Week Eight – Relationships

We went live with Week Eight on Wednesday May 20th, 2020.

You can watch the entire YouTube recording HERE.

Below we will be breaking it down into seven separate chunks. The format for this (and every week) is that there are some meditations broken up by some commentary about the nature, purpose and benefits of meditation.

Part One – Welcome

Welcome to week eight of Introduction to Meditation.

This week we continue our theme of the second half of the series where we look at why meditation is so beneficial for our normal, everyday life. In this case we are focusing on how the skills we are developing in meditation can help our relationships, both those of an intimate nature, but also the larger relationships that could benefit from some healing in our society.

Part Two – The first meditation (10 minutes)

Relatively quickly we get down to do our first meditation. Simple, classic, focussing on the breath. When you notice you’ve lost focus, simply let go of the new focus and re-focus back on the breath. Start again. Rinse and repeat.

Part Three – Connection

Unfortunately I forgot to switch the view of the broadcast to the camera, so this is audio only. In this section I recount my experience from over thirty years ago where I rather surprisingly fell in love for no apparent reason. I go on to describe how it was only on a meditation retreat a few years ago that I worked out what happened, and how meditation can help us develop the relationship connections we crave in our lives.

Part Four – Second Meditation

Opening ourselves up to everything we can sense in the present moment is the second meditation we did this week.

Part Five – Conflict

Meditation can certainly lessen the incidence of conflict, but the truth is that when people spend time together there is still likely to be some conflict, no matter how mature or enlightened you are.

Although I haven’t particularly noticed meditation being hugely helpful in the middle of conflict, thanks to a model of communication in conflict by Marshall Rosenberg known as Nonviolent Communication, the tools of meditation can help us develop the skills necessary to navigate conflict better.