6-week Introduction to Mindfulness
This is designed for those who want to explore mindfulness beyond apps and books, but also have hectic schedules. There are 6 weekly sessions, each lasting about 90 minutes. The goal is to offer a number of ways to bring mindfulness into daily life even, if you think you don’t have much time to meditate. Rather than adding meditation to your life, your life can become the meditation (at least when you remember!).
Here is a breakdown of each session:
Session 1: Introduction and orientation and then experiencing ways to resource yourself along with doing a body scan, eating meditation and breath meditation. We also look at what mindfulness is, and how we trip ourselves up when we aren’t mindful of our minds.
Session 2: Adding mindfulness of sound and walking meditation, along with more exploration of the breath. We’ll also look at various things that get in the way, like sleepiness and restlessness.
Session 3: Using mindfulness to work with physical pain and using the loving-kindness practice as a way to be kinder to ourselves. We’ll also look at mindfulness of movement.
Session 4: We’ll try out guided imagery, both as self-care and a way to maintain a practice when you feel you just aren’t into it. We’ll also see how mindfulness can help with difficult emotions using the RAIN practice.
Session 5: Mindfulness of thoughts, including five ways to work with that busy mind. We’ll also explore using mindfulness as a way to enhance communication and relationships.
Session 6: We’ll learn how to combine practices to create custom meditations that can be used under any circumstances. We’ll also look at a powerful motivator for both meditation and life: our core values. Finally, we talk about ways to maintain a practice going forward.
This--and the 6-week Mindful Self-Compassion course--are probably the most popular mindfulness series I teach. If you want to try meditation but keep hitting a wall, you may find this course helpful since we cover so much ground without carving too much time out of a busy schedule. There are also copious handouts to support the subjects.
Photo by Simon Berger on Unsplash
