Kindness as a Path to Increased Well-Being and
Life Satisfaction (February 2022)
Kindness is often an underrated quality. But research is demonstrating that kindness both to ourselves and to others has a powerful impact and a rippling action beyond our original reach. It appears that our biological system is primed for kindness and that acts of kindness have profound effects on the physical, emotional and relational well-being of others and ourselves.
In this Mindful Meet Up, we’ll consider how our systems benefit from kindness and what impact that has on our well-being, on our levels of stress and anxiety, on our relationships, and on our satisfaction with life. We’ll note how “contagious” acts of kindness are. We’ll experience some mindful loving-kindness practices that support our attitude of kindness in our life.
Mindful Journaling as a Tool for Spiritual Growth (March 2022)
Mindful journaling practice creates the means to externalize our painful thoughts, emotions and ruminations in ways that foster self-compassion and expand our inner wisdom.
Research has demonstrated that incorporating a mindful journaling practice can reduce stress and anxiety, improve the immune system and physical health, and increase our resilience. It frees up mental resources as we give the brain a way to process the turbulent emotions and ruminations we all experience.
In this Mindful Meet Up, we’ll explore mindful journaling, setting the intention to allow our inner wisdom the space to come to the foreground.
Mindful Speech, Wiser Tongues (May 2022)
In our culture, mindful speech has become subsumed by fraught exchanges and painful polarization. Sometimes this state of hurtful speech can feel overwhelming and not repairable.
In this Mindful Meet-Up, we’ll consider what our own mindful speech can contribute to our relationships and to our culture. We’ll examine guiding ideas of how we can contribute to an atmosphere of care and compassion in speech. We’ll use discussion, mindfulness practices and journaling to further understand mindful speech as an essential part of our mindfulness practice.
A Mindful Approach to Taking Things Personally (June 2022)
A lot of our pain and suffering stems from taking things personally. Feeling like the intended target of things people say and do, the impact of events and happenings. We expend a lot of energy warding off these assaults on our self - who we are, how we want to be perceived, what we want to accomplish. The pain of our vulnerability to these experiences can be consuming.
Is there a more nuanced approach to this pain we experience as we take things personally? A way that would tap into our wholeness, our wisdom Self? Not ignoring the pain or discomfort, not dismissing the option of dealing with what happened, but discovering a perspective that supports seeing these incidents less as attacks and more as a part of the unwieldly flow of life, a part of our common humanity? Seeing the experience through the eyes of our wisdom Self?
In this Mindful Meet Up, through discussion, mindfulness practice and journaling, we’ll explore, through the lens of mindfulness practice, this prevalent experience of taking things personally.
Breath Meditation: A Tool for Developing
Balance and Resilience in our Lives (July 2022)
The seemingly simple mindfulness practice of focusing on our breath and gently returning our attention to it when our mind invariably wanders, supports powerful benefits for us. These benefits impact our nervous system, our health, and our ability to navigate the ups and downs of our life in a more balanced way. Its broad array of benefits is a paramount reason that it is a foundational mindfulness practice.
In this Mindful Meet Up, we’ll explore Breath Meditation through discussion of its benefits to us and our overall well-being. Using mindfulness practice and journaling, we’ll experience the wealth of information we gather during a breath practice which has direct implications on how we elect to live our life.
Refreshing and/or Rebooting our Mindful
Meditation Practice (August 2022)
We’re aware that a regular mindful meditation practice has pervasive positive effects on us and, consequently, those around us. But then life happens and we find ourselves meditating less often or sometimes not at all, a situation we might regret.
In this Mindful Meet Up, we’ll refresh our understanding of the positive impact a regular mindful meditation practice can have on us physically, emotionally, relationally, and spiritually. We’ll consider barriers we encounter to a regular meditation practice and ideas to deal with those barriers. Through discussion, mindful practice and journaling, we’ll explore refreshing and/or rebooting our mindful meditation practice.
From Constriction to Spaciousness:
Healing the Worry State (September 2022)
Worry…it plagues all of us from time to time and many of us even more frequently. It can derail a promising day and rob us of needed sleep.
Is there a way, through mindfulness practice, to gain a more helpful perspective on worry? To create resilience and equanimity in the face of worry? Is there a way to loosen the tight constriction of worry to enable us to hold it with a spaciousness and a calmness?
In this Mindful Meet Up, through discussion, mindfulness practice and journaling, we’ll take a fresh look at the pervasive state of worry.
The Power of Waiting:
Patience as a Path to Spiritual Growth (October 2022)
Patience - don’t we all wish we had more? In this fast-paced world, there are many delays that are frustrating and irritating. How can I get from here to there the fastest? How can I push through these mundane, irritating delays to get to where I want to be?
But if we examine waiting and patience more closely, we’ll see that there is a quiet power available to us if we just open to it. This quiet virtue of patient waiting to see what unfolds next informs our lives with a wisdom that isn’t available to us in the rushing pace of our days. This Mindful Meet Up is about cultivating that road to wisdom through Mindfulness insight and practice.
Reclaiming Joy (December 2022)
There’s a Buddhist saying, that every life has 10,000 joys and 10,000 sorrows. We’re all aware of the sorrows – only 10,000? But what about the joys?
Joy – it seems at times to be as “elusive as the butterfly of love,” to quote the song lyrics from the 1960’s. Our attention is held fast to the sorrows, the difficulties – big and small -in our life. Our brain is hardwired to lean toward the negative in an effort to protect us from dangers.
But is it possible to also bring our attention to the 10,000 joys in our life? Is it possible to hardwire our brain to be alert to the joys that exist for all of us, regardless of our current circumstances?
In this Mindful Meet Up, we’ll explore the variety of opportunities to reclaim joy on a daily basis and the impact these joys can have on our life, including on the sorrows we also have. There will be discussion, mindfulness practices, and journaling to aid us in uncovering the richness of joy in all of our lives.