Into the Wind: Meditations on Mindfulness, Faith, and Depression
Photographs and essays, with prayers and scripture intermingled, address many of the symptoms of depression, giving hope to those who suffer in the darkness of this devastating illness. Family members and friends of those living with this mental illness may also gain greater understanding of the pain their loved one is experiencing. Read more Read less.
Product description Product Description Pamela Olson is a former school counselor and ELCA Lutheran with an interest in ministry to and with those living with a mental illness. Kindle Edition File Size: Expectancy Press 8 May Sold by: Share your thoughts with other customers. Two regions of the brain are responsible for depression, anger, stress and anxiety: The left prefrontal cortex, on the other hand, is associated with feelings of peace, happiness, self-awareness and positivity.
This region is activated in the brains of consistent meditators. Clinical studies have also linked production of dopamine with meditation. Dopamine is the neurotransmitter that helps create feelings of pleasure and reward just like chocolate, but without the calories. Meditation is believed to influence the sympathetic nervous system, keeping blood pressure, respiration and heart rate in check.
When poorly controlled, these are the physical parameters that go hand in hand with feelings of stress and anxiety. And science concurs that many forms of meditation help reduce stress , starting with mindfulness, as practiced in Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction for example, and Transcendental Meditation, as well as relaxation meditation, guided meditations, walking meditation and more. Trinlay Rinpoche , a scholar and meditation expert who teaches all over the world, says that meditation is the best way to take care of your self: Meditation not only makes our lives more meaningful, it also offers us a natural healing mechanism.
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Many ailments begin with an imbalanced or stressed mind and develop in susceptible parts of the body. Guided meditation for healing is a great way to release the stress that accumulates in the mind and the tensions that build up in the body. One of the reasons that guided meditation is particularly effective is that you can just relax and enjoy it. I slept as never before, a stone on the river bed, nothing between me and the white fire of the stars but my thoughts, and they floated light as moths among the branches of the perfect trees. All night I heard the small kingdoms breathing around me, the insects, and the birds who do their work in the darkness.
All night I rose and fell, as if in water, grappling with a luminous doom. By morning I had vanished at least a dozen times into something better. When your eyes are tired the world is tired also. When your vision has gone no part of the world can find you. Time to go into the dark where the night has eyes to recognize its own. There you can be sure you are not beyond love. The dark will be your womb tonight. The night will give you a horizon further than you can see.
Poetry & Other Readings We Use in the MBSR Classes
You must learn one thing. The world was made to be free in. Give up all the other worlds except the one to which you belong. Sometimes it takes darkness and the sweet confinement of your aloneness to learn anything or anyone that does not bring you alive is too small for you.
As the story goes, there was once a farmer and his only son in the days just before the Civil War. Having only one horse, the farmer and son worked long hard days, sun up to sun down, just to get by, with nothing left to spare. One day as the father and son plowed the fields, their horse got spooked and ran off. The son was devastated; "What bad luck, now what will we do?
Then one day their horse comes running back over the hill with 6 other horses. The son exclaimed, "What great luck, now we have all the horses we'll ever need! The farmer's son, having a broken leg, was forced to stay at home. After the leg had healed, the father had the only farm around with a son to help and seven horses to boot. They worked the farm and prospered. Good luck, bad luck. It's too soon to tell. There are two kinds of intelligence: With such intelligence you rise in the world. You get ranked ahead or behind others in regard to your competence in retaining information.
You stroll with this intelligence in and out of fields of knowledge, getting always more marks on your preserving tablets. There is another kind of tablet, one already completed and preserved inside you. A spring overflowing its springbox. A freshness in the center of the chest. This other intelligence does not turn yellow or stagnate. It's fluid, and it does not move from outside to inside through the conduits of plumbing-learning. This second knowing is a fountainhead from within you, moving out.
The grandson thought about it for a minute and then asked his grandfather, "Which wolf will win? Willing to experience aloneness, I discover connection everywhere; Turning to face my fear, I meet the warrior who lives within; Opening to my loss, I gain the embrace of the universe; Surrendering into emptiness, I find fullness without end. Each condition I flee from pursues me, Each condition I welcome transforms me And becomes itself transformed Into its radiant jewel-like essence. I bow to the one who has made it so, Who has crafted this Master Game; To play it is purest delight - To honor its form, true devotion.
The range of what we think and do is limited by what we fail to notice. And because we fail to notice there is little we can do to change until we notice how failing to notice shapes our thoughts and deeds.
It was many years ago that the villagers of Downstream recall spotting the first body in the river. Some old timers remember how spartan were the facilities and procedures for managing that sort of thing. Sometimes they say, it took hours to pull 10 people from the river, and even then only a few would survive. Though the number of victims in the river has increased greatly in recent years, the good folk of Downstream have responded admirably to the challenge. Their rescue system is clearly second to none: Only a small number drown each day before help arrives - a big improvement from the way it use to be.
Talk to the people of Downstream and they'll speak with pride about the new hospital by the edge of the waters, the flotilla of rescue boats ready for service at a moment's notice, the comprehensive plans for coordinating all the manpower involved, and the large numbers of highly trained and dedicated swimmers always ready to risk their lives to save victims from the raging currents.
So it cost a lot, say to the Downstreamers, but what else can descent people do except to provide whatever is necessary when human lives are at stake. Oh, a few people in Downstream have raised the question now and again, but most folks show little interest in what's happening Upstream. That's the way things are sometimes. It takes a long time. It lasts for always. Wage peace with your breath. Breathe in firemen and rubble, breathe out whole buildings and flocks of red wing blackbirds. Breathe in terrorists and breathe out sleeping children and freshly mown fields. Breathe in confusion and breathe out maple trees.
Breathe in the fallen and breathe out lifelong friendships intact. Wage peace with your listening: Play music, memorize the words for thank you in three languages. Learn to knit, and make a hat. Think of chaos as dancing raspberries, imagine grief as the outbreath of beauty or the gesture of fish. Swim for the other side. Never has the world seemed so fresh and precious: Have a cup of tea and rejoice.
Act as if armistice has already arrived. There's a thread you follow. It goes among things that change. But it doesn't change. People wonder about what you are pursuing. You have to explain about the thread. But it is hard for others to see. While you hold it you can't get lost. Tragedies happen; people get hurt or die; and you suffer and get old.
Nothing you do can stop time's unfolding. You don't ever let go of the thread. We have not come here to take prisoners But to surrender ever more deeply To freedom and joy. We have not come into this exquisite world to hold ourselves hostage from love. Run my dear, From anything That may not strengthen Your precious budding wings, Run like hell, my dear, From anyone likely to put a sharp knife Into the sacred, tender vision Of your beautiful heart. We have a duty to befriend Those aspects of obedience of our house And shout to our reason "Oh please, oh please come out and play.
Those who will not slip beneath the still surface on the well of grief turning downward through its black water to the place we cannot breathe will never know the source from which we drink the secret water, cold and clear, nor find in the darkness glimmering the small round coins thrown by those who wished for something else. We who are your closest friends feel the time has come to tell you that every Thursday we have been meeting as a group to devise ways to keep you in perpetual uncertainty frustration discontent and torture by neither loving you as much as you want nor cutting you adrift.
Generally speaking, we regard discomfort in any form as bad news. But for practitioners or spiritual warriors, people who have a certain hunger to know what is true, feelings like disappointment, embarrassment, irritation, resentment, anger, jealousy, and fear, instead of being bad news, are actually very clear moments that teach us where it is that we are holding back. They teach us to perk up and lean in when we feel we'd rather collapse and back away. They're like messengers that show us, with terrifying clarity, exactly where we're stuck.
This very moment s the perfect teacher, and lucky for us, it's with us wherever we are. Most of us do not take these situations as teachings. We automatically hate them. We run like crazy. We are use to all kinds of escaping - all addictions stem from this moment when we meet our edge and we just can't stand it. There are so many ways that have been dreamed up to entertain us away from the moment.
Who turns this into that? Taste into pleasure or disgust? Who turns yes into no? Who turns the present into the past?
Meditation for Healing
Who turns the now into the not-now? The ordinary into the menial? Who turns pain into suffering? Woe into the story of your life? Who turns stuff into sentiment? Who turns life into labor? Who turns why into why not? Who turns delusion into enlightenment? All practice is the practice of making a turn in a different Direction. The colors of the Dark One have penetrated Mira's body; all the other colors washed out. Making love with the Dark One and eating little, those are my pearls and my carnelians. Meditation beads and the forehead streak, these are my scarves and my rings.
That's enough feminine wiles for me. My teacher taught me this.
Approve me or disapprove me: I praise the Mountain Energy night and day. I take the path that ecstatic human beings have taken for centuries. I don't steal money, I don't hit anyone. What will you charge me with? I have felt the swaying of the elephant's shoulders; and now you want me to climb on a jackass?
Try to be serious. And I said to myself: You may be trying to access this site from a secured browser on the server. Please enable scripts and reload this page. Translate this website into the following languages: Sign Up Activate Account. Mead Important by Helen M. Seuss On Commitment by William H. The Guest House This being human is a guest house. Every morning a new arrival. By Rumi, Translation by Coleman Barks. Love After Love The time will come when, with elation you will greet yourself arriving at your own door, in your own mirror and each will smile at the other's welcome, and say, sit here.
Kindness Before you know what kindness really is you must lose things, feel the future dissolve in a moment like salt in a weakened broth. By Naomi Shihab Nye. The Summer Day Who made the world? Wild Geese You do not have to be good. By Mary Oliver from Dream Work. The Journey One day you finally knew what you had to do, and began, though the voices around you kept shouting their bad advice- though the whole house began to tremble and you felt the old tug at your ankles. The Swan Did you too see it, drifting, all night, on the black river? The Hippo The hippo floats in swamp serene, some emerged, but most unseen.
Seeing all and only blinking, Who knows what this beast is thinking. Gliding, and of judgment clear, Letting go and being here. Seeing all, both guilt and glory, Only noting. But that's MY story. I sit here hippo-like and breathe, While inside I storm and seethe. Would that I were half equanimous As that placid hippopotamus.
I would perhaps have more actual troubles but I'd have fewer imaginary ones. One after another, instead of living so many years ahead of each day. Still Water We can make our minds so like still water that beings gather about us, that they may see, it may be, their own images, and so live for a moment with a clearer, perhaps even with a fiercer life because of our quiet. On Commitment Until one is committed, there is hesitancy, the chance to draw back, always ineffectiveness. Concerning all acts of initiative and creation , there is one elementary truth, the ignorance of which kills countless ideas and splendid plans: All sorts of things occur to help one that would never otherwise have occurred.
A whole stream of events issues from the decision, raising in one's favour all manner of unforeseen incidents and meetings and material assistance, which no man could have dreamt would have come his way. I have learned a deep respect for one of Goethe's couplets:. The Five Hindrances The desire for sense pleasure: Fear, judgment and boredom can all be forms of aversion, because they are based upon our dislike of some aspect of experience.
Includes laziness, dullness, lack of vitality, fogginess and sleepiness. Restlessness can be the opposite of sloth and torpor. Agitation, nervousness, anxiety and worry. The mind spins in circles or flops around like a fish out of water. Can be the most difficult because when we believe it and get caught by it, our practice stops cold and we become paralyzed.
Between Going and Staying Between going and staying the day wavers, in love with its own transparency. I am a pause By Octavio Paz.
Guided Meditation for Healing: Self Healing Meditation | Mindworks
The Well of Grief Those who will not slip beneath the still surface of the well of grief turning downward through its black water to the place we cannot breathe will never know the source from which we drink, the secret water, cold and clear, nor find in the darkness glimmering the small round coins thrown away by those who wished for something else. By David Whyte from Close to Home. My tasks lie in their places Where I left them, asleep like cattle… Then what I am afraid of comes.
Admit Something Everyone you see, you say to them, Love me. All the True Vows All the true vows are secret vows the ones we speak out loud are the ones we break. Hold to the truth you make every day with your own body, don't turn your face away. Hold to your own truth at the center of the image you were born with. Those who do not understand their destiny will never understand the friends they have made nor the work they have chosen nor the one life that waits beyond all the others.
Whatever you hear from the water, remember, it wants you to carry the sound of its truth on your lips. Remember, in this place no one can hear you and out of the silence you can make a promise it will kill you to break, that way you'll find what is real and what is not. I know what I am saying. Time almost forsook me and I looked again. Seeing my reflection I broke a promise and spoke for the first time after all these years in my own voice, before it was too late to turn my face again.
Allow There is no controlling life. In the choice to let go of your known way of being, the whole world is revealed to your new eyes By: A Timbered Choir excerpt I go among trees and sit still. Autobiography in Five Short Chapters I. I walk down another street. Awareness Awareness- her gaze is so constant, our every move watched with such affection, a ceaseless vigil without condition or agenda, silent, patient, unrelenting in her embrace. But she is also crafty, this one- a thieft who will steal away everything we ever cherished, all our beliefs, all our ideas, all our philosophies, until nothing is left but her shimmering wakefulness, this simple love for what is.
Cookie Thief A woman was waiting at the airport one night, With several long hours before her flight. She was engrossed in her book, but happened to see, That the man beside her, as bold as could be, Grabbed a cookie or two from the bag between, Which she tried to ignore to avoid a scene She read, munched cookies, and watched the clock, As the gustly "cookie thief" diminished her stock She was getting more irritated as the minutes ticked by, Thinking, "If I wasn't so nice, I'd blacken his eye!
Desiderata Go placidly amid the noise and haste, and remember what peace there may be in silence. Tasting Mindfulness Have you ever had the experience of stopping so completely? The Five Remembrances I am of the nature to grow old. Forget about enlightenment Sit down wherever you are And listen to the wind singing in your veins. I Am That There is only one mistake you are making: If You Would Grow - Shine the Light Of Loving Self-Care On Yourself If you would grow to your best self Be patient, not demanding Accepting, not condemning Nurturing, not withholding Self-marveling, not belittling Gently guiding, not pushing and punishing For you are more sensitive than you know Mankind is as tough as war yet delicate as flowers We can endure agonies but we open fully only to warmth and light And our need to grow Is as fragile as a fragrance dispersed by storms of will To return only when those storm are still So, accept, respect, and attend your sensitivity A flower cannot be opened with a hammer.
I will meet you there. The Ink Dark Moon Although the wind blows terribly here, the moonlight also leaks between the roof planks of this ruined house By: Keeping Quiet Now we will count to twelve and we will all keep still. Let Your Light Shine Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Lingering in Happiness After rain after many days without rain, it stays cool, private and cleansed, under the trees, and the dampness there, married now to gravity, falls branch to branch, leaf to leaf, down to the ground where it will disappear - but not, of course, vanish except to our eyes.