7ğPqıÃqPØØŎį +Ãæ®Ù 36 Exercises, Insights and Tips For Everyday Mindfulness It with extreme pleasure that I pass along this book to you. Please use it as a source for inspiration. As you were my inspiration for creating this. I would also like to express my gratitude to each of the wonderful people that contributed. If you find anything that bugs you (misspellings, formatting, grammatical issues, etc) please email your thoughts to [email protected]. Nothing to big or small. This is a work in progress and your feedback will be helpful. Arranged by Brandon Park of unwobble.com in partnership with MindPodNetwork.com Version 1.2 Original Released February 17, 2017 Version 1.3 Released May 14, 2017 © 2017 Whobody LLC. All rights reserved. All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used Jeff Agostinelli Sean Dunne 1 How to turn a nervous habit into an 51 Simple choices can get you started. exercise in mindfulness. Cory Allen Melissa Eisler 6 Two exercises to help you overcome 54 The Art of Mindful Listening suffering or stress. Toni Bernhard Elisha Goldstein 10 Using Mindfulness as a Refuge for Your 60 Three Things To Do When You Get Home Troubles. Tara Brach Trudy Goodman Kornfield 16 Waking Up From Reactivity: Three 63 Gentle advice for when it feels like you Invitations to Remembering Truth have too much going on to be mindful. Mirabai Bush Chris Grosso 21 Frustration and Impatience at Work 67 Hey, Asshole Jamie Catto Andy Hix 27 Like Me! 76 Making Peace With Yourself Lily Cushman Jack Kornfield 30 How Mindfulness Can “Bridge the Gap” 80 Transforming Sorrow Into Compassion Giovanni Dientsmann Noah Lampert 33 Why Meditation Matters 85 Lucid Dreaming and Mindfulness Michael Donovan Kelly MacLean 41 Can there be mindfulness without 89 Make Love To Your World meditation? Raghu Markus & Rameshwar David Silver 94 Das Lytton 164 Finding Abiding Mindfulness At The Heart Of Mindfulness Thomas Miller Biet Simkin 101 Two exercises to help you overcome 175 The phases you must pass through to get suffering or stress. to a state of completion. David Nichtern Lama Surya Das Mindful of the Pie Hole Remembering To Remember Or Tibetan 107 177 Mindfulness Training & The Practice of Presencing Jared Perry Steve Taylor An Artist’s Guide To Sacred Space The Power of Acceptance: How an 119 186 Attitude of Acceptance Can Transform Your Life George Pitagorsky Duncan Trussell 125 Mindfulness At Work 194 Duncan’s spiritual practice Nina Rao Lama Tsomo 128 “Call to Prayer” 198 The Ocean of Awareness Simon Robinson Yoshino 134 What Is Mindfulness To Me? 202 Curating Your World Sharon Salzberg Eric Zimmer 150 Everyday Mindfulness: The Art Of 207 How to beat rumination when basic Beginning Again mindfulness doesn’t seem like enough. Bill Scheinman 156 Bringing Mindfulness To Our Conversations Jeff Agostinelli (cont’d) Jeff Agostinelli This tip I’m about to share will help you become present by being mindful. I’ve found personally and professionally as a coach that we all have habits that reflect our emotional and mental state. Habits, and in this case, “nervous” behaviors, could be anything from biting your nails to tapping your leg, to compulsively checking your smartphone, to playing with your beard or hair (at least this was/is mine :) The reality of the situation is that when we can be more mindful and queue up meditative like states, we can make quick decisions better because we feel more centered, and when you can show up more fully in the moment, people feel it. This is a way to pinpoint your nervous habits and will give you an idea of where you are mentally and emotionally. Here is how this went for me… I have a beard. I started to notice I would nervously stroke my beard when I was anxious, overwhelmed, or feeling a variety of things. I unwobble.com 1 Jeff Agostinelli (cont’d) also noticed I could become aware of what I was doing and slow it down. First… Pinpoint a nervous habit. It could be biting your nails, or if you have a beard, it could be playing with your beard :) The goal here is not to STOP the action, but like pain or any other physical manifestation of a mental or emotional state, to gather enough information to be able to come to center. So… you are going to still do the thing, but do it consciously, slow it down. As you start to slow down the behavior, just tune into your body. Do you feel any tension? Are you holding your head a certain way? Is your breathing shallow? When you can start to unravel the chain of habits and sensations, you start to become aware, and “in tune” with whatever is going on internally. How do you know you are “doing it right”? Simple… Your breathing will likely deepen, and most of all, you’ll start to feel better. Here is my beard example in a little more detail... I noticed when I was playing with my beard that my thoughts were racing. So the first thing I did was move from playing with my beard with my fingers to actually unwobble.com 2 Jeff Agostinelli (cont’d) stroking my beard full palm style, with my 4 fingers on one side of my face and my thumb on the other. This brought my awareness to the fact that my thoughts were racing and it was time to slow down. With a little practice, this nervous habit became an exercise in mindfulness. You can do this with any type of reactionary behavior… ● Swearing at people that cut you off driving ● Reprimanding your kids ● Just general complaining ● Biting your nails ● Compulsively checking social media, email, or other digital media ● Any excessive internal dialogue or self talk ● Overanalyzing ● Trying to control situations and circumstances Basically you are going to do the thing you were doing by habit or “unconsciously” and start to do it mindfully. Slow it down to the point where you become aware that you are doing it. Then, if you choose, change it. unwobble.com 3 Jeff Agostinelli (cont’d) So what’s the point? Energy always seeks an outlet. Excessive mental and emotional energy are just trying to find a way out. Practicing mindfulness in this way will start to let you know where you are triggered and find areas in your life that you choose to change. In any change, the first step is becoming aware of the thing. Often times, just connecting with the thing you are doing less than mindfully can start to shift once you start practicing it mindfully. unwobble.com 4 Jeff Agostinelli (cont’d) Jeff Agostinelli is a Life Coach, personal development strategist, and host of The Next Level Podcast. His mission is to help individuals realize their own power to transform their lives and live a life by design. Jeff has also written A Beginners Guide to Overcoming Anxiety. jeffagostinelli.com unwobble.com 5 Cory Allen (cont’d) Cory Allen Our consciousness is like a river. There are many fragments of thoughts flowing through our mind at any given time. It’s easy to get swept away in the current of these thoughts. Our ego gets drawn in and entangled in this river. We’ll ruminate on thoughts that feed into our fear and anxiety or ego gratification. Our mind is always looking for something to do and sometimes it decides to chew on itself. This distraction takes us away from the present and causes us to respond to life in ways we normally would not. However, we can learn to be mindful of our thoughts as they come and simply acknowledge them and let them go. As this practice grows, so does our self-awareness. With greater self-awareness comes deeper vision. This vision allows us to see more about ourselves. We can then sit on the rocks and watch the river flow by, instead of getting thrown around in the current. Visualization Practice Wherever you are, whether it’s at home, at work, on a plane, or in bed and you find yourself feeling stress or negative emotion: Simply pause. unwobble.com 6 Cory Allen (cont’d) Close your eyes, and begin to relax your body. Check in on each part of your body. Relax your face, neck, shoulders, arms, hands, legs, feet, and feel your body resting on a foundation. With your eyes closed, direct your attention towards your breath. Start counting your breaths. See if you can count to five. Then, try ten. Visualize the inside of your body as being hollow, almost like your skin is a shell, and there’s only negative space inside. Now, imagine your negative emotion as jagged little edges growing inside of your body like crystals in a cave. As you inhale, visualize yourself breathing in a green smoke, and see it fill your body. Visualize that green smoke softening the sharp edges inside of you. As you exhale, see the pieces breaking free, being carried off by the green smoke as it flows out with your breath. Now, take one more inhale, and as you exhale, picture a lotus blossoming where your heart is, and a flame shooting from your chest, out into the universe. Any time you’re suffering, you can repeat this practice. Contextualizing our negative emotions or trauma in the form of symbolic imagery is a powerful tool. It isolates a single thought or emotion, and allows us to work with it directly in a conscious way. unwobble.com 7 Cory Allen (cont’d) Breath Alarm A few years ago, a dear friend of mine was finishing his PhD in Molecular Biology.