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City Studio
447 Morphett St,
Adelaide
South Australia
PO Box 10454,
ADELAIDE, 5001
South Australia
T: 61 8 8353 0000
E: info@lifeflow.com.au
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Life in Balance – balance at work
Lifeflow® is much more than sitting on a chair and meditating! It encompasses a range of techniques and practices you can use to reduce stress and restore balance. This is the second in a series of five articles (that appeared in our Life Movements print newsletter) that looks at different Lifeflow experiences and how they can apply to your life.
Balance is about working efficiently (and skillful laziness!)
One of the many benefits of Lifeflow® Meditation is learning how to use time more efficiently. This doesn’t mean always being busy, but rather learning to be more skillful in using your mind and energy levels; knowing when to push on with a task, or when to let go. In our Level 1 course we introduce the two ways in which our mind works—we can either focus on a single point or we can open out to become aware of everything in general. Normally we are only taught one side of this—how to focus—and the open, everything in general state is left to chance. With Lifeflow Meditation you can learn about and experience this open state, and then learn to touch it throughout the day. This is learning how to be skillfully lazy, creating a moment of space to deliberately let your mind relax, and so refresh your energies.
Got a minute?
Spot Meditations can be used nearly anywhere and are a great way to build in space through your day. Most of them only take a minute, and they allow you to let go of busy thoughts and return to the open, spacious world of the senses. This automatically helps to calm your mind and bring you back to the present moment.
Here are two examples of Spot Meditations; both devised by students in our Level 2 course. From a general practitioner who does home visits: I found I could use the time of leaving someone’s house, getting into my car, and taking a deep sigh as my Spot Meditation. Time that was being lost was now a moment of relaxation. And from an office worker in the city: At lunch I sometimes sit in Rundle Mall, using the sound of footsteps around me as a Spot Meditation—just focusing on the random sounds.
Think about your workplace or home life: is there a minute you could spend being aware of touch, sound or aroma? It might be something you are doing already; just by bringing awareness to it, it becomes a Spot Meditation.
Creating space…it’s a habit thing
Everything we do runs on habit. This can be a negative—we can get locked into recurrent thoughts and emotions—or we can use it to our advantage, training in the habit of creating space, or looking for moments of space.
We usually view space as the absence of something, an emptiness waiting to be filled. With Spot Meditations you can learn to value and make use of moments of space through the day, which makes it easier to maintain a sense of balance, and even joy.
John Burston.
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