Category: workbook

This workbook is structured around RAFT’s four goals. Each goal contains chapters exploring key concepts and practices. Most chapters include:

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Practice 1 – A map to navigate our journey:
Introducing the RAFT framework

How do we cross the waters from danger to safety? Gotama Buddha suggested that we need to build a raft – a vessel we skilfully construct using whatever materials are available to us.

Welcome!

Taking this step, opening this workbook, shows you have courage, and a deep longing for change. If you are struggling with addiction, harmful compulsions or patterns that cause suffering, know that you are not alone, and that a path towards freedom and genuine wellbeing exists.

This RAFT to Recovery workbook has been designed to be your practical guide and companion on that journey. It draws on the profound wisdom of early Buddhist teachings, in particular the core insights that Gotama – the man we now know as the Buddha – life’s, pain, difficulties and disappointments, as experienced by himself and for others.

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Practice 3 – The Foundational Planks of Our Raft: Commitment to harmlessness

Laying a Groundwork of Kindness

As we begin the first stage of our journey – Recognising ‘What It Is To Be Human’ – we start by laying an essential foundation. Before we delve deeply into the complexities of human suffering and the specifics of our addictive patterns, it’s incredibly helpful to establish a baseline commitment to harmlessness. This commitment, embodied in what Buddhism calls the Five Precepts, is not about imposing rigid rules, but about cultivating awareness of how our actions impact ourselves and others, and consciously choosing to minimise harm. This ethical awareness forms the very foundation of our RAFT to Recovery. In many ways, these five gifts can be considered an original harm reduction programme.

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Practice 4 – Recognising that life can be painful, difficult and disappointing. 

Surveying the terrain of the dangerous shore : facing reality with clarity

Having established a commitment to harmlessness with the Five Gifts (Precepts) – the essential foundational planks for our RAFT to Recovery – we now turn our attention more directly to Stage One of our journey: Recognising what it is to be human. 

This involves taking an honest, clear-eyed look at the fundamental nature of our experience. Before we can effectively build our raft and navigate away from the dangerous shore of addiction and compulsion, we need to understand the terrain we are standing on and the currents we will be navigating.

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Practice 5 – The Heart’s response to difficulty: The first rope that binds our RAFT

Meeting suffering with compassion

In the previous chapter, we began Stage One of our journey, Recognising what it is to be human – by confronting the first Reality: the inherent difficulty, unsatisfactoriness, and pain that are part of our conditioned existence. We surveyed the challenging terrain of the ‘dangerous shore’ we wish to leave behind. Recognising this reality clearly is essential preparation for building our RAFT to Recovery.

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Practice 6 – Mindfulness of body: Meeting life where it happens 

The Island of Grounding Mindfulness 

This chapter is an overview of the First Foundation of Mindfulness, as outlined by Gotama. Traditionally, the four foundations of mindfulness are: mindfulness of body, feeling-tones, mind, and processes. We will present these as the Four Anchors of Mindfulness that ultimately stabilise our raft and provide safety and security on our journey.

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Practice 7 – Mindfulness of Breathing: Gathering Awareness

The first Anchor for our raft

Following our arrival on the Island of Grounding Mindfulness, our first destination on our RAFT journey, we looked at mindfulness of the body as the primary field for recognising the nature of our existence. We now delve into the first, most fundamental, and universally accessible practice within this domain: mindfulness of breathing. This practice forms a core aspect of mindfulness training, helping us explore the nature of our direct experience, including its impermanence, and begin to sit with the discomfort that is part of life, without immediately needing to escape it. It forms a cornerstone of mindfulness training and is an essential skill, a sound anchor, we collect as we continue constructing our RAFT to Recovery.

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Practice 8 – Mindfulness of the Body: Mindfulness of Posture

Recognising the shape of our experience

Knowing how we are

Having established Mindfulness of Breathing –  the first lens of mindfulness of the body – we continue exploring the First Anchor of Mindfulness, by turning our attention to Mindfulness of Posture. This practice is the second lens that connects us with our bodies and involves simply knowing, clearly and directly, the position of our bodies as we move through life.

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Practice 9 – Mindfulness of the Body: Mindfulness with Clear Comprehension

The skilful navigation of our raft

Building upon our foundational awareness of breath and posture, we now delve deeper into our First Anchor of Mindfulness – Mindfulness of the Body – through the lens of clear comprehension. 

While related, a distinction does exist between present moment awareness and clear comprehension. Clear comprehension goes further by incorporating our motivations and the ethical nature of our actions (which includes the Five Gifts). Clear comprehension is an awareness with deeper understanding and wisdom, involving an awareness of our actions, intentions, and their appropriateness – a knowing of our internal and external landscapes. 

“To be mindful means to be aware of what is happening in the present moment without judging or reacting. This awareness helps us to identify the roots of our suffering, including addiction, and to transform it with compassion.”

Thich Nhat Hanh

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Practice 10 – Mindfulness of the body: its reality and composition

Understanding the true nature of our physicality

Continuing our exploration of mindfulness of the body, in the service of Recognising what it Is to be human, and building upon Mindfulness of Breath, Posture, and Clear comprehension, we now engage with a deeper, sometimes challenging, aspect of body awareness: Mindfulness of the reality of the body. This traditionally includes the practice known as mindfulness of the ‘unattractiveness’ or ‘foulness’ of the body; through the lens of what Gotama presented as thirty-two constituent parts – its ‘bits and bobs’.

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