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, relaxation, concentration, etc.
• Meditation vs. belief, esoteric, 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.
• Inverted Classroom: E-learning materials in TUWEL as preparations for regular meetings.
• Regular Meetings: Answering of questions, 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 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 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.

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 9 meetings with compulsary attendance are on Wednesday 10:00 c. t.-12:00.
• The first meeting is the preliminary meeting.
• The reserved dates for meditations are optional.
• Further meetings are listed in TUWEL.
• In the last week there is the final meeting in a slot to be chosen by you.
• Announcements are before the preliminary meeting in TISS, later in TUWEL.

 ECTS Breakdown

On average, students will have following efforts:

5 hours: Preparations, scientific work and/or presentation.
10 hours: Attending meetings.
60 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 20 min.).
2 points per meditation logged in the protocol (Meditations have fixed instructions and durations and they last approximately 1 h.).
Up to 5 points per meditation which was organized for a small group.
Up to 3 points for participation, self-assessment or reviews.
Up to 25 points for the presentation.
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”).

TISS registration is required but only a part of the course's signup. The TISS registration alone will not cause a certificate. The full signup procedure is described in the TUWEL document "Assignments".

No prior knowledge needed. It is not needed to have attended to A&M I 629.001 before.

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