Wellness through Mindfulness

Week 1 : Introduction to Mindfulness

Through your own experience you’ll begin to explore what it means to be fully engaged in the present moment via ordinary things, like the body, the breath, sounds and sensations. You’ll be introduced to mindful eating and mindful breathing. And in this first session, you will become familiar with the working of autopilot and how to identify it in your life.

Foundations of Mindfulness

Over the next eight weeks, you will be developing a strong foundation of mindfulness. Jon Kabat-Zinn defines mindfulness as "the awareness that unfolds as we pay attention, on purpose, in the present moment." It’s cliché to say it, but the past is gone, and the future has not yet arrived. From that point of view, the present moment is the only time any of us has for perceiving, learning, growing, and healing. It is from the awareness born noticing what’s happening right now, that we have the chance to recognize and respond more proactively and effectively to the challenges and demands of everyday life. What we are learning and you will experience for yourself, is that when we are fully aware of the present, we’re better equipped to take control of your life. We are relearning to focus on one thing at a time to harness that power.

From the beginning, we will focus on ways of integrating mindfulness into your life through formal and informal mindfulness practice. "Formal" practice is the time during the day that we set aside to meditate—by practicing a sitting meditation, for example.

"Informal" practice is all the other moments of your day during which we can intentionally focus your attention on the details of your lives—when taking a shower, preparing a meal, speaking with your children and partners, participating in a business meeting, or driving the car are all occasions for being awake and aware. For example, staying in the car—body and mind—while driving, rather than having your bodies in the car and your mind in the office rehearsing what we’re going to say in a meeting. During this topic, you will learn to practice the Awareness of the Breath Meditation as a means of becoming familiar with and cultivating awareness (or mindfulness) of the body and using your breath as an anchor to the present.

From this point of view, no matter what challenges you are facing or physical conditions you may be experiencing, “there is more right with you than wrong with you,” as Jon Kabat-Zinn says. Likewise, experience shows that the challenges and difficulties you are facing are workable. This has nothing to do with liking these situations or "reframing" them in some fake or insincere way. Rather, it is a perspective that reflects your natural ability to solve problems creatively. This often sleeping genius lives within each of us and can be woken up through the practice of mindfulness.

Questions for Reflection and Journaling

Take a moment to reflect on the following journaling prompts. When ready, turn to your preferred journaling method—whether that is pen and paper, a word doc, or an online tool—to record your responses to the upcoming questions.

• What is your intention for this course?

• What drew you to this program?

Mindfulness is a state that can be cultivated in which one is aware of one’s present experience and responds to this experience in a non-judgmental and non-reactive way. The practice of mindfulness often leads to a sense of balance and psychological well-being. To cultivate mindfulness, you don’t need to try to create any particular state of mind such as relaxation or focus. Instead, your task is to simply become aware of each thought, feeling, or sensation as it arises in the present moment and to let each thought, sensation, or feeling pass away without judgment, attachment, analysis or criticism. While this is a simple practice, it can be both challenging and transformative. Our usual mode of doing involves replaying scenes from our past and planning for our future. Mindfulness is a tool for training our mind to be fully present with our experiences as they are happening, so we can leverage both the being and doing mode as our bodies were designed. The below meditation will lead you through the process you’ll practice again and again throughout the course.

During your meditation practices you will be guiding your mind toward increased awareness and compassion for yourself, so you don’t want to begin your practices feeling distracted, uncomfortable or in unnecessary pain. Therefore, the first step of your practice is finding a comfortable position. As with most things in life, there’s no one-size-fits-all, so for the purposes of this course, we’ll look at variations in sitting and lying down postures. I encourage you to explore these options at the beginning of each practice session seeing what’s most appropriate for your body, as your needs may change from day to day.

Our mindfulness practice begins with a very common activity: eating. To fully participate, here you'll need: a table, a chair, and two or three raisins.

In our mindful eating practice; you’re being asked to look at a familiar thing or object in a new way. I’ll guide you through thisfirst mindfulness practice, which will involve you becoming more familiar with a very familiar object, a raisin.

Questions for Reflection and Journaling

Take a moment to reflect on the following journaling prompts. When you’re ready, turn to your preferred journaling method—whether that is pen and paper, a word doc, or an online tool—to record your responses to the following questions. You can write or draw, whatever is most appropriate for you.

• What was your experience of eating with so much focused attention on a single object?

• What was your expectation of eating the raisin and the actual experience of eating the raisin?

• What, if anything, surprised you about this practice?

• Were there elements of this practice that you found challenging, difficult, or easy?

The term 'automatic pilot' describes a state of mind in which one acts without conscious intention or awareness of present-moment sensory perception. The defining feature of being on autopilot is that your awareness of the present moment is clouded.

We will now do a formal mindfulness meditation, the Awareness of the Breath Sitting Meditation. This practice will begin to help you establish a relationship with your breath by helping you become familiar with the subtler parts of yourself. Be sure to have a mat or blanket to lie down on and about ten minutes during which you will not be disturbed (you might want to turn off your cell phone).

Questions for Reflection and Journaling

Before we move one, we would like you to take a moment to reflect back on your experience during Week One. Please reflect on your experience doing ordinary activities mindfully (eating and breathing) and in some ways differently.

• What was this experience like for you?

• Was anything surprising? Difficult?

• Did you notice thoughts and/or emotions during the practice?

At the end of each week, we will review the themes presented and the home practice for the following five days of the week. As already mentioned, I recommend that you complete the online weekly topics within one day, and then use the remaining six days of the week for home practice. This is only a recommendation. In the end, you’re responsible for organizing your practice time in a way that suits your life. Please create a schedule and a system that is sustainable for you. I invite you to think of arranging your time as a part of the practice with you intentionally deciding how best to integrate this course into your life for the next eight weeks.

This week we reviewed postures, so you can find a position that is most suited for your body. We did a mindful-eating Raisin Meditation practice as a way to prepare us to look at autopilot and its impact on our lives. Then we closed with an Awareness of the Breath Sitting Meditation practice. Now let’s go over the weekly homework assignments.

Home Practice Assignments for Week One

Here’s the home practice for Week One:

• Formal practice: Following the downloadable audio or video online, follow the Awareness of the Breath Sitting Meditation, twice daily for 6 of 7 days (A link to free downloadable recording is in resources.)

• Informal practice: Mindful awareness of ordinary things ( eating, brushing teeth, taking a shower, washing dishes, cutting veggies, etc.): carry out one routine thing paying special attention to the details of doing it.

As a reminder, don’t forget to find time in the day dedicated to practicing. Make changes to your schedule to support practice: maybe going to bed earlier, so you can get up earlier, perhaps negotiating with your family for time alone. As you progress through the week, notice how it is for you to integrate moments of mindfulness into your daily activities? What are some of those activities? How would you describe your attention (focused, unfocused, fuzzy, foggy, clear, etc.)? Does your deliberate attention to these moments alter your experience in any way? If so, how?

Congratulations on completing Week One.

Week 2: Mind-Body Connection

This week’s practices will ask you to explore the body. We will investigate the mind-body connection. You will learn to use the Body Scan Meditation to cultivate a greater degree of awareness of how powerfully the body influences thoughts and thought influences the body.

W2 T1 – Week Two Overview

This week, you will continue to develop the mindfulness skills you began to build in Week One. You will expand the awareness of breathing either in a standing, sitting posture or laying down doing the Body Scan Meditation. In addition to these formal practices, you’ll continue to expand your informal practice of bringing mindfulness into our daily life.

You will also begin the process of looking into an important element taught in this program, you'll be asked to explore in your own life. You may find that, much of the time, your perceptions about a situation are a strong factor in determining the outcome of the situation. Most of your perceptions are “conditioned,” that is to say based on past experiences rather than what is actually happening in the moment.

Since your perception of the present moment is often based on the past, it is often inaccurate. And your reactions may be inappropriate for the situation in which you find yourself. And you don’t even realize it. But through your practice and overtime, you can start to notice that it is how you perceive and react to difficult situations that cause stress, and typically not the event, person or situation itself.

You will practice expanding the awareness and ability to see what is present in life so you can investigate and explore how you are reacting or responding to these things. Cultivating this valuable life-skill, you can begin learning how to interrupt conditioned, automatic reactions and assert more choice in our lives.

We will now move to the Body Scan Meditation. In this practice, I will be guiding you to direct your attention to various parts of the body. It is easy to become disconnected from the body, unable to recognize its sensations when they are occurring. And as a consequence, you often miss important signals from the body. You are now going to begin learning how to become attentive and present to these sensations. This practice will begin the process of cultivating your ability to be aware of and present to what is occurring in the body moment by moment.

There are those who have experienced trauma in the body and likewise fall asleep as the focus arrives at certain points of the body. There is wisdom in the body. Don’t judge yourself. Notice it. That’s the practice, really. Sometimes the body shuts down or suppresses sensations to protect you. Notice what is happening, in the moment, and then see what you notice over time. This too is the practice.

This example hints at why the results of this practice are not the same for everybody. While there will certainly be similarities in our experiences of mindfulness training, none of our experiences will be exactly the same. So our understanding of ourselves as we continually evolve and unfold will also be unique to each of us. The invitation is again to notice the experience with curiosity.

Make sure you have the time to focus your attention on what you sense during practice and are in a space where you will not be disturbed. Before you begin, please be sure to have your mat or blanket ready and perhaps a blanket to cover your body and, if need be, a small pillow or rolled-up blanket to support your head. You'll need about 20-30 minutes of uninterrupted time. I recommend lying down for this exercise; but please take the posture that is correct for you and your body. Also, set aside some time after the practice to reflect on the questions below.

Questions for Reflection and Journaling

Take a moment to reflect on the following journaling prompts. Gathering whatever materials you have chosen for journaling, record your responses to the upcoming questions.

• During the Body Scan Meditation, what did you notice?

• What was your experience with sensations in the body while you practiced the Body Scan Meditation?

• Were you aware of any “mind states” such as agitation, confusion, lack of focus, attentiveness, etc. during this practice?

• Did you notice any emotions during the various phases of the Body Scan Meditation? If so, were these emotions connected to any parts or regions of the body?

Awareness allows you to experience the world directly, as it is, rather than through the filter of past experience, education or environment. It supports you being more creative in finding solutions, more easeful and less vulnerable to stress. It changes the perspective from which you see things and in doing so changes your experience of them. Your body is the central to connecting with this new and different perspective.

Continuing our exploration of formal mindfulness practices, let's move directly into the sitting practice. Please have all of your materials (yoga mat, cushion, chair, or blanket) available to make this transition smoother and easier for you.

Finally, if you care to, see what it is like to begin paying attention to thoughts and emotions that may be present. Everything that is arising is natural and normal. In fact, very useful lessons may be available to you as you become increasingly attentive to whatever is coming up for you.

Please make whatever arrangements are necessary to ensure you have the space and time to complete these practices. A few brief reflection questions follow the sitting meditation. We encourage you to take the time to reflect on your experience and gain the insight and wisdom available to you from inquiring along your journey.

Questions for Reflection and Journaling

Take a moment to reflect on the following journaling prompts. When ready, turn to your preferred journaling method—whether that is pen and paper, a word doc, or an online tool—to record your responses to the upcoming questions.

• What about your experience with the sitting meditation—what was that like?

• Immediately following the sitting practice, what did you notice about the condition of your body?

• What did you notice about the condition of your mind?

• During and following the practice, what are you noticing about the quality of your attention?

During the week, notice how many times you can touch base with the breath: as you are working, talking, driving. Ask yourself, “What do I notice right now about the condition of the body? What do I notice about the condition of the mind? What do I notice about the quality of the intentions?” See what there is to be known and learned from your ally, the breath.

Home Practice Assignments for Week Two

Building on the work you did last week, again using the audio or video provided, here’s the home practice for Week Two:

• Formal practice: Body Scan Meditation twice daily for 6 of 7 days

• Formal practice: Body and Breath Meditation, to be practiced twice daily for 6 of 7 days.

Informal practice: Mindful awareness of ordinary things (mindful eating, brushing teeth, taking a shower, washing dishes, cutting veggies, etc.): with full awareness carry out a different activity from last week.

Exercise: Try exploring and solving the 9 Dots Puzzle. The task is to connect up all nine dots with four straight lines, without lifting the pencil off the page and without retracing over any of the lines. The invitation is to pay special attention to how you respond to the puzzle.

Congratulations on completing Week Two.

Week 3: Perception

This week, you’ll practice distinct yet another interrelated mindfulness practices—Mindful Movement Meditation and Breath and Body Meditation. You will discover that there is both pleasure and power in being present—you’ll directly attend to and investigate how your experiences create reactions like pleasure or discomfort in the mind and body.

W3 T1 – Week Three Overview

This week, you’ll be introduced to a sequence of Mindful Movements immediately followed by Body and Breath Meditation practice. I invite you to follow the Mindful Movement Meditation and Body and Breath Meditation one after the other as one flowing experience during the home practice for this week.

The next group of meditations introduces you to an extended practice. The first meditation will describe and introduce Mindful Movement Meditation, then the Body and Breath Meditation will follow in one continuous flow.

As always, be sure you have the materials you will need for the movement practice and the sitting meditation that follows.

Questions for Reflection and Journaling

Please reflect on your experience with the Mindful Movement Meditation. Noticing how you relate to these sensations. Are you easeful? Do you find yourself trying to ‘do’ something? Are you over-cautious? See if you can explore all the ways that you relate to the movements. Notice ease, tightness, tension or anything else that arises, instead of judging your experience, explore it.

• What are you noticing about the body? Is this new, surprising, familiar? Explore.

• What, if anything, can you say about the relationship between thoughts, emotions, and bodily sensations?

• What are you noticing as you become more familiar with the Body and Breath Meditation?

You practiced the Body and Breath Meditation all of last week, take a moment to reflect on that experience. Many people report that the Body and Breath Meditation feels different after the Mindful Movement Meditation. Is that true for you? You may choose to separate the practices, if you do what is that like? If one day you do the combined practice and another you do them separately, how do they compare?

Life events don’t have a universal meaning. Instead, it’s your interpretation of life’s events that dictates how you feel. Since all events are up for interpretation, a given life experience could cause you to feel one of many different ways. But first you need to slow down enough to notice your assumptions. In this way, you can understand the impact of thoughts on daily life. Choosing your narrative may be one of the greatest skills you can develop in life. Developing mindfulness helps you notice when your automatic responses are kicking in. It creates space between events and your reactions.

The Three-Minute Breathing Space is a mini meditation for the purpose of stepping out of automatic pilot and reconnecting with the present moment experience. This practice can be very useful when negative thought patterns arise, attempting to push you into a downward spiral of emotional reactivity.

This week you were introduced to the Combined Mindful Movement and Body and Breath Meditation. Then you looked at how perception shapes experience. You were given the Breathing Space Meditation, a tool to steady your mind and emotions when you are stressed and are also most likely to forget to use your newfound skill.

Home Practice Assignments for Week Three

This week's home practices are designed to begin to weave an enhanced awareness even more into your daily life. Again asking that you follow the three below practices twice daily for 6 of 7 days. Building on the work you did last week here’s the home practice for Week Three:

• Formal practice: Combined Mindful Movement and Body and Breath Meditation, to be practiced twice daily for 6 of 7 days.

• Formal practice: A Breathing Space Meditation, to be practiced twice daily for 6 of 7 days

There was no right or wrong way of doing this. The idea is rather to simply notice each of these movements and moments. Noticing enables you to dissolve habits that have developed over time because through your awareness you are able to see habitual things again. This gives you the option to do the same things differently and from a new perspective.

Congratulations on completing Week Three. Now you are ready to begin the home practices.

Week 4: Exploring the Unwanted

Weeks One through Three were designed to assist you in becoming increasingly familiar with the body, to strengthen and stabilize the mind, and to get increasingly aware of the body-mind connection. This week marks the halfway point in the course. We will continue to hone our skill of relating to difficult moments, events, or situations, whether external or internal, and to expand our understanding of mindfulness as a means of reducing the negative effects of stress.

This week the invitation is to pay attention to the places where you might be stuck in repeating, unhealthy patterns that you may now disarm through mindful awareness. You will also learn how to apply mindfulness at the critical moment when you experience a physical sensation, intense emotion, or condition, with special attention to exploring the effect of reactivity. We’ll look into what reactivity is later in the lesson.

W4 T1 – Week Four Overview

Our on-going practice of mindfulness continues with our growing capacity to be aware of whatever is arising in the present moment—the wanted and unwanted—without judgment or maybe noticing the judging itself. Noticing without the immediate need to make anything happen. We’ll look at our tendency to automatically react to stress and ways that we can respond with awareness more effectively, more directly and more unconditionally—addressing both internal and external demands that we face everyday of our lives. The daily informal mindfulness practice for this week will focus on the importance of observing and integrating mindfulness into even more areas of your everyday life.

Our on-going practice of mindfulness continues with our growing capacity to be aware of whatever is arising in the present moment—the wanted and unwanted—without judgment or maybe noticing the judging itself. Noticing without the immediate need to make anything happen. We’ll look at our tendency to automatically react to stress and ways that we can respond with awareness more effectively, more directly and more unconditionally—addressing both internal and external demands that we face everyday of our lives. The daily informal mindfulness practice for this week will focus on the importance of observing and integrating mindfulness into even more areas of your everyday life.

In this topic we are building on your experience, introducing yet another way of coping with stress. In the same spirit of being with what is, we’ll do another formal practice, the Sound and Thoughts Meditation. It has two parts: receiving and noticing. Receiving sound we are able to notice the qualities of the sound: tone, pitch, pattern, duration. Then by noticing sounds we can observe the labels, judgments, stories, memories, like and dislikes we assign to sound. We can also sense and take note of the emotions that are associated with our experience of sound.

Questions for Reflection and Journaling

• What do you notice during the Sound and Thought Meditation?

• Did you notice anything entering and leaving awareness?

• Did you sense thoughts, emotions, and physical sensations? Together? Separately?

• Can you relate to thoughts in the same way you relate to sound?

• How was the experience? Surprising? Enjoyable? Aversive?

• Are you learning anything new about yourself through this experience?

The stress response, or “fight or flight” response is the emergency reaction system of the body. It is there to keep you safe in emergencies. But the stress response can work against you if left unchecked. It can get triggered when you don’t really need it. It can turn on when you are just thinking about past or future events.

As Week Four comes to a close, let's revisit some of the themes we have explored, and then review the recommended home practice for the week that follows. This week we practiced the Sound and Thought Meditation followed by exploring stress reactivity. We unpacked how the body automatically responded to perceived threats. Then you explored your own reactivity through the Turning Toward Meditation, as a way of getting next to and noticing your own reactive patterns. From these very different perspectives you may have begun to notice how you habitually react to stress and how the body is a natural stress detector.

Home Practice Assignments for Week Four

This week’s home practices are designed to continue to hone our skills of bringing expanded awareness to every moment of our day and looking at new ways we can integrate mindfulness into our daily lives.

As always these meditations should all be practiced twice daily, six days out of seven days. This week, the meditations are practiced in sequence, effectively rolled into one longer practiced:

• Formal practice: the Sound and Thought Meditation immediately followed by the Mindful Movement Meditation, to be practiced twice daily for 6 of 7 days.

• Formal practice: Body Scan Meditation, to be practiced twice daily for 6 of 7 days.

• Formal practice: A short Breathing Space Meditation, to be practiced twice daily for 6 of 7 days.

Now that you’ve become familiar with the Breathing Space Meditation you can use it anytime you feel pressure. With practice you will find you can call on the breathing space whenever you need it. The breath is always with you.

We’ve already arrived at the end of Week Four. Can you believe it? Congratulations!

Week 5: Creative Responding

In Weeks Five and Six we will continue to build on your understanding of stress. We will also look at the ways we are conditioned to react habitually and often ineffectively to stress. Over the course of the upcoming weeks we will explore skillful ways to lessen this reactivity by applying mindfulness as a way to see more clearly, understand situations more fully, and act wiser.

We begin that process by continuing to look at how our conditioning and perception shape our experience, and also begin to discuss stress and our reaction to stress in a more overt, explicit manner. I can’t emphasize enough that you have a natural capacity to adjust and adapt rapidly and effectively to everyday challenges and stressors. To that end, we will explore the many ways we interpret stress, and, most importantly, how to respond to stress more mindfully and creatively. The key to this process is your growing familiarity with your individual stressors and your ability to respond rather than react to stressful situations.

You will learn new ways to approach difficult moments, events, or situations, whether external or internal, and to expand our understanding of mindfulness as a means of reducing the negative effects of stress. By developing more effective ways of responding positively and proactively to stressful situations, you can engage in an increasingly participatory role in your health and wellbeing.

W5 T1 – Week Five Overview

In the previous weeks you have been cultivating awareness of the body. You’ve been doing that through doing the Breath Meditations, the Body Scan Meditation and through the Mindful Movement. Then in Week Four we expanded those practices by starting to become aware of the connection between thought and sounds in the Thought and Sound Meditation, perhaps beginning to notice the changeability of both. We closed with the Meditation for Intensely Frustrating Moments, presented as a way to cope with the inevitable moments of frustration.

The Turning Toward Meditation very gently invites you to bring an unsettling situation to mind and then use the skills you’ve learned in observing your responses to see how your body reacts to the unwanted. There’s no need to choose the most traumatic event you’ve ever experienced. As in all cases in the course, the idea is to practice skillfully working with the body, not using the mind to analyze or solve a perceived problem. You are being asked to use the body to turn toward the unwanted, not the mind.

Questions for Reflection and Journaling

• What did you notice in terms of pleasant and unpleasant sensations during this meditation?

• Are these sensations familiar? Surprising? Aversive? Enjoyable?

• Do you notice them in your everyday life when you encounter an unpleasant moment?

• How did you meet or work with these obstacles and challenges?

• Are you learning anything new about yourself through this experience?

Many of us in the mindfulness community love to quote Portia Nelson’s “Autobiography in Five Short Chapters.” It’s a little work of wisdom about habitual approaches we bring as we face challenges in our lives.

I appreciate this parable because it exposes our own habits and shows how certain ways of coping with the world can be self-defeating. It also points to our ability to learn, use and adopt new more skillful means of coping.

The negative bias is the human tendency to notice the negative more readily than the positive, even when of equal intensity, but also to dwell on negative events more than positive ones. As a consequence, negative things (e.g. unpleasant thoughts, emotions, or social interactions; harmful/traumatic events) have a greater and longer lasting effect on us than neutral or positive things.

As Week Five comes to a close, let's revisit some of the themes we have explored, and then as usual review the home practice for the upcoming week. This week we’ve explored difficult emotions, understanding how they feel in the body and how they are triggered in the mind. Then we unpacked our own bias toward negativity.

Home Practice Assignments for Week Five

With that, we’ve arrived at the end of Week Five. Again building on the work you did last week, here’s the home practice for the week:

• Formal practice: Mindful Movement Meditation immediately followed by the Sound and Though Meditation, finishing with the 10 minute Turning Toward Meditation, to be practiced twice daily for 6 of 7 days

• Formal practice: Breathing Space Meditation, however this week after you complete the meditation “drop into” the body to explore any physical sensations that arise as difficulties appear in the mind. This weeks’ practice is very similar to the ones you’ve done before, but it has been refined to support your exploring difficulties with greater compassion toward yourself. This should be practiced twice daily for 6 of 7 days and also whenever you need it at any other time.

Congratulations on completing Week Five.

Week 6: Building Resilience

Resilience or “stress hardiness” is our ability to return to equilibrium after stressful situations. The more resilient we are, the faster we bounce back after a stressful situation. This week, you will focus on coping strategies to broaden your inner resources and enhance your resilience through mindfulness practice. You’ll gain exposure to a variety of methods to support your developing more effective and creative means to address life’s challenges.

W6 T1 – Week Six Overview

Week Six builds on the work we began in Week Four and Week Five by placing an emphasis on your growing capacity to cope more effectively with stress and on continuing to develop transformational coping strategies. By continuing to develop an awareness of your patterns you can become more fluid, flexible and balanced, particularly in times of stress or when you are experiencing strong emotions or feelings, in any area of our lives.

Jon Kabat-Zinn explains that the Loving-kindness Meditation is a meditation practice, used to cultivate singular concentrated attention. Just naming the qualities of the heart (happy, healthy, free, etc.) explicitly and making their role explicit in our practice often help us to recognize them when they arise spontaneously both during and after the practice. You could say that by naming these qualities this way, your brain adds them to it’s list of things to notice, especially in difficult times, again even when we are not meditating. Now you are starting to take control of your thoughts and deciding where to focus your attention in a way that uplifts you.

By this point, you may have settled into a routine for your practice periods. Make sure you are listening to your body's needs and adjusting your practice as necessary. I invite you to ask yourself the question “What is called for now?” As you begin a practice segment, listening to the body, adjust your practice. As you learn to ask yourself this question more regularly, what are you learning? Are you adjusting your practice?

Questions for Reflection and Journaling

• Can you name a few things, if any, that you are discovering as you practice?

• Have the Body Scan and Mindful Movement become complementary for you?

• What are you noticing about the quality of your attention?

• Is one of the practices influencing another?

• Does one specific practice stand out for you?

• If so, do you have any sense of why?

• Is one easier or more difficult?

• Are you drawn to one more than others?

• What, if any, new ways of responding to stressful situations have arisen for you?

There are still gaps in what science currently knows about the brain and how the brain actually works. Based on what we do know about the brain right now, there is no “good part of the brain” and “bad part of the brain.” All parts of the brain work together, but they work in specific ways. While I have not directly focused on these modes, you will very likely recognize them based on your experience with the practices thus far. This week we will unpack the ideas behind modes of being and doing.

During Week Six you’ve explored how to develop and strengthen your resilience, that is to say your ability to bounce back after unwanted events occur. We started with the Loving Kindness Meditation in which we took steps toward befriending ourselves. Then you were asked the question, “What is called for now?” as a way of checking in with yourself and continuing to tune into your needs. This is yet another way of showing yourself deep understanding and compassion, accepting your thoughts and feelings. Through this acceptance, you can both stand grounded in what is and show yourself deep empathy. Finally, we looked at “doing” and “being” modes.

Home Practice Assignments for Week Six

We’ve already arrived at the end of Week Six. This week's home practices are designed to increase your capacity to forgive, connect with others, and accept yourself as you are. When done regularly, Loving Kindness Meditation can help minimize negative emotions. This practice along with the body focused meditations all support developing your resilience when faced with stressful situations.

• Formal practice: Loving Kindness Meditation, to be practiced once daily for 6 of 7 days

• Formal practice: Either Mindful Movement Meditation or Body Scan Meditation, to be practiced once daily for 6 of 7 days

• Formal practice: A short Breathing Space Meditation, to be practiced twice daily for 6 of 7 days. Again you are invited to use the Breathing Space Meditation you can use it anytime you feel pressure.

Congratulations on completing Week Six.

Week 7: Making Skillful Choices

You’ve been strengthening your practice by exploring guided meditations that are longer and include longer periods of silence. This week we will also focus on your ability to adjust your practice accordingly to the changing conditions of your life. So you may notice that there’s a lot less of me navigating, and more of you tapping into your own internal guidance system.

W7 T1 – Week Seven Overview

In Week Seven, we are turning a corner. This week there is less of me guiding and more of you taking the helm. This is an important part of your own and taking responsibility for your own life. You will be invited to reflect on lifestyle choices that are adaptive and nourishing and those that are draining and depleting. The idea is for you to appreciate your growing capacity to care for yourself.

We will move now into a period of sitting meditation. There will be an increased amount of silence between segments of guided instruction. The space that is created is intended to give you more opportunity to explore and notice what is occurring while you become more familiar and comfortable guiding yourself.

The Exhaustion Funnel concept came from Dr. Marie Asberg from Karolinska Institute in Stockholm. It Illustrates the emotional effect, over-concentration on things that deplete you at the expense of things that nurture you, have on you over time.

This week we’ve explored how much you’ve learned, realized and begun to recognize about yourself. At this point in the course, you have a lot of experience with practicing mindfulness. Over the last several weeks, you’ve practiced the Awareness of the Breath, Body Scan, the Body and Breath, Mindful Movement, the Breathing Space, Difficult Emotions, and the Sound and Thought Meditations. You have quite a few tools in your toolkit.

Home Practice Assignments for Week Seven

With your toolkit of meditations in mind, here’s the home practice for the week:

• Formal practice: Design your own periods of practice while maintaining more or less 45 minutes of formal practice per day. For this week's home practice, I ask you to try not to use any of the practice recordings. Instead, see if you can guide yourself as you sit, scan the body, or engage in mindful movement. If this is too difficult for you, then try to alternate every other day between the recordings and self-guidance.

• Formal practice: A short Breathing Space Meditation, to be practiced twice daily for 6 of 7 days. Again you are invited to use the Breathing Space Meditation you can use it anytime you feel pressure.

In addition, while keeping up the intensity of more or less 45 minutes of daily practice, if you would like, you can begin experimenting with shorter individual segments. By example, you might "sit" for twenty minutes and practice yoga for twenty-five minutes. This may be done sequentially or at two different periods during the day. What is most important is to continue to ask yourself, "What is called for now?" If you wake up stiff, maybe a longer yoga sequence is in order. The key point here is to listen for what you need while maintaining the spirit and intentionality you have been cultivating since you began the course. Have fun. Enjoy the experiment. It is your laboratory and you are the scientist, the experiment, and the data!

Congratulations on completing Week Seven.

Week 8: Life Is The Practice

In this final week of the program. If you have made it this far, congratulate yourself! This week, you will have a complete review of everything we’ve covered during our time together, with an emphasis on carrying the momentum you’ve built forward into the coming months and years. You’ll learn about resources available to you to pursue mindfulness in new directions as your life and practice evolve, as well as the support systems that exist to help you continue to integrate, learn, and grow. The final week creates a satisfying closure by honoring both the end of this program and the beginning of the rest of your life.

W8 T1 – Final Review and Meditation

With much hard work and deep exploration, we have come to the end of our formal time together. Week Eight offers a review of the course with an emphasis on daily strategies for maintaining and deepening the skills you have developed throughout this program. I will present an extended period of practice that includes a sitting meditation followed by a Body Scan. Then This week will conclude with a segment on how to move forward and keep the momentum you have created over the past seven weeks.

Let’s acknowledge that because learning is non-linear by nature, it calls for disciplined, consistent practice supported by intention and energy—held within an attitude of acceptance, non-judging and compassion. This offers space for something new and perhaps unexpected to arise. With that in mind, I’d like to invite you to reflect on your practice last week as well as take stock of how the practices are impacting your life.

• How was it for you to take time independently and practice for 45 minutes on your own, without listening to a recording?

• Did you decide that you wanted to listen to the recordings one day, and not the other, and just experiment that way?

• Or did you say, "The heck with it. I'm going to use the recording!"

Let’s reflect on where you have been over the course of these eight weeks and offer questions designed to help you enter into the self-guided Final Self-assessment, which appears on the final page below.

I hope that you have found this of value. So very briefly, I’d like to suggest some resources to continue your practice.