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Thematic Offerings
Hello fellow mindfulness seeker. Below are mindfulness practices, info, poems that are aligned with our themes and in order as we've posted them. So scroll through to be sure you see everything. They're also organized by activity in the activity pages.
Come Into The Now
As we head into the holiday season, use this short meditation to help re-center and meet any challenges or difficulties head on. Join Susan in this 12-15min Mindful Meditation to bring you into the NOW. Take your noble, dignified seat and get comfortable; then hit play:
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A Short, Simple Mindfulness Practice
Bringing awareness to how we are holding stress is incredibly powerful - yet simple.
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Join Abigail in this great practice:
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The Hidden Toll of Microstress
“Engaging with other people…trains your brain — like training a coordinated group of muscles — to develop brain circuits for managing your own reactions, responses, and emotions,” says neurologist Salinas. There’s also a healthy distraction component, because emotional burdens don’t weigh on you as much when you’re immersed in a multidimensional life. “You tend not to ruminate on your problems when you are around other people who engage your full attention in a positive way,” Salinas explains."
Micro stresses are the kind of stress we barely notice or think is something we can continue to handle in the moment, but it accrues and becomes a larger problem. In addition to mindfulness, the act of being with a like-minded community, hearing their perspectives and the scope of their problems can ease our emotional burdens. This is why we think attending one of our online classes, with students from all over the world can drastically change your life.
Embracing Beginner's Mind
Mindfulness meditation is the practice of a thousand beginnings.
Because the present moment is the only moment, we are, in fact, always at the beginning.
If we’re always beginning, we don’t have to be an expert. We actually can’t be an expert in mindfulness anyway, so this is a relief!
But the moment-by-moment practice of beginning again, offers a great lesson in letting go of expectations and pressures. It allows us to fully be present.
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And because we are often hard on ourselves, this approach also teaches kindness, gentleness, and care. These outcomes of “beginning again” can then translate beyond our formal meditation practice, into our lives in ways that promote self-forgiveness, courage, letting go — or at least holding more lightly — of our expectations AND our fears.
If we really recognize the present moment and its freshness, we can more clearly see that whatever stories we are carrying from the past may be just that: stories. Not necessarily the truth. Join us as we embrace Beginner's Mind this Fall!
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Inspired Reading: Poetry
Open in Gratitude
by Patricia Ellsberg
Listen to this reading of the beautiful poem - Open in Gratitude. You may find it provides reminders of all the amazing gift of life we have - no matter the challenges or difficulties in our lives.
Short Body Scan
Bringing Gratitude to our Perfectly Imperfect Body
One area many of us find we are focused on what is 'wrong', is our bodies. In this 15 min body scan, we bring gratitude to our bodies - no matter how perfectly imperfect they are right now.
BODY SCAN MEDITATION
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INSPIRED READING
Embrace Marvelous Victories
Abigail's newsletter on disrupting our tendency toward complaining and negativity bias.
I'm a paragraph. Click here to add your own text and edit me. It's easy.
"Staying a little longer in indifference, or not YET having an opinion, we might have the chance for our thoughts and feelings to come at us with a little more creativity and compassion, which can lead us out of conflict, making our collective thoughts and actions more consistent, and, therefore, more able to actually accomplish anything."
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MINDFUL MOVEMENT
Follow along with Susan as we move through some gentle Mindful movement practices designed to open you up to possibility !
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RESEARCH AND ARTICLES
Glimmers Are All Around Us
You could call mindfulness the original psychology. Understanding and accepting the ways of the mind and body to suffer less and live more fully has been the knowledge of mindfulness since the beginning of time. Which is why we love when the fundamentals reach popular culture under a new, marketable term.
Enter: Glimmers, "the tiny micro-moments of joy that allow us to feel calm and give us a sense of inner peace."
Sounds a lot like Noticing What's Right to us!
"As each one of us finds a glimmer, the glimmer moments begin to accumulate in our system,” Dana continues. “We begin to see more, and we begin to have more capacity to be in that place of regulation. And from that place of regulation, you then can show up for others in a different way. It's almost as if this micro-moment — this glimmer — is the beginning of what can become a really big change.”
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PONDER THIS
Rainer Maria Rilke
"Have patience with everything unresolved in your heart and to try to love the questions themselves as if they were locked rooms or books written in a very foreign language. Don’t search for the answers, which could not be given to you now, because you would not be able to live them. And the point is to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps then, someday far in the future, you will gradually, without even noticing it, live your way into the answer.”
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Meditative Reflection
Noticing What is at Ease
Rather than focusing on the difficulties and challenges in our life, we can learn to see and truly appreciate all the things that are positive as well. Try this reflective meditation to expand your practice:
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PONDER THIS
Try noticing your thoughts about a particular negative event today and pause to consider everything that is neutral or right about that moment as well. Become aware of what happens when you do this.
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Notice What Is Right
Life is filled with difficulties. There is nothing we can do about this fact. For as many challenging parts of our life there are, there are so many more parts that are doing just fine. Some are even joyful and happy. We are pre-wired to focus on the negative stuff - a necessary part of our survival mechanism. However, we can train our brains to develop new pathways of thinking.
SUMMER
Summer is officially here and that can sometimes be a time of frustration and challenge. Perhaps there isn't time or money to go on the dream vacation this summer. Or maybe you're just not feeling up to the beach or even enjoying the summer. It is also the mid-point of the calendar year. Maybe things aren't going the way that you planned this year. Help meet any summer doldrums or challenges directly and clearly with our special focused practices.
Check back often for new offerings to aid in expanding our perspective on the theme, plus options to join us for Live Practice. Enjoy!
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MINDFUL MEDITATION
Looking to bring your awareness within? Try this 18 min meditation and focus on the motion of your breathing - akin to the gentle waves in a calm sea. Discover a new in-between place.
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MINDFUL MOVEMENT
Follow along with Abigail (and Potato!) as we isolate the space created by our arching lower backs and discover the fluidity of our spines.
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LIVE VIRTUAL PRACTICE
Mindful Meditation
Live via Zoom (recorded)
If you missed our live session on May 22nd, here is the recording. Enjoy!
"The quieter you become, the more you hear."
RUMI
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PONDER THIS
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INSPIRED READING
The Between
Abigail's newsletter on learning to mindfully relate to others by nurturing the space that is created between us.
"Relaxing into this kind of mutuality instead of a more isolated and heavily bounded sense of self, we may even find there is not such a rigid divide in our interactions with others- that both sides can just arise and be" witnessed.
Awareness of The Space Between
Here is a meditation designed to sit with awareness of the Spaces Between.
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GUIDED MEDITATION RECORDING
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POETRY
This great little poem is all about the pause - the space in-between.
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MINDFUL MOVEMENT
How about a nice standing mindful movement session as a way to transition between activities during the day. This practice will take anywhere from 15 -25 mins.
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Becoming Aware of the Space Between
Our focus is about bringing awareness to The Space Between: the space between one thought and the next; the space between one activity and another; the space between an emotion and an action, the spaces in our bodies, even the space that is created between ourselves and others.
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Below, we will be building on the many different angles we can use to bring our full awareness to this pause, so we can reap the benefits of the space and time it gives us to find our center and make full use of our free will.
HAPPY SPRING
For our inaugural study, we're focusing on the inspiration for this community space: the Space Between. What happens in that space within the pause? Can we be aware of that space and use it to create what we want?