Review: "Mindful Living for Peace and Happiness" at Sohum Yoga and Meditation Studio with Ajay Kapur

Each Thursday evening, Ajay Kapur offers a one-hour class with a title that I suspect is intriguing to most people: Mindful Living for Peace and Happiness. Who doesn’t want to live in peace and happiness? Ajay, co-owner of Sohum Yoga and Meditation Studio, brings a different theme to each class, though they all center around the basic practices of mindfulness and meditation.

This week, we began with “mindful stretching” while seated in a chair with our feet grounded on a folded blanket. Unlike some yoga poses, which may involve large, effort-full stretches of the limbs, during these exercises, small movements made all the difference. Mindful stretching and simple self-massage of the neck, shoulders, and spine released immense tension that had built up for all of us as a long pre-holiday week neared a close. Ajay helped us to simply bring awareness to these areas of tension (and, in turn, release), which we may not have consciously given attention to. Before transitioning to a period of seated meditation, we lay on our backs, supported by a blanket and pillow, with our legs resting up on the seat of a chair. In this position, we entered a longer, deeper experience of body mindfulness, scanning the body for sensations. A profound sense of calm pervaded my entire body.

For the remainder of class, we sat in guided meditation, which Ajay introduced by describing a compassion-based approach to meditation advocated by those like the Dalai Lama and practitioners of Tibetan-style meditation. While meditation functions to relax the individual and relieve him or her of anxiety, Ajay explained, one can also use it as a tool to cultivate the compassion that one shows toward oneself and others, thereby expanding meditation’s role beyond the individual.

Following Ajay’s verbal cues, we imagined a situation in which we felt anger (or another negative emotion) toward another human being. First, recognizing that a reaction based in anger hurts not only the other person, but ourselves, we silently extended compassion to ourselves by repeating “I will be loving to myself; I will be kind to myself; I will be gentle to myself.” Next, using the same phrases, we expressed compassion toward the other person, then to all human beings. Throughout the process, Ajay emphasized that compassion toward other humans begins with compassion toward oneself—a central principle of Tibetan Buddhist meditation. As class neared an end, he gave as an example how the Dalai Lama himself puts this belief into practice as a Tibetan living in political exile. Reflecting on our practice as we concluded class, one student shared how in her workplace, she regularly tries to extend compassion to her co-workers despite the strains of a very high-stress environment.

During this busy and demanding time of year, Mindful Living for Peace and Happiness was a useful and beautiful way to re-commit to the practice of compassion through guided meditation. This class is offered each Thursday evening at 7 p.m. at Sohum Yoga and Meditation Studio on Lyman Street in Westborough.