Samatha Meditation
Through the practice of Samatha meditation we train the mind to stay with our breathing when we decide to (ānāpāna-sati practice). This then allows us to keep our attention on whatever focus we choose (cooking, driving, studying, exercising, working, listening…). When we do things with attention and we are connected from our heart, we do them well, or in any case, much better than when we do them without attention. Attention is one of the fundamental elements of conscious action. We manifest ourselves through thought, speech or action. By developing attention through Samatha meditation, we increase our conscious behaviour, reducing our mechanical behaviour, developing our mindfulness and eventually continual mindfulness. This leads us to own our lives and not be dominated by internal or external elements. The proposed work emphasizes improving our mindfulness, both in meditative practice and in everyday life.
When we manage to keep our attention on breathing properly for long enough, we spontaneously enter certain healthy meditative states. These are: serene stillness (viveka), mental stability (samādhi) and the so-called jhānic states (in which a significant healing occurs and helps us to see reality as it is). One of the aims of this work is to enable us to enter these meditative states. To do this we develop the therapeutic and body work simultaneously, which helps us to enter these states. Thus, little by little we are freeing the mind from its conditioning, achieving greater awareness of mind and body, which leads us to greater freedom.
Vipassanā Meditation
Through the practice of Vipassanā meditation we do the practice of satipaṭṭhānā, the development of the four foundations of mindfulness. The foundations refer to four different areas to which we apply full attention:
- The body.
- The sensations/feelings.
- The contents of the mind.
- The study of certain teachings.
With this training we are developing four factors that bring us closer to freedom:
- Samādhi, mental stability.
- Sati, mindfulness.
- Saññā, wisdom.
- Viriya, perseverance.
The aim of this practice, is to apply it both in formal meditation and in everyday life. Thus we train ourselves to be aware, most of the time, of body movements, sensations/feelings and the contents of our mind; and we devote time to studying and understanding certain teachings (for example, how the mind works).
In meditation we apply vipassanā in order to see things as they are. For example, if we have a conflict with a person, we will first take time to calm our mind, and then look at the conflict in a concrete way until we can see for ourselves what produced the conflict and how we can solve it, without the mind intervening in this process.
Through the practice of Vipassanā meditation, we come to understand the four noble truths in their essence, not theoretically:
- Suffering exists.
- There is something that causes suffering.
- We can free ourselves from suffering.
- There is a path, a way (there is an antidote) to free ourselves from suffering.