Lesson-1, Welcome!

"How to Reduce Stress"

This 3-hour lesson includes the establishment of a learning contract with the participant. We are experientially introduced to mindful eating, mindfulness of breathing and the body scan. This week’s home· practice is a guided body scan for 45 minutes as a means of beginning to learn to become familiar with mindful awareness of the body.

Theme - From our point of view, there is more right with us than wrong with us, no matter what challenges we are facing. Challenges and difficulties are workable. Mindful awareness, defined as paying attention, on purpose, in the present moment, non-judgmentally, is fundamental to this work since the present moment is the only time anyone ever has to perceive, learn, grow or change.

Opening meditation:
Becoming aware of body sensations, emotions, and thoughts in this present moment.

Guidelines for participation:

• self-care

• confidentiality

• communication with instructor

Guided internal reflection:
What are you here for?
What is your intention?
What do you really want?
What has brought you here?
What are your expectations for the program?

Yoga:
15-minute introduction to standing Mountain Pose and other standing poses.

Raisin-eating exercise:
Reflecting (not taking a personal position) on the experience.
Focusing on direct sensory observation -what can be seen, felt, smelled, tasted, heard.
Noticing if your observations of the immediate experience of mindfully eating, are becoming personal opinions and theories.

Abdominal breathing:
Notice the moment-to-moment awareness of the eating awareness and to experience (beginners mind & non-judgment) of the breath in the same way.
Introduction various comfortable postures for lying down: corpse pose and sitting in a chair.
Focusing on the feeling of the abdomen rising and falling with the in-breath and the out-breath, mindfully “tasting” the breath in the same way open-minded way as tasting the raisin.
Non-judgmentally observing one’s own breathing from moment to moment; and gently bringing one’s attention back to the breath and the present moment when it wanders.
From mindfulness of breathing, we move into the guided body scan where we lie on the floor or sit in a comfortable position.

Summary:
We finish with an inner reflection on our experiences of the body scan and lesson 1.

Assignment:
Instructions for use of the 45 minute Body Scan recording for home practice during the week

Home Practice Assignment:
Listening to the Body Scan recording ~ 6 days this week
Home Practice Manual: 9 dots exercise
Eat one meal this week mindfully
(Optional assignment -read “Upstream/Downstream” by Donald Ardell)

Closing:
Guided meditation of 'Stopping & Dropping'