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

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

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

• Being more attentive and relaxed.
• Observe with less unconscious bias.
• Have more vitality and zest for life.
• Being 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.
• To integrate some meditations into their own life as needed.

Basics

• Instructions of meditations.
• Clarifications and differences between meditation, contemplation, concentration, trance, 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.
• Relaxation techniques (short meditations), 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.
• Inverted Classroom: E-learning materials in TUWEL as preparations for regular meetings.
• Regular Meetings: Answering of questions, discussions, polls etc.
• 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 also make a self-study of their progress using self-chosen criteria or scale.
• Written scientific work about meditation using the literature of current meditation research.
• Review of scientific work.
• Presentation of scientific work or/and own experiences of mediation on video and in meeting.
• Email: At any time questions can be asked via email, which will be answered directly or in the lecture.
• Social interactions: There will be opportunities for social interactions using a supervised TUWEL forum.
  In particular, in this forum students can offer and discuss the meditations organized by them.
• Feedback: After every deadline the lecturer will provide feedback and current scores via TUWEL.
  It is possible to book a feedback discussion with the lecturer at any time in TUWEL, if capacity allows.
• Final talk: After the last submission there is a compulsory final talk in which students present their protocol.
  In this talk the lecturer will check if students actually did the meditations as written in the protocol.

Positioning

“Awareness and Meditation” gives students the opportunity to:

• Get to know meditation and to integrate it in 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.

Meetings

The meetings are on Wednesday 09:00 c. t.-11:00.
The first meeting is the preliminary talk.
Announcements are in the beginning via TISS, later in TUWEL.

 ECTS Breakdown

On average, students will have following efforts:

5 hours: Preparations, scientific work and/or presentation, and the final talk.
10 hours: Attending lectures.
60 hours: Meditations.

= 75 hours (3 ECTS)

The lecturer will issue a certificate to every student who got points from a protocol submitted before the first deadline.
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 meditation logged in the protocol (Meditations have fixed instructions and durations and they last approximately 1 h.).
3 points per meditation which was organized for a small group.
Up to 3 points for participation, self-assessment or reviews.
Up to 10 points for the presentation.
Up to 25 points for the written scientific work.

Precondition to be allowed to the final talk is to have scored 100 points; at least half of which must originate from meditations.
If the final talk 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 the registration in TISS does not work or there are questions, please write an email to markus.raab@complang.tuwien.ac.at.

No prior knowledge needed.

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