Mindfulness Classes
Bringing Mindful Qualities to Life
Mindfulness is a springboard for cultivating positive personal qualities such as patience, kindness, gratitude, and generosity. These sessions are offered periodically to explore particular qualities and their relevance and application in daily life. Each session has a similar format of guided meditation, a themed teaching, and an interactive dialogue practice regarding the theme.
Mindful Self Compassion Program
The Mindful-Self Compassion program is a well-regarded protocol pioneered by Kristin Neff PhD. and Chris Germer, Ph.D. It draws on the skills of mindfulness and focuses on developing the resource of self-compassion to enhance our capacity for emotional wellbeing. Burgeoning research shows that self-compassion is strongly associated with emotional wellbeing, coping with life challenges, lower levels of anxiety and depression, healthy habits such as diet and exercise, and more satisfying personal relationships. It is an inner strength that enables us to be more fully human—more fully ourselves.
Mindfulness-Based Cognitive Therapy
MBCT is an intervention designed for individuals with a history of depression. It is also beneficial for those who experience stress or anxiety. Combining the concepts of cognitive-behavioral therapy (CBT) with principles of mindfulness, it is one of the most widely used and researched mindfulness-based approaches. MBCT was developed by Zindel Segal, Mark Williams and John Teasdale, and is based on Jon Kabat-Zinn’s Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) program.
Mindful Communication: Listening, Speaking, & Relating with Care
The basis of mindful communication is first and foremost personal mindfulness- greater awareness of sensations, emotions, and thoughts that create unconscious reactivity. This six week series is grounded in the primary practice of personal meditation- refining how you stabilize attention and responsiveness within yourself, moment to moment.
From here you will explore how to maintain and extend self-awareness to others, through a variety of speaking and listening practices. These practices not only help you become a more skillful communicator, but also provide a fascinating gateway into your personal patterns and the human condition.
This series is designed for both experienced and beginning meditators. Each class will involve some form of group, triad, and one-to-one speaking and listening. Care, kindness, and confidentiality will be emphasized throughout.
Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction
In Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction MBSR, we define mindfulness as the awareness that arises by paying attention on purpose in the present moment. In the course, we develop our attention informally and formally. Informally in our everyday life, by lighting up our awareness in the midst of whatever we are doing or experiencing. Formally in our meditation practices, by taking time away from our normal activities to cultivate deeper connections to the direct experience of body and mind.
With mindfulness meditation we literally meditate upon the moment to moment movements of sensations, emotions, and thoughts. In this simple way we expand our knowing of what is actually happening, our capacity to attend, and our ability to respond. As simple as it sounds, be present, it is important to keep intentionally and formally practicing.
Please see: The MBSR Program in Depth for a comprehensive look at the program.