NEW432H1: What did you learn from this course? - created from Mind Map_1

Thesis: The cours NEW432H1: Cultivating Counsciouness enriched my journey through the path of mindfulness and compassion by generating a space to actively cultivate mindfulness through meditation and T'ai chi, teaching me techniques and methods that are instrumental in this process, providing me constructive feed back and clarification while also endowing me a cognitive and neuroscientific understanding of the mechanism of minfulness and compassion at play. Three major components of my learning Self as process Parasitic Processing: Processess that harm the self Procedural practice of improving insight (mindfulness and contemplation) and compassion Experiential understanding (Mindfulness, T'ai Chi, Contemplation) Cognitive Science and Research Cognitive Science and Research Based account of MM and Contemplation

1. Self is a process - Dynamic nature of mind (meditation, cognitive science) -RESEARCH IN YOUR 2nd essay -Dynamic nature of body  (My scientific background, breathing exercises, T'ai Chi) 2. Processes that harm my wellbeing- body and mind- are processes - Parasitic processing (NEW333H1) -knowledge and skills generated about posture during mindfulness practice and T'ai chi -Discussion on 5 precepts and how these practices could be harmful and destructive. 3. Since self is a dynamic entitity, unfolding moment to moment there is nothing to be fixated on.  The harmful and antagonistic processes that harm the body and mind can be counteracted by a procedural practice as well -mindfulness ( Transparent to opacity, complexification through opponent processing, flow states as insight cascades) -contemplation and lovingkindness (remodle ones self-other relationship, make your self-preocesses more in sync with that of others) -Body: 5-precepts are day-to-day tools to remodel yourself, allow the growth of your self 4. Since self is a process, it is always changing and generates opportunity for changing. We must be able to therefore develope self-acceptance without allowing the decrepancy based paracitic process such as rumination and avoidance. We must take this as an opportunity to be more open to our unfolding self through developing self awarness.  Thus the only way to becoem as you develop is to practice,reflect,practice with more effort.

Meditation, Contemplation and T'ai Chi based awareness -During contemplation your attention to the content (the hard person) of interaction with individuals made you miss the cycle of repeat -Meditaion: when you were unable to get past the certain body sensations on forehead, upper chest and abdominal areas it affect your rooting exercise, flow and focus of breath as it kept stealing attention away.T'ai chi: how one can harm oneself by assuming vulnerable stances, how imbalance, wrong weight shifting affects the proper processing of the body in T'ai Chi and create unnecesary stress and exhaustion, burnout, anxiety and uneasiness----> since it took a long while for you to grab the threads of T'ai Chi walk you couldn't focus on the breathing during that timeCognitive Scientific & Research Parasitic Processing--> Reintepretation of NT1 Not all life is suffering but in every aspect of life there is possiblity to suffer.  Parasitic processing is when we think of it the 1st way. Steps are individually adaptive but when coming in a circle and have feeback generate issues Dukka--> analogy of the wheel not properly turning around due to dirt/gap/impurity  (process impeded) Doing mode of mind: Discrepancy based processing: a mode of mind in which negative mood of certain memories generate global self-referent negative ideas which are taken s reality and compells one to close the gap between now (negative state) and the future (perceived good state). This leads to getting hung up, not thinking of initial conditions differently,  on the unsatisfactoriness of now and therfore is inefficient in problem solving.  Hargus 2010, WIlliams 2008---> DM leads to maladaptive behaviours such as rumination, auto-piloting and habitual responding DM 1.Negative ideas of self are taken as reality 2. Matching to standard of the current state of affairs to ideals fuels both the striving for the ideal self and avoidance of negative outcomes 3.ruminative or analytic attempts to solve emotional and self-related problems as well as attempts to suppresss or avoid negative thoughts are used but fail to address percieved discrepancies (Williams, 2008) OVERGENERALIZATION, LACK OF MEMORY SPECIFICITY (Hargus et al 2010, Pollock and Williams 2001) ---> mention that mindfulness counteracts this process by developing MA and MS by the operation of BEING MODE which will be discussed later

Mindfulness 1.Inquiring mindfulness (MEDBOOK chapter on page 36 refining mindfulness)

MEDITATION- allow me to see how MIND unfolds 1. Spaces between thoughts -the nature of thoughts folding and unfolding -abrupt, thought cascades, longer and shorter spaces, disconnected but subsequent thoughts -thoughtless and thoughful moments " I gained an opportunity to to make sense of the nature of thought processes in my mind. It enabled me to be aware of how the opponent process of integration and differentiation occurs as thoughts arose and dissolved into space.  " 2. Inquiring mindfulness (who am I) -how self is created moment by moment -the tools and methods by which I make meaning of myself -how heuristics influence the process of creating the self -vigilance (guard nature), sensitivity (by magnifying the scale of our sensory awarness it allows us to be be more familiar withe the experience) "content of our experience as a process than a static thing"-MEDBOOK BODYMeditation practice also improved my salience toward my body and as a result made me realize the ongoing nature of body1. Breathing awareness (numbering distractions)Breath as the most vital and energizing component of a living being is renewed every-moment. An opportunity to see how we create ourselves metabolically moment by moment2. Rooting experienceAllowed to see how different sensations occur in different body parts and their nature changed overtime T'AI CHI Ironical it may seem given that I come from a biology background I have not really been conscious of my body very much. Weight gain, appearence has been not much of a concern I NEVER REALISED how my body can be instrumental in focusing my mind unitll I begin to practice TC -certain movements (hip turns in TC walk, balance in white crane spread wings and ward offs) made me realize how my body is also changing movement by moment (one time it was easy the other times it wasn't) Being sensitive to your body and how it is stuated in space allowed me to easily bring my self to the present John's discriptions of the marshall arts aspect of movement and the need for coordinated and integrated acivity of body parts shows how they need to be in a certain way for maximals outcomes in body processesContemplation -how self unfolds within the context of the other -degree of interdependence of self and other (we cannot be apart from others and we always assimiliate otherness and also to accomodate others) -changing nature of our relationships, affection and emotions towards outside situations

Cognitive Science Just like our biological machinery (i.e process of evolution by natural selection) our cognitive machinery is arragned in a VIRTUAL ENGINE mechanism  virtual generators generate enabling constraints (increase probability of events) virtual governars that create selective constraints that reduce the probability of events. Opponent processing between these two levels is necessary According to the networking of the brain too an animal to be its most efficient be a machinery that is both general purpose and special purpose.This shows how procedurally oriented our intelligence mechanisms and our whole build up is.  We generalize by assimilating--> integration in to already existing cognitive frames (INTEGRATION)--> efficiency We specialize by accomodating--> creating new cognitive frames (DIFFERENTIATION)--> resiliency Opponent processing---> Both efficiency and Resiliency  Diagrams of neural networks SWN theory increases processing fluency by generating a machinery that is both resilient and efficient---> brain wiring also show how our brian is procedurally orient to generate insight through the process of complexification Reseearch:  Bekker-Sennette 1996 (cognitive leaping----> findng soluitons with fewer cues),  Navon's Letter experiment (H made up of Ls---> people who were driven up to gestalt level improvement in insight L hemisphere--> featural and R hemisphere---> gestalt),  Beckman et al 2012--> procedural knowledge thinking about the process/evalution effects Also when biking (gestalt/R) thinking (featural/L) lead to cognitive chockingResearch on self as a process: Brown & Ryan 2003: self as a process view is a healthier alternative to the most commonly held views of self as a static entity.  Mindfulness based realization that me is a constructed process and that self-esteem and related qualities are just mental activities playing on the screen of self awareness Ryan 1995: self is the integrative core of the person which entails ongoing activities of assimilation, accomodation and therfore self is both an inherent tendency (possibility) and a dynamic, synthetic process.

Procedural knowledge: know how to do a process, often impeded by verbalization Propositional knowledge: fact-based, claims 3rd kind of knowledge: PERSPECTIVAL (playing a role) integration of both self and other recreating identity developing mind-sight (helpful in insight problems solving in the social context as help to see how others do RR         Research: How mindfulness faciilitates the self-as process thinking Brown & Ryan 2003---> true pscyhological wellbeing occurs when one steps outside of the problelmatic framing of self as an unchanging image (self-esteem based self concept) Claxton 2000-->  "the chronically active self is disabled   

NEW432H1: What did you learn from this course?

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