In week one, you’ll learn the principles and attitudes of mindfulness, as well as the three core elements of our weekly meditation practice – the purpose of each element and how each one works. We’ll then begin our first 30-minute meditation practice focusing on the attitudes of mindfulness and the 3 elements of our practice. We’ll also discuss how to bring these core attitudes into your everyday life. An MP3 guided meditation for your weekly practice is provided, along with a reflective activity to help you apply the attitudes of mindfulness throughout the week.

In week two, you’ll learn to gain awareness of your thought patterns, including looking at the conditioned stories and beliefs you hold that often create suffering. We’ll also explore the concepts of attachment and aversion, as well as the conditioned mind vs. unconditioned mind, and how these thought patterns shape our experience. Our guided meditation will focus on creating space between you and your thoughts, allowing you to see them clearly and cut through their illusions. We’ll also discuss how to apply this insight to disengage from stressful mental patterns in your daily life. An MP3 guided meditation on thought awareness is provided, along with a journaling prompt to use throughout the week, designed to help you identify the specific thought patterns that create suffering within you.

In week three, you’ll learn how to work with emotions that arise both in meditation and in daily life. We’ll explore the concept of “parts” from the Internal Family Systems model, discovering that challenging emotions often belong to distinct parts of us—each holding specific beliefs and stories. Our guided meditation will focus on feeling emotions mindfully in the body, while also learning to recognize the part and the story that may be arising alongside them. We’ll also discuss how to bring this reflective work to emotional triggers as they occur in your daily life. An MP3 guided meditation for working with emotions and parts is provided, along with a reflection exercise to support you throughout the week.

During weeks 4 and 5, we focus on deepening our meditation practice and weaving together and practicing the concepts of weeks 1-3. We use additional points of focus during our 30 minute guided meditations – the soundscape and body sensations – so that you can experience various points of focus to determine which meditation technique suits you most. 

In our final week, we’ll explore the art of resting in “just being” and what is called open awareness. We’ll discuss what this state represents and how it connects to working with our thoughts and emotions. We’ll also explore  “being-ness” versus the conditioned mind and why this is such a helpful and needed concept and state to live from within our lives. A final guided 30-minute meditation on “just being and open awareness” is provided, along with reflections on living from this place of embodied presence.