Fullness

Fragments from imaginary dialogues

“What is the difference between Mindfulness and Embodiment?”

“Both essentially mean Self-Awareness.

Mindfulness adds the nuance of Non-Judgmental Awareness.

Embodiment adds the nuance of Awareness of yourself AS a Body. It could equally be phrased Bodyfulness.”

“What if you integrated them together into one word: BodyMindfulness?”

“It’s a bit long.”

“How about simply Fullness?”

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Values as Deliberate Practice

Fragments from imaginary dialogues

“How can I deliberately practice my Values?”

“Let’s take Gratitude as an example.

Every time you express Gratitude for something, you’re practicing it. We might call this, one ‘Gratitude-rep[etition]’.

How many Gratitude-reps do you do during a day?

I call this, practice-density.

You might do it once at the end of the day. Certainly better than nothing. However the more reps you do during a day, the better. All these little reps add up.

How you do the reps is also important.

How many quality Gratitude-reps do you do during a day?

A low-quality rep is just going through the motions in order to get it done.

A quality rep is doing it slowly and reverently, like a ritual. You might even have a physical gesture, like the bowing in martial arts, or a stance.
A quality rep is fully experiencing the feeling of Gratitude in your body – a quality rep is embodied.

In a sense, every quality rep is a Meditation.

It’s also important to gain clarity on – design – the details of the practice. 

What specifically do you want to do?
What specifically do you want to think? Where do you want to direct your attention?

For instance, I think of everything I express Gratitude for as a Gift.

You might even have a theme that captures the essence of the practice.”

“What is the theme for your Gratitude practice?”

“Take NOTHING for granted.“

Impromptu Meditation

Fragments from imaginary dialogues

“What do you mean by impromptu meditation?”

“Impromptu meditation is an unplanned meditation that can be done at any time, anywhere, improv style.”

“Is that even possible?”

“It requires some mental magic.

We all form a default mental image of the minimum length a meditation session is supposed to have. I like to think of it as our default unit of practice. The larger the size of the unit, the less flexible it is. If my unit is 5 minutes long and I only have 1 minute, I’m unable to practice. 
This is a top-down process. I’m metaphorically trying to fit something into a small space.

For maximum flexibility, the unit needs to be smaller. I call the smallest atomic unit of practice micro-meditation. A micro-meditation is one embodied breath (EBreath [<link; medium read]). 
This is a bottom-up process. I’m metaphorically filling up the available space, however small it is.”

“Like water.”

“Indeed.

So impromptu-meditation requires two things:
– a mental structure: the micro-meditation model
– a mental attitude: the Improviser mindset / model

“

On Embodiment and Stacking

Fragment from imaginary dialogues

“To optimize a practice, you need to remember to practice. The more often you remember, the more often you can engage in the practice.”

“What’s your strategy for remembering to practice?”

“I’m currently experimenting with concept-stacking[<link; short length] as a means of information-retrieval.”

“Remind me what concept-stacking is.”

“It’s the process of fusing concepts together for practical ends.

Let’s take Embodiment for instance – the practice of becoming aware of your own body – and Mindful Breathing.

As long as Embodiment and Breathing are two different concepts, it makes it less likely to remember to do them together. By connecting them, you increase the likelihood.

You can connect them conceptually: Breathing as Embodiment practice. As far as retrieval goes, this is better than no connection, but it’s a weak-connection.

You can connect them structurally: EmbodiedBreathing practice. By fusing the two concepts together, you create a strong-connection for the purpose of retrieval. To make it even easier to retrieve, Embodied can be shortened to E – you thus get EBreathing.

Using the structure as a template[<link; medium], you can expand its application:

EConnection
EMovement (and, by extension EParkour)
EMeditation
EThinking
ECelebration
…

EMovement can be expressed as EMotion. You thus get emotion, which I consider an essential aspect of Embodiment practice.”

“So emotion also stands for EmobodiedMotion.”

“Indeed. Whenever I think of emotion, it also reminds me to move.”