7 January 2014

my vegan cooking and meditation club

→ Deutsche Version des Artikels gibt's unten! ←

I am trying a mixed German/English post here and I am not a diligent translator, so only the key facts are the same in both versions and the narration/motivation is half English, half German. Feel free to read however much you understand or want to read. ;-)

I've participated in my friend's meditation meetups every week since I came back to Berlin. (Today is the first time that I skip it, because of the parallel LYL Berlin meetup.) I also feel the desire to contribute to the world by offering or organizing meditation or self-help groups. And additionally I have the desire to meet new people and cook together, and get to know each other to possibly do other stuff together. 

So this week I decided to bring it all together and organize a combined cooking - meditation - dinner - socializing event. The idea is simple: I want to give myself and others an occasion to exchange in a relaxed and social manner, but also provide a common theme: we are all interested in cooking and meditation. Also, I find that meditating together creates a nice, tranquil atmosphere by making people more open for others. (This way, we don't need alcohol as an ice breaker ;-) We could even add a listening meditation in one of the later meetups. 

Here's a sample schedule for such an event:
6 pm: people arrive and start cooking. if too many are in the kitchen, others can just sit on the couch and chat over tea.
around 7:30 pm: when the meal is prepared and the table is set, we keep the food warm and close the doors for 20 minutes of group meditation. Then we silently walk to the dining room, do some waiting meditation for people to fill their plates, and then 15 minutes of eating meditation. Then the social part of the evening begins!

That's the end of the English part!

Random picture of delicious vegan food to make this more viral on the social networks :-P

Also hier nochmal auf Deutsch, zuerst die Idee: nur wegen einer kurzen Meditation eine lange Reise durch Berlin zu einem Treffen zu machen, kostet vielen zu viel Zeit. Aber für eine lange Meditation am Abend bin ich persönlich meist zu müde. Deswegen habe ich mir einen Kompromiss ausgedacht: verbinden wir eine kurze Meditation mit einem Kochabend und zur Krönung des Ganzen noch einer Genuss-Meditation beim Essen! Danach sind wir dann nicht nur satt, sondern auch im Geiste erholt und können den Abend gemütlich ausklingen lassen.

Hier ist ein beispielhafter Terminvorschlag (je nach Wochentag/Wochenende bzw. den Teilnehmern anzupassen):
18:00 Uhr Gäste trudeln ein und wir beginnen zu kochen. Wer in der Küche nicht gebraucht wird, darf auch gern einfach bei einem Tee auf der Couch sitzen und mit anderen plauschen (die vielleicht ihren Teil des Essens schon fertig zubereitet haben). Dadurch muss niemand pünktlich sein und jeder kann kommen, wann er eben kommt.

so gegen 19:00 Uhr: wenn das Essen fertig ist und der Tisch gedeckt, stellen wir es warm und verschließen die Tür. (Jetzt kann niemand mehr hinzukommen, damit wir in Ruhe meditieren können.)
Wir machen ca. 20 Minuten Meditation in der Gruppe (z.B. zwei verschiedene Übungen à 10 Minuten). Gleich im Anschluss und ohne zwischendurch die Edle Stille zu verlassen, nehmen wir uns Essen, warten bis alle am Tisch sind und machen dann 15 Minuten Genuss-Meditation beim Essen. Dann können wir zu reden beginnen während wir fertig essen und fließend in den sozialen Teil übergehen.

1 comments:

Robert Jack Wild said...

I was very excited when we actually organized and realized the first evening event according to this plan last week. There was one friend and three strangers who found us via a post in a Facebook group (Vegans in Berlin and some similar groups). It was very nice and some moments felt like we'd all be friends already.
I liked it so much that I would love to the same or slightly modified event one evening in every week of my life :-)

Since there is lots of organizational work to do in the beginning (when there is no stable group of people who meet regularly) and I do not like organizational work at all, I decided to use some motivation technique to make me do what's necessary to keep up this great new tradition.

So I want to write a short comment here on this post for every dinner meditation event that we had. I think, this time I might have been too excited and happy to really be in the moment, so that alone is reason to organize a follow-up and feel how each event is different and unique in its way.

We'll continue to advertise the event to relevant online groups and in our own circles of friends. But my vision is that one day, everything will just flow without any advertisement or public explanations because people start coming regularly and bringing their friends. And many people who meet here will become friends...

Enough motivation for this time, on to the org work!

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