Amita Schmidt is a licensed clinical social worker with a focus on trauma and meditation. She was the resident teacher at Insight Meditation Society from 2000-2006. She is the author of "Dipa Ma: The Life and Legacy of a Buddhist Master." She also has practiced with Adyashanti, a teacher of non-dual awareness.
Questions and Answers: 1)Why meditation can make your memory worse.
2) Why does practice create sadness sometimes? 3) Dementia and true nature. 4) Some reflections on chronic illness
Thinking itself is actually just a part, a protector part, and this meditation will help you have compassion for this part. The meditation will also give you insight into your thinking and what it's true purpose is. Knowing this will help you on the meditation cushion and in your daily life practice.
Instead of trying to bring mindfulness to emotions from the inside out, this meditation will help you develop awareness of the calm outside of emotions (eg. the outside of the storm). Some people have found this tool to be very useful in decreasing anxiety, overwhelm, and fear.
The first 3 minutes explains about Kuan Yin, and the practice of Compassion as a listening and bearing witness to suffering. Then there is a short and simple, 5 min Kuan Yin meditation, on listening with the ear of the heart.
This is a short, guided meditation exercise in extending forgiveness to a part of yourself. The meditation is designed for healing, and you can practice it as many times as needed, for different ages/parts of yourself.
A brief, additional comment to a student, who mentioned that my suggestion of a practice of "listening to all thoughts like they were a birdsong" was helpful to her.
A dharma talk about how to strengthen your spiritual resilience/immunity. This talk introduces the idea of dharma micro-dosing and includes some practices to do on a daily basis.
A daily practice to move out of the worries of your mind. This heart reset reminds you what's true verses what you fear. The heart perspective is quite different than the mind, and this meditation will connect you with this wisdom.
This meditation will help you connect with what is here now that outlasts death. Once you know and feel this, you can use it as an orienting principle to feel more calm and relaxed no matter what happens in your life.
