Unwinding Habit Loops through Compassionate Curiosity (January 2024)
The first of the year often brings with it our resolution to change a habit that is not supportive of how we want to live our life. These habits vary with everyone: eating, exercising, social media, anxiety, smoking, gambling, worry, shopping, drinking, day-dreaming.
Whatever habit loop we decide to address, we gird our loins and take up our shield of will power and march forward. However, research tells us that will power is depleting and headed for inevitable failure.
What we’d like to examine is bringing compassionate curiosity to these habit loops as a path to unwinding them. Research tells us that compassionate curiosity is energizing rather than depleting. In this Mindful Meet Up, we’ll consider the teachings and research of Dr. Jud Brewer, a psychiatrist and mindfulness teacher at Harvard Medical School.
Experiencing Healing and Rejuvenation in Nature (March 2024)
Spring is an optimum time to tune into what nature has to offer us in the way of healing and restoration and emergence of our true Self.
We’re bombarded with stressors from emails, demands on our time, people’s comments, news stories, deadlines. We experience constriction and tension in both our body and our mind. We need a refuge to rest and relax the body and the mind, to disengage from all of the confusion and information overload.
Nature is a natural refuge where we can find a place for our body and mind to rest and to bring them into balance. In nature’s landscape, our inner landscape has an opportunity to refresh itself, to move closer to the natural expression of who we are in our essential nature.
In this Mindful Meet Up, through discussion, mindfulness practice and journaling, we’ll come to appreciate the healing gift of nature which lies just outside our front door.
Embracing Imperfection (May 2024)
When we mess up, we often glibly say to ourselves, “Well, no one is perfect!” but then that berating inner voice pipes up. “But you should be. Shame on you.” None of us like to screw up, but given that we’re flawed human beings, it happens with some regularity. This internal shaming is painful and often hits its mark – our heart and our nervous system.
But is there a way to embrace our imperfections? A way to welcome our entire self, flaws and all? Are there benefits to gain by shifting our stance toward our imperfections from one of shame to one of interest and curiosity? What hidden gifts are found in embracing imperfection?
In this mindful Meet Up, through discussion, journaling and meditation practices, we’ll explore what’s possible when we fully embrace our flawed but loveable selves.
Surfing the Waves of Meditation Practice (August 2024)
The hope is that mindfulness meditation will usher us into the territory of bliss and nirvana. Unfortunately, too often the experience is more like surfing the waves of a tsunami—ups and downs and distractions and emotions.
Is this just inevitable or are there paths we can take to help us navigate this sometimes wild ride? In this Mindful Meet-Up, we’ll explore ways to maintain comfortable postures, to return to presence after our mind has wondered off into no-man’s land, and to meet those waves of emotion with kindness and curiosity and without judgment. We’ll use discussion, meditation and journaling to examine ways to enrich and deepen our mindfulness meditation practice.
Discovering Ways of Meeting Anxiety through Mindfulness (October 2024)
We all, at one time or another, experience anxiety and its close companions, worry, rumination, and a sense of being overwhelmed. We try so hard to think our way out of this painful state, but thinking just mires us more deeply in the trench of anxiety. Anxiety can paralyze us, giving us no room to turn, no place to rest, no way to move forward.
In this Meet-Up, we’ll discuss how dealing with anxiety differs from how we solve external issues like getting groceries or prepare a report for work. Using discussion, meditation practices and journaling, we’ll discover more effective ways of meeting anxiety.