Live a More Mindful Life

Welcome to this Reflect-Learn-Grow Introduction to Mindfulness Course! My name is Billy Lahr, and I will be your guide through this introductory course. I'm so grateful that you’re here, and I'm excited to get started.

Learning to meditate is one of the most powerful and impactful things you can do for your own personal mental health and well-being.

And that’s not just me saying that! Time and time again, research and clinical trials show that mindfulness has physical, mental, and emotional benefits. Not only that, but mindfulness has the ability to rewire our brain to help us be more present, curious, open, compassionate, aware, and non-judgmental.

In this video we're going to go over how to sit during our meditations. It’s a common question, so it’s important that we take a quick look at this before we dive into our first meditation.

Now from society and movies we get a lot of images of of what a “good meditator” looks like.

And usually, when we see meditation in the movies or on social media, they're doing some sort of funky yoga pose or full lotus posture.

But, I'm here to tell you that you don't have to do any funky yoga positions to practice mindfulness.

Mindfulness is really more about something we're doing with our mind rather than something we're doing with our body.

Hello, and welcome to our first mindfulness practice of this course. In this video we're going to cover the foundation of how to get prepared for our meditation practice.

So let us begin by getting into a comfortable position, either sitting in a chair in a dignified posture with your back away from the back of the chair, chest proud, feet flat on the floor, and hands wherever they’re most comfortable. Or, if you prefer, you can lie on the floor with your feet uncrossed, falling away from each other, arms at your side.

Finding alignment in the spine, lengthening the spine, and relaxing the shoulders.

Find the natural rhythm of your breath, taking in the air through the nose and filling your belly with that air, and on each exhale, letting the air pass through the nostrils gently while softening the belly. Using these breaths to quiet the mind by just focusing on each inhale and each exhale, allowing yourself to simply just be.

And as you breathe, please bring kind awareness to:

*why you chose this meditation.

*how your belly, chest, and head each feel during this meditation.

*the emotions that arise during this meditation.

*the positive or negative narratives you tell yourself during this meditation.

*the fact that many others may be experiencing similar thoughts, feelings, and emotions as you may experience during this meditation.

*how you might feel with having increased awareness.

*when you can apply this increased awareness in your day-to-day life.