Live Your Best Life: 100 Days of Mindful Meditation
(By JP Thong)
What is Mindful Meditation?
Meditation is a practice where we learn to control our mind to focus. It is most beneficial when we incorporate it into our daily lives. Whereas mindfulness is being fully aware of the now, being present with everything that is happening inside and outside of us.
So when we practise Mindful Meditation, we are learning to control our mind to focus on the breath. Whenever our focus is distracted by a sound, light, a thought, an emotion, an ache or an itch on our body, we acknowledge the distraction but bring our focus immediately back to the breath. We do not analyse the distraction nor give it much attention. The practice of constantly shifting our focus from the distraction back to our breath enables us to increase our level of awareness and our control of our focus.
The end result is a sense of calm abiding, having a more positive outlook in life, less stress, and more clarity. With consistent practice, the mind becomes more resilient to handle challenges in our lives.
Being Mindful During the COVID 19 Pandemic
The coronavirus pandemic is a reminder of how fragile our lives are and how unpredictable our mortality is. When Malaysia went into a total lockdown on March 18th, 2020, my daily routine turned upside down. I was staying in my room in Kechara Forest Retreat all day and night instead of being on-site working on projects and managing the operations.
Everyone in the community and I had to learn new standard operating procedures to protect ourselves from infection. It was a total change of lifestyle and yet we had no other option but to abide by them for our own and others’ safety. As the days passed with me spending all day and night in my 300 sq ft room, my mind was actively wondering, “What’s happening with the pandemic in the country?” “How is Kechara going to adapt to this new normal?” “How is our community doing?” “How is my family in the city doing? And so on. After the third day passed, a sense of boredom began to arise. It caught me off guard as I rarely felt bored since I joined Kechara in 2007.
I immediately calmed my thoughts and checked in with my mind to see what was causing this boredom. As soon as I became mindful of the root cause, I focused on my breath and on being present. The boredom subsided and I was in a calm abiding state. Thereafter, the boredom didn’t arise again throughout the lockdown. I only felt peace, gratitude and joy.
A Daily Meditation Exercise in Mindfulness
A day or two later, our education department suggested that I teach mindful meditation on a daily basis via livestream to help our members and friends cope with the lockdown. This was the birth of my program, Mindful Morning Meditation which was aired live on Kechara Forest Retreat’s Facebook fanpage. We ended up doing 100 episodes in total.
The program is a simple workshop to understand the basic tools of focusing on the breath and what to do when we are distracted by our thoughts, emotions, sensations, and so on. I explain briefly how the mind works and how to deal with the withdrawal symptoms we experience when our daily routine suddenly changes. I made it very simple without much fuss so that anyone can learn to ground themselves whenever they feel down or restless or need some clarity in their lives especially during the pandemic.
Mindful meditation is extremely beneficial. It is not difficult. We just need to take baby steps and put in a little time to get used to sitting comfortably and focusing on something such as our breath. With consistent practice, it becomes easier. For the first week, the participants watching my program focused on their breath for five minutes. It was a struggle for most to sit still even for that short period of time. However, closer to the end of the week, it became easier. Subsequently, we added five more minutes every week.
Everyone noticed that every time we added five minutes to our meditation session, the first two to three days would be a struggle to focus. Then as we got closer to the end of the week, it became much easier. When most participants became comfortable with a half hour of meditation, I switched from focusing on the breath to focusing on the sound of a singing bowl that I would play. Again, most participants struggled to focus on the sound as they were already accustomed to the breath. This helped everyone to realise how our body and mind need time to adjust to change.
Tame Your Mind, Transform Your Life
Our untrained mind will always wander and be distracted when we try to focus. The key here is to be mindful of our distractions and immediately bring the focus back to the breath or the sound. This exercise of bringing back our focus to the object of meditation is the key to strengthening our control of our mind. After all, our mind is responsible for how well we focus, and it is from the mind that our emotions and thoughts arise.
With consistent practice, we will become better at focusing whenever we are distracted in our daily life. We will notice that we have become more efficient as a result and our stress levels have decreased. Regardless of how chaotic and busy our daily schedule may be, we will be able to ground ourselves, maintain clarity of the mind and be at peace. This simple exercise is really so beneficial for us!
I also highlighted the importance of keeping a gratitude journal and being clear with our intention as this will help us focus on what truly matters to us, enabling us to live our best life.
When we are clear of our intention and are truly grateful for what we have and do not have, we will experience joy and fulfilment in everything we do. This is a result of practising mindfulness consistently.
Start Your Journey to Mindfulness
Do try the 100-day Mindful Morning Meditation program. You’ll learn very effective and simple tools on how to be mindful. Follow the sessions chronologically on your own and if you have any questions, drop me an email at bemindful@kechara.com. I’ll be conducting private live workshops from time to time and I’ll be happy to personally coach you along your mindfulness journey.
Once you’re consistent with mindful meditation and have a good grasp of focusing, you’ll be ready for the next exciting program, Detox Your Mind – The Workshop. In this intermediate workshop, I’ll guide you on how to remove the negativities and toxins in your mind one step at a time using the control of your focus. From these healing sessions, you’ll gain even more clarity, joy, inner peace, and a deeper understanding of who you have been and who you choose to become. This special workshop empowers you to live your best life!
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Mindful Meditation daily practice may reduce stress, anxiety, depression while improve mood, sense of well beings, focus, resilience. Help people with autism, increase communication and social behaviour while decreasing aggressive behaviour. The silence and stillness we experience in meditation and the increased happiness and diminished stress Meditation on friendliness helps us drive away our negative thoughts and feelings and replace them with positive ones. Focusing on ourselves, without guilt or our ego getting in the way, is a necessary and sufficient condition for a happy life especially during this pandemic time. It improves our personal relationships, as well as our relationship with the environment we live in. We become loved, trusted and compassionate individuals, ready to help others.
Thank you JP for sharing with us the details and benefits of these 100 Days of mindful meditation.
Nice compilation of “Mindful Morning Meditation” . I’m not a fan of yoga meditation and morning person myself as my mind works much better past midnight …lol!!😎. But I find your mediation program quite interesting and pleasant during the 1st MCO last year. Nevertheless. I’m sure many people out there will definitely find this very useful. Thank you very much J.P. Thong for doing this wonderful meditation sharing with everyone during this very depressing time. 😘👍👍🌻👏👏
Mindfulness is a type of meditation in which we focus on being intensely aware of what we’re sensing and feeling in the moment. Practicing mindfulness involves breathing methods, guided imagery, and other practices to relax the body and mind and help reduce stress. Very beneficial practice indeed . Through mindful living practices, we can find happiness, joy, and meaning in our lives. Our true self. Mindful living can help us to find more happiness, joy and meaning in our life.
Yes the coronavirus pandemic is a reminder of how fragile our lives is. Having these mindful meditation on a daily basis via live stream helps many of us coping with the lockdown.
Thank you JP Thong for sharing whatever we need to know all about meditation exercise in mindfulness. A thumb up …….simply amazing understanding the basic and what to do when we are distracted by our thoughts, emotions, sensations, and so forth. Thanks again.
“I never like meditation, and I did not know what was good to just sit there and do nothing, and this action will benefit our mind-” this is what I told myself before joining in Jp’s Meditation programs. In fact, I joined JP’s program because out of curiosity to see how the live video was taken, at first, I sit in and look at how he meditated, and, one day, I told myself, why not I try to see. It was a struggle for me, even to count to 10 on my breathing, the mind keeps flipping off without I notice, and, I have to be aware to catch it back. Slowly, I realize I can do more than 10 minutes! As Jp’s also gave us a space to learn- BABY STEP, so I did
Changes that I noticed bring to my daily life
1) I am able to focus on the tasks I want to do – I could catch my thoughts that running wild and “force” it to focus back on the tasks I needed to finish on that day.
2) When my emotion turn up and influent my tasks, I can catch the thought by doing breathing and let the mind calm down
3) I have a frequent headache and all types of different headaches- well, you name it I have it. So, one day, I decided to try the breathing exercise that JP’s have taught. To my surprise, the pain subsides and I able to sleep that night.
Detox Mind
This is a very rare and special program. Normally this kind of program will be charge a lot of money. But, JP does it to benefit the participants without charging. In this program, you can see how unaware our mind have influent us to a made decision in our daily life, how our habits create that thought, and how JP guide us to peel the layer and bring us to see how our thoughts play on us.
Even tho the Private workshop ended very late, but, JP never complains! In the daytime, he was busy in all kinds of meetings and projects, sometimes I can see he was not too well, yet, he still consistently went online every week! He always carefully listen to each participants’ sharing and always guided them one by one how to. In here, I see his love for H.E Tsem Rinpoche. He is benefitting many people by applying the teaching that H.E Tsem Rinpoche has taught.
Thank you, JP for being the light that shines thru many people who needed help
Thank you JP for writing this article on mindful meditation, its benefits and your journey in conducting the online meditation class.
In the beginning of the Mindful Morning Meditation session, I was struggling to sit still and focus on the breath as well as struggling with some emotions that arise during the meditation. Thank goodness JP clarified that it is normal for emotions to arise as we are stilling the mind and he guided us to watch them past and bring back our attention to our breath. One of the reasons I did not continue practicing meditation in the past is because I don’t really know why some unexplainable emotions arise during meditation and unsure on how to handle such emotions.
JP’s constant reminder that we shall keep shifting our focus from the distraction and emotion back to our breath/singing bowl sound enables me to gradually not let my emotions to take control of my mind during the meditation though it took a considerably long time due to my strong habituation. The said technique is also helpful to enable me to be more aware and observe my habituation, perception and reaction towards people and situation. With that, I managed to gradually lessen/stop certain habituations and react differently though sometimes it’s not immediate and there is frequent relapse until now.
Before joining the Mindful Morning Meditation, I was having frequent chest pain, shortness of breath and persistent cough for almost 2 months and the usually effective medicines didn’t help. I later realised that it is because I was emotionally overwhelmed by the global Covid-19 pandemic situation and later on the sudden change in my routine due to the first Movement Control Order in Malaysia. About 2 -3 weeks after participating in the Mindful Morning Meditation, all my aforesaid conditions gradually disappear without me taking any medication during that period and I believe it is due to the meditation practice and JP’s sharing on how the mind works.
Since then I have been practicing breathing meditation daily except twice or thrice of missing it when I was too busy in the late evening which is my usual meditation time. Honestly the tendency not to practise meditation daily was very strong initially due to numerous distractions and strong habituations. It was the realisation that I shall not break the chain of meditating daily which JP did with us for almost one and a half month that motivates me to continue practicing it daily. I was also telling myself that if I can spend 15 minutes or more on my handphone and watching television, why can’t I spend at least 10, 15 minutes or more daily to just focus on my breath. Another reason why I am still practicing meditation is because I learned and experienced from the Mindful Morning Meditation that it is by practicing meditation consistently that I can gradually improve on my ability to control my mind to focus better instead of being easily swayed by emotions and thoughts that don’t serve me and the people around me and be immersed in such emotions and thoughts for a long period.
Thank you JP and team for the 100 sessions of Mindful Morning Meditation that shed much light to me at the time when I need it the most. Thanks JP for continuing to guide us in your current Detox Your Mind workshop 🙏