Muni on this:
When alone in a quiet room, do you still find yourself struggling to tame the noise in your head?
While most have joined the yoga bandwagon, not all have explored other practices, such as meditation, that can help lead to more holistic mind & body wellness.
For this feature, we chat with Eileen Tupaz, freelance writer and a co-director of Katipunan-based White Space Mind and Body Wellness Studio, which offers classes and workshops on mind and body disciplines such as yoga, pilates, t’ai chi, reiki and meditation, among many others.
1. Would you say that developing meditation practice (as in learning Vipassana or other meditation techniques) is necessary in learning to live mindfully? Or would having acute awareness of everything around us and our own “being” suffice?
The meditation practices exist because we’re literally not designed to maintain any kind of hyperawareness. We’d cognitively short-circuit if we paid attention to ALL the sensory input we receive. Our ability to perceive selectively and to screen out what’s familiar are all aids to our survival, so there is a point to our zoning out. There’s just a trade-off, of course, and all the things we lose out are the things we want to recover through meditation practice. And it really is practice in the most mundane sense of the word, because we’re not accustomed to maintaining this kind of awareness. If we could go straight to maintaining the awareness, then we should. But we can’t. That’s why we undertake meditation practices under different traditions.
2. What do you wish people were more mindful of?
There isn’t anything in particular that I want people to be more mindful “of”–I just want people to be more mindful, period. If we were all just more…present, more attentive and more conscious, we would literally transform our experience of life, and quite possibly save the world along the way.
3. What comprises mindful living for you?
I have a terribly idealistic notion of mindful living, which is probably only possible for the exceptionally gifted spiritual athlete. If one could act at all times as if one were in the presence of the sacred – with attentiveness, with reverence, with wonder, or at the very least, with a gentle and lighthearted curiosity – I think that would be the ultimate in mindful living. Like I said, it’s an idealistic notion.
4. What drives you to get up in the morning? What’s in your head before you sleep at night?
These days, my studio. It’s the first thing and last thing I think of, which is understandable since it’s the culmination and embodiment of so many things I deeply value. I love learning new things, sharing what I discover with other people and making a difference along the way. The studio continuously gives me a huge opportunity to deepen my practice of mindfulness through yoga and meditation, to share this practice with others, and to positively alter the quality of their life in the process.
To learn more about meditation and practice quieting your mind, join Muni PH & White Space for an introductory meditation class on Feb. 16, 2013, 1-2pm at White Space in Katipunan. Click here for more details, or view the e-poster below.
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