Mindful Stress Reduction teaches mindfulness meditation and gentle yoga to cultivate awareness and reduce stress. Participation in an MBSR course has been shown to decrease stress, increase peace and well-being, and decrease symptoms of anxiety and depression as well as symptoms of a number of medical conditions, including high blood pressure and heart disease, arthritis, […]
Mindfulness of body allows us to practice being aware of what it feels like to be in this body in the present moment with an attitude of kindness and interest. This week we continue the exploration of the early teachings on mindfulness from the Satipatthana Sutta. Following mindfulness of breathing, the next two instructions for […]
The four foundations of mindfulness include mindfulness of the body, mindfulness of feelings, mindfulness of the mind and mindfulness of the mental formation.
Accepting change with mindfulness and meditation brings a greater sense of happiness and peace. If there is one thing that we can count on, it is that change is inevitable. Everything is impermanent. We can either fight against this reality, tightening our bodies and clinging to rigid and inflexible thinking, which most often leads to […]
Letting go of fear can bring a greater sense of peace and freedom. Fear is a normal and healthy response that can protect us from danger. The problem is that we are at risk for automatically reacting to our fear and allowing it to immobilize us even when there is no real danger. When you […]
Mindfulness of feelings practice can help us to be aware and connected with our feelings in a way that allows us to be grounded and not overwhelmed. Feeling tones of experience are either pleasant, unpleasant or neutral. Much has been written about how we tend to cling to pleasant experience and crave more, which creates […]
Mindful travel is a practice that brings mindfulness practice into local or global travel experiences for greater awareness and presence. When we travel with mindfulness, we are able to be more present in our moment to moment experience. In being more present, we can observe the details of a place and our internal landscape in […]
In exploring how to be happy, we can experience more happiness by cultivating positive mental and emotional states through mindfulness and meditation practice. It really is true that whatever we rest our attention on grows. If we wake up and focus our attention on the difficulty in our lives, we will cultivate a state of […]
When dealing with the unexpected, we can experience greater ease by bringing mindfulness to the situation. Each moment brings uncertainty, and sometimes, unexpected events arise. When dealing with the unexpected, if we judge the events as positive, we say we’re lucky. When we judge the unexpected events as unpleasant, we say we’ve encountered unfortunate circumstances. […]
Dealing with difficult thoughts by approaching our inner experience with mindfulness, with kindness and curiosity, can support our wellbeing. Difficult thoughts can lead to difficult mental states — anger, hatred, resentment –and take us out of the present moment. How many moments have we all struggled with difficult thoughts that lead us to get entangled […]