BOOK
Embodied Meditation. Mindfulness, The Body, And Daily Life.
Published November 2021.
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by Karin van Maanen and Mark Walsh
“This is a clear-eyed, transformative guide that everyone can benefit from. With love and rigor, Karin van Maanen and Mark Walsh have synthesized the power of meditation when practised in an embodied way. The lessons in these pages clearly come from the author's experience, and so many people will benefit.”
—David Treleaven, PhD, author of Trauma-Sensitive Mindfulness: Practices for Safe and Transformative Healing.
Do you meditate? Do you have a body? Embodied Meditation can help you bring the two together beautifully.
The way mindfulness is usually taught reflects the disembodiment of the modern world. Often meditation is taught without pleasure, free-flow or the body at all. Even the translated term “MINDfulness” reflects this. Sadly, this misses a lot of what makes meditation so powerful, and ensures it doesn’t integrate into daily life.
Throughout this refreshing take on meditation, Mark and Karin draw on their experience from the world of martial arts, dance and yoga. They offer a clear, no-nonsense and humorous roadmap to making your meditation more embodied.
This books contains techniques suitable for:
- People newer to meditation who want a clear, practical system
- Movement lovers (e.g yogis and dancers) who want an approach to meditation that fits well with their skills
- Experienced meditators who want to go deeper into embodiment
You’ll learn:
- How most meditation is disembodied
- A guide to the most common meditation challenges (including distraction, sleepiness and trauma)
- Over 30 embodied techniques (many that you won't find anywhere else)
- The most impactful and practical techniques for busy people (and how to build a regular practice around your lifestyle)
- A practical 'bridge' to bring meditation into your day-to-day life (work, childcare, sex, computer use, etc)
Promise: If you meditate, there will be something fresh and useful here to help deepen your practice. Take a look.
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ARTICLE
The science of yoga and mindfulness
Published in Spectrum, Winter 2014 edition, p. 36-39.
by Karin van Maanen
After practising and teaching yoga and meditation for some years, my interest in mindfulness was sparked and I embarked on the University of Aberdeen’s Studies in Mindfulness course in 2011. The course is geared towards the research and practice of integrating mindfulness into one’s professional context. In my case: yoga teaching. As part of the research I had the opportunity to investigate and reflect on the relationship between yoga and mindfulness in-depth. I am grateful for being able to share some of the resulting findings. May they be helpful to Spectrum readers.
I had always considered mindfulness and meditation to be an integral part of yoga...
ARTICLE
Self-compassion and the ego
Published in Spectrum, Winter 2015 edition
by Karin van Maanen
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Since immersing myself in compassion-based mindfulness training, and incorporating the practice of self-compassion and equalising self and others more overtly in my weekly yoga and mindfulness classes, several people have asked me whether self-compassion could lead to more selfish, ego-led behaviour and choices. I have found it useful to investigate ideas around self-compassion in Buddhism and current neuropsychology research, and to look at my own, culturally determined patterns to see how self-compassion helps me and might help my students. May what I share in this article be useful.
Definitions of compassion include references to a commitment or desire to relieve suffering, and that compassion needs to be accompanied by wisdom to be effective (Siegel and Germer, 2012; CCARE, 2015). Wise self-compassion takes into account the effect on others and self equally...
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