It shocked me when I returned to NUS to celebrate a friend's graduation and realised that it's been a full year since my own graduation. It's totally unbelievable, because I can totally and fully remember the sequence of events on the day that I went up the stage to collect my degree. I can almost remember where in the vicinity that I took some photos with friends; I can remember where my parents sat; I can remember the mixed emotions on that day, and alot of the well wishes that were exchanged.
It genuinely felt much much less than one year ago.
This scares me.
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Yesterday, I attended a workshop on Meditation, and was really glad that I went. The speaker, Mr. Tan Chade Meng, is a Google pioneer and has spoken at TED, the United Nations and The White House. Perhaps more importantly, he had been an advanced practitioner of Meditation and the entire class of youths were eager to learn from him.
He was an effective speaker, making the techniques so easy to relate to and understand. My greatest takeaway from him, was that there was no 'wrong' or 'bad' meditation -- with practice, the ability to keep out distractions will only get better. I can now appreciate that meditation is really the 'attention of attention', and the benefits, as proven by Science, can be immense.
Admittedly, during at least 2 of the guided meditation exercises, I unknowingly fell asleep for a while. It was comforting to know that some of the participants fell asleep too. I guess as super beginners, this is common.
One of the exercises we did, was surprisingly, walking meditation. To me, it was slightly harder to grasp because being in activity and with the eyes open, it was easy to have distractions. The technique was to focus on the sensation, the breathing and the very joy of walking. It did work after a while. Then it dawned on me that I might have already practised this in my regular running routines. Running (and also swimming) has always been my destress tool, because during running, my mind is usually relaxed, and I only know the sensation, the breathing and the joy of running, which is essentially the technique involved.
One of the common takeaways among the participants, was also the cultivation of empathy. As most of the participants are young professionals who feel stressed at work, one way to get out of the negativity, is to genuinely wish for people (and strangers) to be happy. This may not even need to be verbally expressed, as that cultivation of compassion and empathy deep within, can have effects on one's joyfulness.
I'm quite interested to read his book "Search Inside Yourself", a New York Times Bestseller. So if anyone has it, it's your chance to cultivate your compassion and lend it to me!
P.S.: There's another session of this workshop on 21st July, if you're interested, visit this Link . Highly recommended.
人生是黑白的.
6:25 PM <3
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