Interested in taking the course? Here is where I did it: https://stressrelief.podia.com/3333a0ac-10bd-4d2c-b6ed-b31e66e8c29d
| MBSR Mindfulness based stress reduction | “Mindfulness is a Life Skill” |
| Week 1: Establish the learning contract | Mindful eating |
| Mindful breathing | |
| Mindful body scan | |
| Internal questions | What are you here for? |
| What is your intention? | |
| What do you really want? | |
| What has brought you here? | |
| What are your expectations of the program? | |
| Yoga: Standing mountain pose | |
| Raisin-eating mindfulness exercise | reflect on sensory observation- felt, smelled, taste, hear |
| Abdominal breathing | sit comfortably |
| watch abdomen rise and fall, naturally and non-forced. | |
| Bring mind back to breathing if it wanders. | |
| Home practice 6 days this week: | body scan recording. |
| 9 dots exercise | |
| eat mindfully | |
| close with “stopping and dropping” | |
| Mindfulness attitudes | who is hearing? |
| Who is feeling? | |
| Who is thinking? | |
| Stress Reduction | Grounding- ground the toes, flex and extend |
| Breathing- belly , slow and fine for nervous system | |
| Noting: note sounds, sensations, feeling w/o comment | |
| Self-Love | Inhale- “there is love” breath out. |
| Belonging | Inhale- “I belong”, breath out. |
| Body Scan | learn what body does and needs in order to thrive |
| reveals a great deal about the world around you | |
| helps understand stress and anxiety, pain and illness. | |
| work with physical pain | |
| link emotions with physical sensations | |
| physical associations to emotional states | |
| opens the door to mindfulness of body | |
| “the body says what words cannot”-Martha Graham | |
| Body Scan in Sivasana (corpse pose) | Not judging experience as good or bad |
| Just feel sensations as they come and go. | |
| Just feel emotions as they come and go | |
| Be gentle with yourself | |
| Note aversions | |
| Note unpleasantness | |
| Difficulties | |
| Bad feelings | expect them to arrive |
| maintain emotional equilibrium | |
| try not to get absorbed in the stories | |
| Balance | Do not intensify practice if emotions arise |
| Try other things like a dinner with friends | |
| Be good to yourself in other ways | |
| Mindfulness attitudes | Apply it, anchor yourself, label the emotions, feeling sensations |
| Attends to your sensitivity, a flower cannot be opened with a hammer. | |
| Gratitude | Have gratitude in every day and moment. |
| Schedule: | Eat on meal mindfully |
| Do the body scan daily. | |
| Standing yoga | |
| Close meditation | Sit and breathe |
| Let go of plans | |
| smile and see self as a young child | |
| Feeling being in a loving embrace with parents. | |
| Week 2: Theme is Focus | Perception and creative responding |
| Method: sitting meditation w/ awareness of breath | |
| Reinforce the body scan to handle physical and emotional pain. | |
| Self responsibility | in short and long term goals |
| Focuses reflection: conditioning in the appraisal of stress | |
| focus on perception in the assessment of stress | |
| Perception: | How we see or do not see things and response to them. |
| How we see pain and illness | |
| How we see stress and anxiety | |
| Perceptions in the commitment to mindfulness | |
| How we handle stressors is the real stress. | |
| Class Sequence: | Stop and drop (stop and be still, drop tension and breathe), attitude, reflections, body scan, standing yoga, |
| breath awareness, closing. | |
| Non-Judging | “There is no need to judge, analyze, or figure things out.” |
| awareness of automatic judgments, go beyond prejudices and fears | |
| liberation of our inner tyranny | |
| recognizing the judging quality of the mind | |
| assume the stance of an impartial witness, remind self to just observe it | |
| When you are judging, be aware that you are and stop. | |
| do not judge the judging and make matters complicated for yourself | |
| Watch breathing- judgements like, “this is boring” or “it is not working” | |
| Thinking outside the box | or “I can’t do this” arise, let go of them, and return back to breathing. |
| Do Not to get stuck in same old way of thinking and make matters worse. | |
| Frustration, inadequacy, insecurity make problem solving harder. | |
| Test your limits- take risks, take new challenges, look at entire scope | |
| Believe in your own resources and belief about life. | |
| Find courage, wholeness and connectedness in yourself. | |
| Body Scan | Take in 3 deep breaths and be still. |
| “Be present to any sensations, thoughts, and emotions.” | Check-in with the body: allow for waves of feelings, emotions, sensations. |
| Come to a state of being rather than doing. | |
| There is no need to judge, analyze, or figure things out. | |
| Allow your self to be in the the moment. | |
| Shift to gentle breathing and awareness of breathing at abdomen. | |
| Watching the breathing out and the breathing go in. | |
| Mind may wander off from breathings, recognize this and go back to breathings | |
| gently withdrawl from breathing and shift to body scan | |
| If you come across body tightness, allow them to soften, let sensations just be | |
| physical sensations, thoughts, emotions may arise from the body. | |
| Scan from feet to head slowling- feet- ankles-knees-thighs, body groin, abdomen, pine, chest | |
| internal organs, arms, finges, wrist, elbows upper arm, shoulders, neck, mouth, teeth | |
| Face forehead, eyes,. All the back to extremes- breath 3 times to close. | |
| Attention | ATTENTION IS TRAINED WHEN WE PLACE MIND ON AN OBJECT |
| Body scan is a great way to do this. | |
| Awareness | Bring awareness to what is happening in the mind, even if it is not what we’d like. |
| Knowing our patterns is the first step to working with them skillfully. | |
| We are open to the landscape of the mind and see the terrain of our being. | |
| Embodiment | Scanning body balances tendency to be in our head. Body senses rather than thinks |
| we tune into grounding and centering and the world around us, not concepts. | |
| Letting Be | Forcing change, push, pull, and badger self into change, mindfulness is different. |
| We accept, gently finding a starting point, not resist or force change. | |
| Unpleasant experiences | Body sensations like discomfort, pain, irritation, boredom, sadness, numbness are common. |
| We usually battle them or retreat from them, body scan we gently lean into them. | |
| It can transform it into a kind of appreciation and gratitude. | |
| We see rejection and attraction to pain and pleasure, sensations shift and move. | |
| We can get unstuck and find some relief. | |
| Difficulties | Judgements that things are not good enough or not what you are expecting. |
| Blaming, wanting change, | |
| Freedom is accepting and acknowledging the situation. | |
| Body scan is a simple way to do this, friendly awareness to the way things are. | |
| There is no goal to be achieved like some special state of mind or relaxation. | |
| Body scan tips | Just do it regardless of falling asleep, lacking concentration, thinking to much. |
| Label thoughts if you are thinking to much and go back to body scan. | |
| Let go of competition, success, failure. Winning is regular and frequent practice. | |
| Let go of any expectations. It is like planting a seed and giving it the right conditions. | |
| Unpleasant thoughts, feeling, sensations will distract you, accept them as they are. | |
| Gently practice- awareness, non-striving, and acceptance. | |
| Physical Pain. | Pain can be acute or chronic |
| Acute is recent within 6 months, chronic is longer and has a cognitive and emotional component. | |
| Chronic pain can come with despair, anger, fear, or confusion. | |
| MBSR assists chronic pain: recognizing or dropping the body to feel tension and pain. | |
| Acknowledging: without judgement any emotional reactions to the pain and tension. | |
| Understanding- learning how to live with pain and emotions one moment at a time. | |
| Investigate pain and tension in the body around areas of pain and relax around the pain. | |
| You can observe and let pain be, if you can relax, observe the waves of sensation. | |
| Give space to the sensations, let them go where they need to go. | |
| Emotional Pain | Mindfulness offers a pathway to work with pain, anger, rage, sadness, confusion, despair |
| grief, anxiety, fear. | |
| Acknowledge emotions without resisting. Let be and go with it. Observe where the feelings go. | |
| Acceptance or being at peace with things as they are. | |
| Letting go is being able to release, while Letting Be simply provides space for things as they are. | |
| The sky gives space for storms, the mind can give space to emotions. | |
| You can change emotional responses and reduce suffering. | |
| Living in the present moment | You can only live in the here and now. |
| You can learn to be with pain one moment at a time and deal with it. | |
| Mindfulness creates new strategies for pain and tension. Learning from it in the moment. | |
| This perspective transforms you, your pain, and relationship to pain. | |
| Mind the pain: stress, tension, pain- soften it, ride the waves of sensation, let it be. | |
| Standing Yoga | Loosening circles from heat to toe, stand on one leg. Etc. |
| Week 3. The power of being present | Lying yoga, sitting meditation, Walking meditation. |
| Mind and body in the present moment. | |
| Resepct for our current condition and non-striving. | |
| Notice the minds tendency to label things. | |
| Question of our relationship to self-narratives and beliefs fixed opinions on reality. | |
| Recognizing there can be pleasure in painful situations and pain in pleasurable situations. | |
| Opening meditation focus | Patience, Non-judgement, posture, present moment, unpleasant sensations. |
| Patience: | Form of wisdom. Understanding and accepting the fact that sometimes things |
| must unfold in their own time. | |
| Patience towards our own body and mind with mindfulness. | |
| No need to be impatient when our mind is judging al the time, | |
| or tense, agitated, frightened, or practicing for so long with nothing seems to happen. | |
| No need to rush into the next moment. | |
| Some thoughts are anxious, others are pleasant, thinking exerts a strong pull on our awareness. | |
| Much of our thoughts overwhelm our perception of present moment. Losing the presence. | |
| Use patience at a time of agitation and accept the wandering aspect of the mind. | |
| Patience teaches we don’t have to fill our mind up with moments of activity or thinking. | |
| Patience is simply to be open to each moment, | |
| accepting and knowing things unfold on their own it time. | |
| Wholeness and healing | Health Is whole and complete, interconnected. |
| Even in loss of limb or disease we are whole. Connected with the outer world and change. | |
| Health is dynamic, nothing is fixed and then you hold on to it. | |
| Health, healing, holy, meditation, medicine are related words- to cure. | |
| Reflection | Mindfulness of body sensations, |
| notice body vibrating with activity, whatever sensation predominates. | |
| Notice multiple sensations including heart beat, feet, tight neck, etc. Let it be. | |
| Grounding- return to your body posture, stabilize attention. | |
| Opening- open awareness to any body sensations. | |
| Remain in the present moment, rest for 15 minutes. | |
| Reflection the sensation you had. | |
| Shelter can be found with one-pointed attention to breath and posture of the body. | |
| Walking practice. | |
| Loving-kindess practice | |
| Week 4: The shadow of Stress | Reducing physiological effects of stress and psychological ones. |
| Finding effective ways of responind positively and proactive. | |
| Mindful yoga, Sitting meditation, from breath to body sensations and sound. | |
| Reinforce the body scan and sitting. | |
| Learning to Strengthen the mind | Body Scan, Standing Yoga, Sitting Meditation. |
| Reactivity and developing effective ways of responding. | |
| Be curious and open to a full range of experience. | |
| Learn new ways to respond to stress both external and internal. | |
| Reduce the effects of stress reactivity, respond positively to stress. | |
| Reduce stress to recover from stress. Recognize, accept, and inquire on reactive patterns. | |
| Opening meditation | Patience, non-judgement, beginners mind, Present moment, unpleasant sensations |
| Beginners Mind | Noticing for the first time. Empty cup. |
| Beginners mind to be free of expectation. | |
| Allows for new opportunities. | |
| Try to view people, pets, nature with fresh eyes daily. | |
| responding to stress | Break free from stress reactivity. |
| Stress response not stress react. | |
| Inner change to create a range of responses. | |
| Not reacting automatically every time your buttons get pushed. | |
| Inner calm, acceptance, and openness to respond. | |
| Mindfulness training is the grounding for stressor responses. | |
| Breathing for mental equalibrium. Relaxation and peace of mind become familiar. | |
| The comfort of wisdom and inner trust, the comfort of being whole. | |
| Not suppression of emptions, but just working with our reactions. | |
| Week 5: space and Choices | Mindfulness with perception, appraisal and choice in critical moment. |
| Choiceless awareness: whatever arises in the moment. | |
| Meditation: stop and drop, grounding, opening, letting be. | |
| Trust | Trust in self and feelings. Trust intuition, your basic wisdom. |
| Be your own person and understanding. Do not hero worship your teachers. | |
| Becoming Unstuck | Seeing the relationship between thoughts we think, and resulting sensations in the body |
| informs us what needs caring attention. It is a two way communication. | |
| Conditioned coping might be: anger, over-eating, substance abuse, suppression of feelings. | |
| With attention and intention we can make better choices for self-care. | |
| Watching the self talk of our thoughts: | |
| Is the tone of our thoughts caring, gentle, forgiving? Or judgemental, suspicious and critical? | |
| Sitting meditation is building non-judgement, acceptance, letting go, gratitude, and trust. | |
| Close minded thinking: | |
| Blaming: self or others, denying role. Try non-judgement. | |
| All-or-nothing thinking: black and white. Try beginners mind. | |
| Over Generalization: view of negative event as a never ending pattern of defeat. | |
| Negatives: dwelling on the negatives. | |
| Short changing yourself: insisting accomplishments don’t count. | |
| Mind reading- assuming negative thoughts being directed to you from others. | |
| Fortune telling- assuming bad things will happen to you. | |
| Magnification: blowing things out of proportion. | |
| Minimization: shrinking of important things. | |
| Emotional reasoning- reasoning how you feel. | |
| Should statements: would of, should of, could of done, critical of self. | |
| Over personalization: being hard on the self instead of taking ownership of mistake. | |
| Have open minded thinking , change thoughts and patterns. | |
| Choiceless Awareness | Allowing the experience to choose us- sounds, sensations, thoughts, emotions- present moment. |
| Mindfulness is insight meditation- full attention to body and mind in present moment, | |
| watching ever-changing nature of body and mind, difficulties, grasping, aversion, | |
| deepen our understanding of what fuels our stress. | |
| Concentration meditation focus is on concept, image, or mantra in one-pointed way. | |
| What arose for you as you brought awareness to sounds, thinking, and emotions? | |
| Week 6: working with difficulties | How to maintain a grounded center, recognize habitual patterns. |
| Communication possibilities in the verbal and nonverbal realms. | |
| Interpersonal communication patterns | Growing capacity to cope more effectively with stress. |
| Transformational coping strategies and stress resilience. | |
| Develop health enhancing attitudes and behaviors, practical applications. | |
| In-depth explore stress, build strategies I communication. | |
| Intellectual and experiential communication styles. | |
| Stressful communication, knowing your feelings, expressing your feelings. | |
| Interpersonal mindfulness: staying aware and balanced in relationships. | |
| Under acute or chronic stress, strong expectations of others, past habits of | |
| emotional suppression and expression. Be more flexible and to recover more rapidly. | |
| Exploring Difficult communication | Awareness of habitual patterns and behaviors in one’s inner life. |
| Essential or pause and reflect on these experiences, | |
| and notice how relational patterns are externalizations of internal mind and body states. | |
| Mindfulness as a way to experiment with new behaviors and engaging interpersonally. | |
| Essential intention is develop awareness. | |
| Aikido based ideas: side stepping the conflict, blending, stepping out of the path of aggression. | |
| Grounding in the moment, taking a firm stand, not running away, acknowledging others view, | |
| showing your point of view, staying in the process without knowing where it will go. | |
| Experience and explore- patterns of communication (passive, aggressive, assertive). | |
| Exploration of assumption: notice difference in observation and assuming. | |
| Speaking and listening: mindful listening, and mindful speech. | |
| Non-striving attitude | Nothing to get, everything to know. Non-doing. |
| Meditation is not to be a better person, more relaxed, or enlightened, that you are not ok. | |
| Mindfulness is just being present to what is happening. | |
| Tense? Pay attention to tense. Pain? Be with pain as best you can. | |
| Criticizing self? Observe the actions of the judging mind. Just watch. | |
| Allow and everything we experience from moment to moment, be here as it is. | |
| Lower blood pressure? Try not to lower blood pressure. Let is happen on its own. | |
| Reduce anxiety? Try not to reduce anxiety. | |
| Objects of awareness. | Choiceless awareness- whatever comes up. |
| Effortless relaxing into stillness of being, accepting each moment as it unfolds. | |
| 1. Sit with breath | |
| 2. Sitting with body as a whole | |
| 3. Sitting with thoughts and feelings | |
| 4. Sitting with choiceless awareness. | |
| People Stress | Practicing mindfulness around people who give us stress, usually someone we love the most. |
| Choose a response rather than be carried by a reaction. | |
| Avoid defensive and aggressive behavior. | |
| Relationships can heal through love, kindness, and acceptance. | |
| Assertiveness- you can be in touch with what you are actually feeling- it concerns. | |
| Your deepest ability to know yourself and to read situations appropriately and face them | |
| consciously. You can break out of passive or hostile modes when feeling threatened. | |
| Feelings are neither good or bad, act without judgement. | |
| Assertive: know feelings, communicate in a way that allows integrity w/o threat to others. | |
| Use “I” statements and not “You”. | |
| Aikido- calm and centered | Align: put self in others shoes, empathy, compassion, and attunement. |
| Agree: finding areas to support alignment, looking in the same direction as the person. | |
| Redirect: move interaction in a positive direction. | |
| Resolve: there could be compromise, collaboration, or agree to disagree. | |
| Part 6″ Self Retreat | Deepen mindful awreness over extended period of time. |
| Greater self knowledge and insight into pleasant and unpleasant experiences. | |
| Mountain meditation and loving-kindness meditations introduced. | |
| Acceptance | Seeing things as they actually are and coming to terms with it. |
| We often waste a lot of energy denying and resisiting what is fact. | |
| Knowing what you have to do and have inner conviction to act when you have a clear picture. | |
| Take each moment as it comes and being with it fully, be open to whatever here and now. | |
| There is wisdom in developing acceptance in the present moment. | |
| Week 7 Kindness towards others | Cultivating kindness towards self and others. |
| Create your own blend of sitting, standing, and lying down sessions , 45 minutes daily. | |
| Letting go | Non-attachment. Mind wants to hold on to pleasant feelings and situations. |
| There are thoughts we want to rid of, the unpleasant, painful ones. | |
| Mindfulness we have to be in the moment whether pleasant or unpleasant. | |
| Accepting things as they are. We have to observe our grasping and pushing away. | |
| Let go of the impulses on purpose just to see what will happen if we do. | |
| Let go of judging thoughts, recognize them and let them be, in doing so, we let them go. | |
| Thoughts of the past or future come up, let them go. | |
| Watch them-whether we are successful or not. | |
| R.A.I.N. and Loving kindness for difficult emotions | R- Recognize what is happening. |
| A- Allow life to be just as it is. | |
| I- Investigate inner experience with kindness. | |
| N- Nurture with Selfless-compassion. | |
| RAIN directly de-conditions the habitual ways in which we resist your moment to moment | |
| experience. RAIN begins to undo these unconscious patterns as soon as we take the first step. | |
| Recognize is seeing what is true in your inner life. Starting with thoughts, emotions, feelings | |
| and sensations right now. | |
| Allowing– let it be. You may feel aversion to unpleasant thoughts, feelings, and emotions, | |
| be present with them and a new attention will emerge. Offer to consent gently to the | |
| unpleasant situation gently and patiently, in time your defenses will relax | |
| and you will feel a physical sense of yielding or opening to waves of experience. | |
| Investigate– with kindness. Call on your natural interest to know the truth and present | |
| experience. Pause and take a look at what is happening. Engage and inquiry. | |
| Without judgement investigate. Investigate with kindness. | |
| Non-Identification and Rest in natural awareness. Sense who you are, but | |
| not infused with thoughts, emotions, sensations, or stories, just open awareness. | |
| Rest in natural awareness. | |
| Week 8: the Rest of your Life | Keeping up the momentum and discipline of 7 weeks of mindfulness practice. |
| Gratitude | People with gratitude have been found to exercise more regularly, have fewer physical symptoms, |
| and feel better about their lives as a whole. They are more optimistic about the upcoming week. | |
| Daily discussion of gratitude: people report more alertness, enthusiasm, determination, attentiveness, | |
| energy, and sleep duration and quality. They report lower levels of stress and depression. However, | |
| they do not deny or ignore the negative aspects of life. | |
| People who journal or think about gratitude are more likely to help others going through emotional | |
| or personal problems. Offering them support. | |
| End MBSR |
Yongnian Tai Chi 