Basic Attendance requires global listening skills that must be developed,
First of all, regarding yourself.
Open-mindedness, non-judgment, ability to stay with what is being, are attitudes that are not improvised, but must be cultivated.
And these things take time …
(…) “Tame me” – said the fox to the Little Prince. (…) Men have no more time to understand anything. They buy things all ready made at the shops But there is no shop anywhere where one can buy friendship, and so men have no friends any more
If you want a friend, tame me! “
“What must I do, to tame you?” Asked the little prince.
“You must be very patient,” said the fox. “First you will sit down at a little distance from me, like that, in the grass I shall look at you out of the corner of my eye, and you will say nothing Words are the source of misunderstandings. But one day you will sit closer … “
The little prince came back the next day.
(…) It would have been better to come back at the same hour, said the fox. If, for example, you come at four o’clock in the afternoon, then at three o’clock I shall begin to be happy. (…) But if you come at just any time, I shall never know at what hour my heart is to be ready to greet you… One must observe the proper rites… “
From “The Little Prince”, Antoine de Saint Exupery
Accordo provides, for those who are interested in Basic Attendance, a
MINDFULLNESS TRAINING
The practice of mindfullness, like meditation, is a bit as tame yourself. Devote time to themselves, create the conditions for learning to listen, and then later be able to do the same with others.
“Meditation is not a technique is a” way “
is a Way of Being,
a Way of Life,
a Way of Listening,
a Way to Walk the path of life;
in keeping things as they are. “
Jon Kabat-Zinn
Speaking of “Mindfulness” means, in this context, referring to the work of Jon Kabat-Zinn and those who follow his teachings.
Professor of Medicine, founder of the Stress Reduction Clinic at the Massachusetts University, Jon Kabat-Zinn introduced in the eighties, the “mindfulness” or awareness meditation as an aid to medical care with excellent results. Since then, Jon Kabat-Zinn, together with his collaborators, has developed and expanded his experience by working “with mindfulness” and in clinical settings (more than 17,000 patients in his clinic followed the eight week stress reduction program) as well as aside from clinical background (professional athletes, socially disadvantaged backgrounds, schools, companies ..) and his programs have spread throughout the world.
Mindfulness is essentially a way to draw attention, a way of looking inside yourself, an attitude toward reality. Mindfullness is rooted in the heart of Buddhist teachings and it is proposed by Jon Kabat-Zinn and his school, stripped of the rituals of the Buddhist tradition, beyond the religious context and enriched by original contributions.
In his book “Wherever you go, there you are” Jon Kabat-Zinn says about mindfulness: “… is to look deeply within themselves with a spirit of self inquiry and self-understanding” and then bring the same attention, the same attitude in the life of all days, in relationships, in reality.
Mindfulness involves a change of perspective in the way we look at ourselves and at the world.
It means, in fact, paying attention to the here and now, participating in an attitude of curiosity, not judgment, of trust, of patience and acceptance. It means being present. It means realizing how often we escape the here and now fleeing into the past or the future, letting our emotions capture us.
Something very simple, that sometimes we experience, being enchanted by a particular landscape, in some precious moments with another human being, something extremely complex to bring to into every day life, because it means go beyond the beliefs, constraints, illusions, emotional reactions, in other words beyond what seems to give us security.
Mindfulness is a state of mind, an act of perception capable of depth seeing, it draws its characteristics from a deep core that everyone of us who has, it has the qualities of peace, acceptance, non-judgment, power of concentration, joy, confidence, patience, deep understanding.
Mindfulness can be nourished and developed through meditation, a practice made up of a collection of techniques and lessons that can be implemented both in “formal” and “informal” moments.
During “formal” moments there is an established time when you on purpose dedicate yourself to be present, to observe your body and mind letting what appears to flow from moment to moment without wanting it to change, accepting it as it is, remaining into a precise position (sitting meditation, walking meditation, body scan, aware yoga). During “informal” moments you follow some guidelines, some suggestions to enable the flow of awareness during daily activities.
Fundamental aspects of mindfulness meditation are: the use of breath, as the main object of meditation, the importance of reconnecting with the body, the careful observation of the workings of the mind time after time.
Mindfulness meditation is not relaxation, although relaxation is an important component, it is not a form of hypnosis, quite the opposite it requires to sharpen the attention, it is not to try to develop paranormal powers even if it can happen to observe what our mind is capable to generate, it is not escape from reality, rather it is the cability to dive more deeply into it.
It is an inner job, a path of profound transformation that takes place day after day, the result of small steps, each of which has the same value as the next.
Meditation does not mean always being right, sometimes you feel good sometimes bad, sometimes you are in raptures and sometimes you descend into hell. To meditate means learning to live with what you have from moment to moment and see it for what it is, including the suffering. Awareness is the faculty that allows us to “be with” our suffering, to be able to accept, observe, understand it, and then let it go.
To benefit from the mindfulness and understand why it is so precious it is necessary to experience it, to practice it. The more you practice, the more it is rooted in you, grows and sustains you. It’s like the daily practice for a pianist or a dancer.
By reading the features of the Basic Attendance, it becomes immediately evident the need of such a path in the formation of a Basic Attender. The mindfulness is the most recognized form of meditation in the West, as it has been the subject of studies by the group of Kabat-Zinn, fitting within the broader framework of cognitive therapy. Rsearches were conducted and the results were presented at the Western scientific world. For this reason it has been recognized by the law and it is widely used in psychotherapy, both in public and private sectors.
For this reason we have chosen it as experiential path of meditation and we have included it in the training path that we offer to those interested in being part of a Windhorse team.
It should be clear that the training aims to develop an ability to “listen globally”, essential for those intending to work in this direction, but it is not expected to be given to people subject of the team attention.
Develop mindfulness, that non-conceptual awareness, the act of perception that allows you to see in depth, it means first of all cultivating for themselves those qualities that are required to a basic attender. The ability to be present, and therefore to remain with what you have time after time, the ability of deep listening, the trust, the non-judgment, the acceptance of reality as it is when the reality of the person that is close to us at that moment is completely “other”, as in situations of psychotic decompensation.
The program that is proposed has been developed by the staff of Kabat-Zinn, it is a practical program that allows participants to discover a new way of being, to take control of their lives with increased awareness.
It is an eight week course, eight meetings, one per week, lasting two hours and a half more a full day of practice, between the sixth and seventh week.
The training costs will be defined depending on the number of participants and may vary between one hundred and two hundred euro, that can be divided into tranches.
Great importance is given to the work at home (meditation exercises led by audio CDs, short tasks during the day, ..) because meditation is something that each has to fulfil every day and because the work that we propose, to cultivate and increase awareness, involves the transformation of some bodily and mental habits that have been stiffened in automatic behavior and are often out of our consciousness, something that can be done only by constant practice.
