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Group Programs
for dealing with anxiety, recurrent pain, or illness
This 8-week course is modeled after Dr. Jon Kabat-Zinn's program at the University of Massachusetts Medical
Center. We will focus on gentle and compassionate ways of being with our bodies, emotions and challenging mind
states through:
- mindfulness meditation & its applications to everyday life
- body awareness & relaxation
- gentle yoga stretching & movement
- learning to ground ourselves in the present moment & connect with moments of calm
- learn how to work with uncomfortable mind states & body sensations
Classes are very experiential and involve a mixture of:
- meditation (lying down, sitting, and walking)
- gentle stretching and mindful yoga
- teaching and discussion
- understanding the stress response cycle & learning to be less reactive
- homework to facilitate bringing mindfulness into everyday life
The program requires a commitment to daily practice (approximately 45 minutes) for optimal benefit. You will receive a workbook & 2 CDs to guide you during the course and to support ongoing home use.
For information re dates and fees please refer to the course schedule and contact Marian by email or by phone to ensure a good fit. Pre-registration is necessary and space is limited. The final step is to print the registration form, fill it out & mail in with your payment.
Benefits
Research has shown that the majority of those who complete the course report:
- an enhanced ability to cope with short and long term stressful situations
- reduced levels of anxiety, panic and depression
- lower pain levels and increased ability to cope with pain
- a greater ability to relax
- increased self-esteem and sense of well-being
to prevent
depression relapse
This 8-week course is modeled after Dr. Zindel Segal's program at the Centre for Addiction and Mental
Health in Toronto and grew out of Kabat-Zinn's MBSR proram. The program integrates cognitive therapy principles and
practice into a Mindfulness framework.
Participants learn to make a radical shift in their relationship to the
thoughts, feelings and bodily sensations that contribute to depressive relapse through mindfulness meditation,
decentering, focusing and practicing "radical acceptance". We will practice gentle and compassionate ways of working
with personal barriers and negative thought streams.
The program requires a commitment to daily practice (approximately 45 minutes) for optimal benefit. You will receive a workbook and two CDs to guide you during the course and to support ongoing home use.
For information regarding dates and fees, please refer to the Course Schedule and contact Marian by email or by phone to ensure a good fit. Pre-registration is necessary and space is limited. The final step is to print the registration form, fill it out and mail in with your payment.
Connection & Wholeness
The S.O.N.G. of Connection: Dissolving Inner Impediments to Wholeness
To underscore our place in Nature, philosopher Alan Watts emphasized we don't come into the
world, we come out of it. We are Nature. The Earth "peoples" the way an apple tree "apples."
Yet we suffer deeply from feelings of separation from the world around us, and even from
ourselves.
In this 8-session course (7 evenings + an all-day), we will learn to cultivate Loving-Kindness;
Compassion; Empathetic Joy; and Equanimity to dissolve inner impediments to wholeness
and those we place between Self, Others, Nature and the mystery of life we might call God
(S.O.N.G.).
We will also explore the nature of love, love as action, skilful approaches to working with fear
and anger, ways to accept the inevitability and ubiquity of change and cultivating meaning and
connection.
Benefits of such practices include feeling a greater sense of connection and unconditional love,
greater compassion and joy, and more peace in navigating the vicissitudes of everyday life.
Home practice will include a variety of daily meditation practices and assigned readings.
Working with Difficult Mind States and Emotions
 This program is designed for those who already have meditation experience and would like to deepen their practice. Most people take MBSR II after completing either an MBSR or MBCT program.
Each of the 7, two-hour sessions will involve instruction, discussion and meditation to learn skillful means for navigating difficult mind states.
As we learn to work with challenging thoughts and emotions during meditation practice, we begin to develop the strength and confidence to address them more skillfully in our daily life.
Specifically, we will spend one session each working with:
- anxiety & fear
- physical pain & discomfort
- anger & hurt
- grief & loss
- obsessing & ruminating
and one session each on learning to directly cultivate:
- kindness, befriending ourselves & others
- forgiveness & letting go
Homework will be comprised of weekly readings and specific meditation practices. Participants will be invited to attend a six-hour mini-retreat on a Saturday, late in the course. Course fees include the daylong session, seven evening classes and the weekly readings.
For information on dates and fees, please refer to the group schedule and contact Marian by email or by phone to ensure a good fit. Pre-registration is necessary and space is limited. The final step is to print the registration form (click to download), fill it out & mail in with your payment.
Stephen Levine suggests that we experiment with living a year "so profoundly alive that we directly experience the moment-to-moment process that is our life. We take responsibility for being alive, recognizing that responsibility is the ability to respond instead of the compulsion to react. We explore it all: that in us which at times wishes to be dead as well as that in us which never dies. That which blocks the heart and confuses the mind as well as that which clears confusion and dissolves obstruction."
 As many wisdom traditions attest, until we fully face our mortality, the fact of our own inevitable annihilation, we cannot fully come into this life. To fear and hide from death is to fear and retreat from life. According to Stephen Levine, it is not death that causes so much fear, but our attachment (positive or negative, as excitement or dread) to past fears. Especially in times of stress, we tend to follow well-worn paths of patterns.
Not a morbid undertaking
Though on the surface, to contemplate one's mortality may seem needlessly morose, ultimately to see clearly that our time on this small planet is short and getting shorter leads not to depression and hopelessness, but to a freedom and joy previously unimagined. Many who have been visited by a diagnosis of terminal illness speak of its gifts, grateful they were awakened while there was still time to learn to live and love.
What would you do with a year to live?
In this 7 week workshop, together we will employ various gentle meditative approaches to help us learn to appreciate the moments of our lives, and to become aware of, and present to, the inevitability of our own death and the incredible gift that is life.
With a daily meditation practice, we will begin the letting go of a lifetime of holding, making room in the body and mind for our whole life. Through softening the armoring over the heart, we begin to realize that it's safe to be alive in the body once again.
Practices
In this course, we will:
~ embark on a personal life review, going beneath the surface of past actions to the states of mind from which the acts originated
~gently explore our emotional attachment to the shadows of previous actions that affect us in the present
~practice becoming more mindful of the process we call our life, with a daily practice of investigating the heart and mind
~cultivate a deepening awareness and a broadening of forgiveness and gratitude
~begin a process of inquiry and observation through which we will investigate our attitudes toward death and our underlying and often contradictory belief systems
What could I potentially gain from this course?
According to Stephen Levine, living this experiment encourages:
~ a greater vitality and sensitivity to even the most ordinary day
~ a greater sense of balance and ease
~ a lessening of fear
~ an appreciation of impermanence & the living of a more conscious life
~ a sense of completion before dissolution
~ a greater sense of freedom and joy
For information regarding dates and fees, please refer to the Course Schedule and contact Marian by email or by phone to ensure a good fit. Pre-registration is necessary and space is limited. The final step is to print the registration form, fill it out and mail in with your payment.
Mindful Parenting
“The most precious gift we can offer others is our presence.
When mindfulness embraces those we love, they will bloom like flowers.
~Thich Nhat Hahn
This 6 week program is designed to help parents with kids of all ages learn the internal skills they need to become better parents.
Being a parent is one of the sweetest
roles we can play in life — and, at
times, the most difficult.
Despite our best intentions, we sometimes behave in ways we later regret.
Habits, and habits of mind, are hard to change. Negative experiences from our
own childhood can colour our perceptions and affect our behaviours towards others.
Mindfulness practice can help us to:
~ be more in the moment
~ decrease stress
~ develop insight into behaviours
~ decrease emotional reactivity
~ foster patience & compassion
~ improve relationships with ourselves
& our children
~ raise happier kids!
Classes are very experiential and involve a mixture of:
- meditation practice (lying down, sitting, mindful movement & walking)
- teaching and discussion
- 30 minutes daily home practice to facilitate bringing mindfulness into everyday life
You will receive a workbook & 2 CDs to guide you during the course and to support ongoing practice.
Facilitator: Brett Peterson, MA (Couns. Psych.) has 15 years experience as a counselor and as a student of mindfulness meditation including Jon Kabat-Zinn as teacher. He has 11 years experience as a parent
& has been teaching mindfulness programs for UBC research & in the community for the last 5 years.
For information re. dates and fees, please refer to the course schedule and contact Marian by email or by phone to ensure a good fit. Pre-registration is necessary and space is limited. The final step is to print the registration form, fill it out & mail in with your payment.
© Mindful Living 2004-2010
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Vancouver, BC
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