Below, you’ll find links to all the important areas that are available to you on New Mindful Life. Please feel free peruse these links as well as the rest of the website and don’t hesitate to let us know if you have any questions.
DOWNLOADING AUDIO – If you are downloading audio files, please make sure to download them one at a time to ensure you receive the entire recording.
In our experience we have found that students have an easier experience streaming the meditation audio from YouTube. Our YouTube channel is http://youtube.com/newmindfullife
You may also find the following Mindful Meditation Books very useful in developing your practice.
Please click the + to the right of each of the areas below to expand that section.
SIT Guided Meditation Audio Files
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Listen will open a new tab on our site and play the audio using YouTube (we recommend doing this)
Download will give you the ability to download to your computer
Instructions for Downloading
PC Users: To download the mp3 file, right-click the Download link and choose ‘save target as’ or ‘save link as’.
MAC users: Option-click the Download link and save to your computer.
Download will take a couple of minutes because of file size and depending on your connection speed.
3 Minute Seated Meditation
10 Minute Seated Meditation
20 Minute Seated Meditation Practice
20 Minute Body Scan
40 Minute Seated Meditation Practice
40 Minute Body Scan
10 Minute Loving Kindness Meditation
20 Minute Loving Kindness Meditation
Guided Mindful Movement Practice I
Guided Mindful Movement Practice II
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SIT Course Materials
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Hello Mindful Participants
Learning mindfulness and brining it into everday life is a process. We are learning through these practices how to awaken our senses and our way of being in life.
The working definition I pose for mindfulness is :
The practice of cultivating purposeful present moment awareness without judgment to the experiences that are arising inwardly as well as outwardly – for the purposes of liberating suffering and living a skillful life
Looks for ways to you cultivate this into your everday life. Can you stop to take three concious breaths? Allow yourself a moment of connection to the sensations present in your body?
The suggested practices for this week are:
- Practice formal mindfulness meditation: 5-10 minutes Awareness of Breath- Daily
- Practice bringing mindfulness to one everyday activity (e.g., washing dishes, eating, getting dressed, showering, texting, emailing). Take time to be aware of each step of this activity- noticing internal experiences- body, mind/emotion, and external- taking in environment through senses
Additional supports:
- Set up personal or sacred space in home to support formal mindfulness meditation practice
- Encourage participants to purchase Fully Present: The Science, Art and Practice of Mindfulness by Susan Smalley, PhD and Diana Winston to support practice
- Consider downloading mediation app to remind you in your schedule to practice
You will receive an email later today with information on logging in for audio access. Stay tuned to your emails!
I hope your week is unfolding with new possibilites of bringing mindfulness into your everyday life!
Warm regards
Rochelle
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Hello Mindful Participants,
As we practice mindfulness we are learning that a foundational place to practice is through the breath and through sensation of body. These gate ways begin to allow us to see the places we are in our automatic patterns. As we see these experiences of auto pilot we begin to wake up into greater awareness of the fullness of life.
See where you can pause throughout your week to take in THIS BREATH in this moment. See where you can connect to the aliveness of THIS BODY in this moment activity in life unfolds.
The suggested practice for this week are:
1. Practice formal mindfulness meditation: 10-15 minutes Awareness of Breath/Body- Daily. Consider the postures of practice of lying down, sitting, standing or walking as forms to practice awareness of breath and body sensations
2. Practice bringing mindfulness to eating and the senses. Take time to be aware of each step of this activity- noticing internal experiences- body, mind/emotion, and external- taking in food/environment through senses
3. Attached are the pleasant and unpleasent events calendar. Please take a few moments to fill in for the rest of the week.
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Hello Mindful Participants,
As we practice mindfulness we are awakening our curiosity to fully experience each moment. We are learning that a place to orient our attention into the moment is through the awareness of breath and body sensations
We discussed the feeling tones of experience of pleansant, unpleasant and neutral which began to shed light into the ways in which we get caught with our judgments, expectations and anticipations. By learning to see these experiences arising, holding them in awareness, then letting them go, we can begin to re-wire the automatic conditions/reactivity that cause our stress and suffering.
See where you can pause throughout your week to take in the experience is arising (e.g., reading something at work, driving, talking to a friend or family member, etc). Can you notice a body sensation, a thought, an emotion, as it is arising and unfolding? Allow awareness and curiosity to notice the pleasantness, unpleasantness or neutralness of the moment and practice letting it go.
The suggested practice for this week are:
1. Practice formal mindfulness meditation: 15-20 minutes Awareness of Breath/Body- Daily. While practicing bring awareness to the arising mindfulness- desire, aversion, restlessness, tired/dull or doubt.
2. Practice bringing mindfulness to stress reactions and behaviors during the week, without trying to change them
-Attached is the handout we discussed on reactive cycles in class
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Hello Mindful Practioners
This week we continued to explore our training in awareness of breath and body. We learned to begin to invite awareness of emotion states that arise while in practice. We discussed ways in which to begin to invite an awarenss to the visceral nature of emotions as they arise in the body. As an invitation to work with challenging emotions we practiced RAIN
Recognize (oh- this emotion is like this)
Allow (let go of following, avoiding or ignoring)
Investigate (curiosity, touching the edges, the visceral nature)
Non-identify (this is what is arising-now, its an emotion unfolding, this emotion is not me- its this felt experience in this moment)
We also continued our discussion of using mindfulness to help us wake up to where in our life we may be stuck, in automatic or experiencing reactive conditioned patterns. (i.e. fight, flight, freeze.) Its important to remember that the maladaptive coping patterns we may have developed have likely been survival based, we did not know another means to coping skillfully. While these coping methods may have been protective and supported survival, they may now be counter-evolutionary and limiting, if not destructive.
Remember that mindfulness allows us to re-relate to what is here in the moment, offering the possibiligy of more compassion, humor, kindness, acceptance to be with the experiencing that is arising.
Finally, consider re-committing to the remainder of this course that will support your path of developing mindfulness. This practice is your own, it supports your inner wisdom that is developing. See where you may want to bring more formal or informal practice into your everyday life.
Home Formal and Informal Mindfulness Practices:
1. Practice formal mindfulness meditation: 20-25 minutes Awareness of Breath/Body- Daily. While practicing bring awareness to the arising emotions within the body- what is felt as you make contact with emotions- bring curiosity, then care to the experience as it unfolds, practice RAIN.
2. Bring awareness to moments of reacting and explore options for responding with greater mindfulness, spaciousness and creativity, in formal meditation practice and in everyday life. Remember that the breath is an anchor, a way to heighten awareness of reactive tendencies, to slow down and make more conscious choices. Offer the option to your self to choose with a skillful and wholesome response in the moment
Warm regards,
New Mindful Life
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Hello Mindful Practitioners,
This week we continued to explore our training in awareness of breath and body. We learned to begin to invite awareness of thought states that arise while in practice. We discussed ways in which to begin to invite an awareness to the nature of thoughts as they arise in the mind and how they can give rise to emotions/body (visceral reactions) experiences. There are four categories of thought that typically arise as we begin to pay attention to their nature:
1- vague/random- jumpy, popcorn-like, recycled processing of past or near future
2 – charged/obsessive- wanting to follow figure out, rehearse, plan
3 – aversive/painful- wanting to get away from, not attend to, ignore
4 – judging – comparing, evaluating self or others or world
As an invitation to work with these categories and the challenging-ness of mind we practiced the 3 R’s –
RECOGNIZE (oh- this is what is here- this thought, emotion)
RELEASE (allow the arising and falling away of what is here- let go of following/avoiding/judging- thought, emotion)
RETURN (this is that is here now- awareness of this moment)
We also further continued our discussion of using mindfulness to help us wake up to where in our life we may be stuck, in automatic or experiencing reactive conditioned patterns. (i.e. fight, flight, freeze.) This is how our thought/emotion patters take off into dysfunctional cycles and cause to cope in ways that are not skillful. As we more deeply make contact through practice with our habit cycles- THIS is where the opportunity to learn new ways of re-relating exists. By seeing our experience as it is in the moment, noticing the pattern as it unfolds, we can learn to cease being driven by this type of patterning and learn to just abide in our awareness- holding what is arising and falling away in the moment it is here- with compassion and kindness.
Finally, take a few moments to reflect what insights you are taking away from this course that you have learned about mindfulness and ways to live in your life in a more present, kind, and compassionate manner.
Home Formal and Informal Mindfulness Practices:
1. Practice formal mindfulness meditation: 20-30 minutes Awareness of Breath/Body- Daily. While practicing bring awareness to the arising thoughts within the mind and in connection to emotions- recognize, release and return to the moment. Practice letting go of content of thought and enter the process.
2. Bring awareness to moments of reacting and explore options for responding with greater mindfulness, spaciousness and creativity, in formal meditation practice and in everyday life. Remember that the breath is an anchor, a way to heighten awareness of reactive tendencies, to slow down and make more conscious choices. Offer the option to your self to choose with a skillful and wholesome response in the moment. Consider reflecting and writing about habits/reactivity noticed in thought and in emotion
3. Plan for closing ceremony. Plan to bring something to share with you that expresses your learning over the past 6 weeks.
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Hello Mindful Participants-
I am sending this email to check in, and encourage you all to continue to practice and stay in touch.
During our last class we shared and discussed mindful communication. I am attaching the insight dialogue (mindful communication) practice we experienced in class. I hope it is helpful to encourage you practice mindful interactions.
We also discussed in our last class ways to continue to practice mindfulness. Developing a regular practice is a journey. It is helpful to stay in connection to community and to learn from teaching that stimulates your connection to practice. Take a moment to reflect on what you may need to bring into your life to encourage you to stay on your path of practice.
Mindfulness when translated in Pali language means “to remember”. I encourage you all to remember open to what is here right now- allow your awareness to open into the moment that is unfolding.
Stay tuned for emails that will be coming inviting you to an open house, half day mindfulness retreats, and additional mindfulness training courses.
Please keep in touch! Drop in for practice in one of our mindfulness classes- now held on Friday (6pm), Saturday (5pm) and Sunday (5pm).
I hope you all are well. It was definitely my pleasure to have the opportunity to know you each in your journey with mindfulness.
Warm regards,
Rochelle
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