Introduction to Mindfulness - Dean Amory

Yoga
Orla introduced yoga exercises and spoke about their value in helping
us connect with our bodies and use this to ground ourselves in the
present moment.
She took the group through a range of Hatha yoga exercises that
involved standing and lying down.
She brought people through the exercises at a fairly swift pace and
this appealed a lot to the group. When we reviewed their experiences
afterwards, it became even clearer that the yoga had engaged their
attention completely and that it had made them very aware of their
breathing and bodily experience.
- “I was concentrating fully on the exercises”
- “I noticed I was weaker on the left side”
- “When you focus on breathing, inhale into it, you can go more. I
stopped using my brain, just breathed through it.”
- “I really enjoyed it. It’s better than the gym. I had been doing Reiki
but the teacher was ‘getting in contact with the spiritual world’ so I
said stop!”
- “The last breathing exercise we did was the first time that I’ve ever
stayed with meditation. Last week I was thinking about sea gulls, I
was in space. Why? Suppose I’m doing a lot of surrender in my life
at the moment. Yoga took my mind off why I was here, but doing
it mindfully helped… yeah, that helped. It’s starting to come
together for me”
Awareness of Automatic Thoughts exercise
To introduce automatic negative thoughts and their power in shaping
our perceptions of the world and how we react to everyday events,
we had the group imagine the following scenario:
192