After successful completion of the course, students are able to...

• describe basics of meditations,
• reproduce instructions of meditations, and
• meditate alone and in groups.

Social skills and personal competences.
Successful completion of the course can enable students to:

• Be more attentive and relaxed.
• Observe with less unconscious bias.
• Have more vitality and zest for life.
• Be better able to share their own experiences.
• Understand themselves better.
• Be more aware and sensible of their needs, the needs of their body, and the needs of others.
• Integrate meditations into their own life as needed.

Basics

• Instructions of meditations.
• Clarifications and differences between meditation, contemplation, concentration, etc.
• Meditation vs. belief, esoteric, religion, etc.

Additional

• Organization and practical aspects for meditations.
• Background and context how meditations were designed.
• Modern translations and interpretations of traditional texts.

Practice

• Requirements for meditations.
• Preparations and (non-)doing of meditations.
• Potential risks while doing meditations.
• Short meditations as well as relaxation techniques, e.g., before presentations.
• Impact of awareness on the body/mind.
• Self-inquiry.
• Group sharing.

• Meditation in meetings, online, with guests, in groups or alone.
  Meditation in groups is self-organized and has following steps:
1. Preparation and repeating of instructions.
2. Meditation as individual experience.
3. Sharing about experience with self-inquiry.
• Regular Meetings: Answering of questions, group work, polls etc.
• Inverted Classroom: E-learning materials in TUWEL as preparations for regular meetings.
• Protocol: Students keep a protocol of all their meditations.
  There are monthly deadlines at which the protocol must be submitted.
  The protocol contains for each meditation:
• Date; time; score; which meditation; which group.
• If and how the meditation was organized.
• Students optionally make a self-study of their progress using self-chosen criteria or scale.
• Feedback: After every deadline the lecturer will provide feedback and current scores via TUWEL.
• Questions: At any time questions can be asked via TUWEL forums or protocols, which will be answered directly or in the meetings.
• Social interactions: There are opportunities for social interactions using a supervised TUWEL forum.
  In particular, in this forum students can offer and discuss the meditations organized by them.
• Final meeting: After the last submission there is a compulsory final meeting in which students present their protocol.
  In this meeting the lecturer will check if students actually did the meditations as written in the protocol.

Optional:

• Facilitation of meditations: as part of the protocol or instead of the protocol.
• Written scientific work about meditation using the literature of current meditation research.
• Review of scientific work.

• The 8 meetings with compulsary attendance are on Wednesday 10:00 c. t.-12:00.
• The first meeting 02.10.2024 is the preliminary meeting.
• Further meetings are listed only in TUWEL in several formats.
• For the final meeting you choose a 30 minute slot.
• Announcements before the preliminary meeting are in TISS, afterwards only in TUWEL.

Positioning

“Awareness and Meditation” gives students the opportunity to:

• Get to know meditation and to integrate it into their life.
• Find balance from the challenges of the daily university life.
• Learn more about themselves and exploring better ways to deal with issues in their lives.

“Awareness and Meditation” has nothing to do with:

• Medical or psychological treatment or therapy.
• Belief, life coaching, religion or esotericism.
• Gurus, etc.

 ECTS Breakdown

On average, students will have following efforts:

3.5 hours: Preparations for meetings.
8.5 hours: Attending meetings.
63 hours: Meditations.

= 75 hours (3 ECTS)

The lecturer will issue a certificate to every student who got points (see Assignments document in TUWEL).
The scores are:

1 point per short meditation logged in the protocol (Short meditations do not have fixed durations. During the term their minimal length will be increased from 3 min to 30 min.).
2 points per full meditation logged in the protocol (Meditations have fixed instructions and durations and they last approximately 1 h.).
Up to 3 points for participation, self-assessment or reviews.
Up to 8 points per meditation which was organized for a group.
Up to 25 points for the written scientific work.

Precondition to be allowed to the final meeting is to

1. have been prepared and present to all meetings (or to be properly excused in the protocol),
2. have submitted each protocol, and
3. have scored 100 points; at least half of which must originate from meditations.

If the final meeting was successfully completed, the grade is derived from the obtained score:

Grade 4: ≥ 100 points (“Genügend”).
Grade 3: ≥ 125 points (“Befriedigend”).
Grade 2: ≥ 150 points (“Gut”).
Grade 1: ≥ 175 points (“Sehr gut”).

If you want the alternative tracks:

1. only facilitation of meditations (attendance only in the workshop, without protocol), or
2. only access to TUWEL, without attending to meetings and without certificate

please additionally register in the appropriate group in TISS.

If the registration in TISS does not work or there are questions, please write an email to markus.raab@tuwien.ac.at.

No prior knowledge needed.

Prerequisite is good physical and mental condition.
Otherwise contact markus.raab@tuwien.ac.at before registration.