a restraining order when you touch them in awareness and stop them, when you realize you are not your thoughts but you are the awareness of your thoughts.

source:

www.oprah.com/ -livestreamed 12 April 2015

Curiosity

Brian Grazer – Hollywood producer interviewed by Oprah

 Oscar winning author in science, business, and art.  A curious mind- book – secret to a happier life.  How can we tap into our curiosity?

 Eavesdropping – he heard when he graduated college, what will I do and he was last; he majored in Psychology and was positive he would not get into law school.  He was confused but he heard two graduates talking out of his window and heard the easiest job was at Warner brothers and he called and got the jobs which were to deliver the Warner papers.   He had to hand the paper to the person directly and the assistants just believed it.

He started meeting people who were in the show business and he met Wassermann and he was given the look don’t waste my time kid Wassermann, who created pictures in mca.

You have to own your own idea.  You have to have connections.  The only chance he had was to create anything from an idea.  He was given a pencil and paper and told that was all he needed to do.
 He enjoys drawing.

 How can curiosity make us more adventurous?  It has done so for his life as he grew up in a little neighborhood and didn’t know much but he used his curiosity to study and meet new people and it’s been a tool of courage, self development in his movies.

 Hs movies are his reflection of his insecurities and he overcomes through learning some subjects that other people don’t know e.g. food, fashion.  So his curiosity has all rounded his life.  Curiosity can make us more powerful not the one of shouting and being aggressive.  It is real power as one can come in contact with people who are experts in other things.  Everyone you meet is an opportunity of curiosity finding.  In every situation.  As it adds ones more purpose in life.

 Recharge and revamp when you meet a NO as he did for the splash movie.  He shifted how he told the story.  He tried to meet a new person every day.  He saw Ron Howard; He turned his curiosity into a discipline by deciding he would meet a new person every day.  It’s a religious practice and his goal.  It brought meaning to his life as the new person shared their experiences.   He told him he wanted to be a movie director.  Howard was another curiosity and he walked into him.  Howard wanted to be a director and he wanted to be a producer so they stuck together.

 “Empire” addresses everyone.  It was explosive and had an awe factor.
 Curiosity informed his work in that his ideas and empathy are important but if you can’t change it into energy then you are not communicating.  He used the information, curate the information.  He had 8over 500 curiosity conversations.  His curiosity conversations were just because he was interested.   Daryl’s conversation showed his that power can be austhestistic.   We are all trapped in our own way of thinking, relating with people that we think the world is the way we see it.  That can be dangerous and is boring.  You only see your point of view and you think it is the definitive point of view and not when you meet people out of your conform zone and you know it is not.

 You are born curious no matter how much of it you have lost.  You can regain your curiosity by taking nothing for granted e.g. your health, people.  This is how you can become more curious.

 We are here to find out why we are here.

He defines God as a governing force that is someplace out there and you are at peace if you are connected to the source other than yourself interests.

 How does he stay in the light in all the darkness in the world?

He acts within the sphere of his reach.  Treating all equal with love, it’s a butterfly effect that extends to other people.

 His purpose is to let people know that redemption is possible.  Even if is to reach the empire.


reference:

www.oprah.com - livestreamed on 19 April 2015

"non-verbatim due to realtime transcript"