Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction. WEEK 1 Home Practices

Transcription

1 WEEK 1 Home Practices 1. Download and complete the course intentions worksheet 2. Download and complete the formal and informal practice sheets 3. Listen to Intro to MBSR Part I. 4. Listen to the Body Scan digital recording at least 6 days this week 5. Watch the videos for week 1 6. Eat at least one meal this week with full awareness 7. Read the Attitudinal Foundations of Mindful/Heartfulness. Consider what they might mean to you 8. Read 10 Things You Can Do to Reduce Stress by Jen Johnson 9. Next class: please wear loose, comfortable clothes for yoga The breeze at dawn has secrets to tell you. Don t go back to sleep. You must ask for what you really want. Don t go back to sleep. People are going back and forth across the doorsill where the two worlds touch. The door is round and open. Don t go back to sleep. Rumi (trans. Coleman Barks) Attitudinal Foundations of Mindfulness/Heartfulness: Beginner s Mind try to develop an attitude as if you are seeing things for the first time. Try to see the extraordinary in the ordinary. Non-Judgment try to observe your thoughts, feelings, and sensations in each present moment without labeling or judging them as good/bad or right/wrong. Acceptance try to acknowledge things as they are in this moment. Holding a clear picture of thing as they are, you are more likely to know what to do and have an inner conviction to act appropriately. Non-Striving try to have an attitude of being without trying to change something, go somewhere, or do something. Patience try to have an understanding that life unfolds in its own timing. Trust try to cultivate trust your own feelings and intuitions. Realize that you inherently have within you all that you need for wholeness and healing. Letting Go try to notice both the good and bad thoughts/feelings that the mind clings to and learn to let go and see beyond just the thoughts/feelings. Try to allow things to be as they are in this moment. Self-Compassion try to develop an attitude of kindness and caring toward yourself. All are held in heart qualities such as: Loving-Kindness, Empathy, and Compassion

2 WEEK 2 Home Practices 2. Listen to Body Scan Meditation recording at least 6 times this week 3. Do an awareness of breathing meditation for 12 minutes every day 4. Watch the videos for week 2 5. Fill out the pleasant events calendar 6. Be mindful with your routine activities: brushing teeth, washing dishes, taking a shower, taking out the garbage, shopping, etc. 7. Practice the mindfulness principle Beginner s Mind--seeing all things as if for the first time. Be aware of the extraordinary in the ordinary. Consider this with your pleasant events. The Guest House This being human is a guest house. Every morning a new arrival. A joy, a depression, a meanness, some momentary awareness comes as an unexpected visitor. Welcome and entertain them all! Even if they're a crowd of sorrows, who violently sweep your house empty of its furniture, still, treat each guest honorably. He may be clearing you out for some new delight. The dark thought, the shame, the malice, meet them at the door laughing, and invite them in. Be grateful for whoever comes, because each has been sent as a guide from beyond. ~ Rumi ~

3 WEEK 3 Home Practices 2. Alternate this week between the body scan meditation and lying down yoga. Do the body scan one day and the yoga the next day for 6 > days/week 3. Do a sitting meditation with awareness of breathing for 12 minutes every day 4. Watch videos for week 3 5. Fill out the unpleasant events calendar 6. Make an effort to capture your moments during the day, being mindful of going on automatic pilot and under what circumstances it occurs. What pulls you off center? 7. Read Meeting Pain with Mindfulness and Finding Joy After Loss by Jen Johnson 8. Practice the Mindfulness Principles of Acceptance and Trust. Explore how they are related. Wild Geese You do not have to be good. You do not have to walk on your knees for a hundred miles through the desert, repenting. You only have to let the soft animal of your body love what it loves. Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine. Meanwhile the world goes on. Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain are moving across the landscapes, over the prairies and the deep trees, the mountains and the rivers. Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air, are heading home again. Whoever you are, no matter how lonely, the world offers itself to your imagination, calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting over and over announcing your place in the family of things. Mary Oliver

4 WEEK 4 Home Practices 2. Alternate practicing the Body Scan Meditation and Yoga for practice 6 days/week 3. Listen to the Sitting Meditation 23 minutes every day. 4. Read Are You Balanced? 7 Kinds of Wellness You Need and 5 Things You Can Do to Live a Mindful Life by Jen Johnson 5. Be aware of stress reactions during the week, without trying to change them in any way. Use the reactions to get to know your patterns. Are you more likely to become hyper- or hypo- aroused? (Hyper-aroused is highly activated, angry, impatience, frustrated. Hypo-aroused involves more feelings of being stuck, blocking, numbing, shutting off to the moment.) Do you flip between the two? What do the reactions feel like in your body? Bring as much openhearted curiosity to the physical sensation. 6. Practice the Mindfulness principle of Patience THE WELL OF GRIEF Those who will not slip beneath the still surface on the well of grief turning downward through its black water to the place we cannot breathe will never know the source from which we drink, the secret water, cold and clear, nor find in the darkness glimmering the small round coins thrown by those who wished for something else. ~David Whyte May I have compassion and understanding for myself just as I am. ~Thich Nhat Hanh You gain strength, courage and confidence by every experience in which you really stop to look fear in the face. ~ Eleanor Roosevelt Listen to your life. See it for the fathomless mystery that it is. In the boredom and pain of it, no less than in the excitement and gladness. Touch, taste, smell your way to the holy and hidden heart of it. Because in the last analysis, all moments are key moments and life itself is grace. ~Frederick Beuchner Lazarus (Berkley stress researcher) defines psychological stress as a particular relationship between the person and the environment that is appraised by the person as taxing or exceeding his or her resources and endangering his or her well-being.

5 WEEK 5 Home Practices 2. Practice every other day with the Sitting Meditation recording. Alternate with either the body scan or yoga recording on the days in between. 3. Watch the videos for week 5 4. Be aware of your moments of reacting this week. Explore the possibilities around changing a stress reaction into a stress response. (Being mindful of the difference between suppressing the reaction and being mindful of the reaction) 5. Practice responding with greater mindfulness and creativity also in your formal meditation 6. Work with the mindfulness principles of Non-striving and Non-judging Autobiography in Five Chapters 1) I walk down the street. 3) I walk down the same street. There is a deep hole in the sidewalk. There is a deep hole in the sidewalk. I fall in. I see it is there. I am lost I am hopeless. I still fall in it s a habit. It isn t my fault. My eyes are open. It takes forever to find a way out. I know where I am. It is my fault. 2) I walk down the same street. I get out immediately. There is a deep hole in the sidewalk. I pretend I don t see it. 4) I walk down the same street. I fall in again. There is a deep hole in the sidewalk. I can t believe I m in the same place. I walk around it. But it isn t my fault. It still takes a long time to get out. 5) I walk down another street. Portia Nelson The Summer Day Who made the world? Who made the swan, and the black bear? Who made the grasshopper? This grasshopper, I mean the one who has flung herself out of the grass, the one who is eating sugar out of my hand, who is moving her jaws back and forth instead of up and down who is gazing around with her enormous and complicated eyes. Now she lifts her pale forearms and thoroughly washes her face. Now she snaps her wings open, and floats away. I don t know exactly what a prayer is. I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down into the grass, how to kneel down in the grass, how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields, which is what I have been doing all day. Tell me, what else should I have done? Doesn t everything die at last, and too soon? Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life? Mary Oliver

6 WEEK 6 Home Practices 2. Listen to sitting meditation every other day. Alternate with either the body scan or yoga on the days in between. 3. Continue some time every day sitting with awareness of breath. 4. Watch the videos for week 6 5. Pay attention to how you hold stress in your body and what some of your usual habits reacting to stress are. 6. Practice particularly with the mindfulness principles letting go. For something that is important, how might you practice letting go without dropping something you don t want to drop? All Day Retreat Saturday 9am 3pm. Bring bag lunch and drink THE LOGIC OF LOVE / surrender --Author Unknown If you cannot surrender yourself to the process of life, you are like a stream arguing with a rock. Do you think a river comes up to a rock and spends all its time trying to move it? Of course not. The stream encompasses the rock. The rock becomes a feature of the stream. In time the rock becomes smooth and all its edges polished. The radiance in its structure is revealed. The Journey One day you finally knew what you had to do, and began, though the voices around you kept shouting their bad advice though the whole house began to tremble and you felt the old tug at your ankles. Mend my life! each voice cried. But you didn t stop. You knew what you had to do, though the wind pried

7 with its stiff fingers at the very foundations, though their melancholy was terrible. It was already late enough, and a wild night, and the road was full of fallen branches and stones. but little by little, as you left their voices behind, the stars began to burn through the sheets of clouds, and there was a new voice which you slowly recognized as your own, that kept you company as you strode deeper and deeper into the world, determined to do the only thing you could do determined to save the only life you could save --Mary Oliver

8 WEEK 7 Home Practices 2. Practice without recordings this week: practice formal sitting, yoga, walking and/or body scan on your own, every day 3. Watch the videos for week 7 4. Practice being aware and awake informally when you are not doing formal practice 5. Write out the principles of mindfulness and heart qualities (generosity, empathy, gratitude, gentleness, and loving kindness) and write for yourself what each means for you. Imagine My Surprise Imagine my surprise, sitting a full hour in silent and irremediable fear of the world, to find the body forgetting its own fear the instant it opened and placed its unassuming hands on life s enduring pain, And the world for one moment closed its terrifying eyes in gratitude. Saying. This is my body, I am found. --David Whyte

9 WEEK 8: Home Practice Suggestions Mindfulness is about being fully awake in our lives. It is about perceiving the exquisite vividness of each moment. We feel more alive. We also gain immediate access to our own powerful inner resources for insight, transformation, and healing. Jon Kabat Zinn Suggestions: Sitting Meditation, with awareness of breath, body, sounds, thoughts, emotions, choiceless awareness Body Scan Mindful Walking Mindful Eating Yoga Loving Kindness Meditation: May I dwell in the heart. May I be free from suffering. May I be healed. May I be at peace From Saki Santorelli, Ways to reduce stress during the day, (modified): 1. Take 5 30 minutes in the morning to be quiet and meditate 2. While driving become aware of body tension (hands wrapped tightly around the steering wheel, shoulders raised, stomach tight) Can you breath into those places? Choose to drive the speed limit to slow down consciously. 3. Decide at times to not play the radio in the car or house. Listen to the quiet. With cell phones, experiment with making driving a zero phone time. 5. Walk mindfully from your car to wherever you are going. 6. Bring awareness to bodily sensations and your breath while you work. 7. Take a minute or two break every hour to re connect with your breath. Set your watch on chime 8. Consider mindful eating at lunch if even for 15 minutes 9. Take 5 minutes when you first come home to sit, breath, center or, do it in the car before you walk into the house BOOKS: Books about mindfulness: Chodron, Pema Taking the Leap The Places that Scare You When Things Fall Apart Start Where You Are

10 Dalai Lama Kabat Zinn, Jon Kornfield, Jack Roemer & Orsillo Rosenberg, Larry Salzberg, Sharon Seligman, Martin Thich Nhat Hanh An Open Heart: Practicing Compassion in Everyday Life Full Catastrophe Living Wherever You Go There You Are Mindfulness for Beginners Everyday Blessings, A Guide to Mindful Parenting A Path with Heart Seeking the Heart of Wisdom: The Path of Insight Meditation Bringing Home the Dharma: Awakening Right Where You Are The Wise Heart: A Guide to the Universal Teachings of Buddhist Psychology The Mindful Way Through Anxiety Breath by Breath LovingKindness: The Revolutionary Art of Happiness Authentic Happiness The Miracle of Mindfulness Being Peace Williams, Segal, Teasdale The Mindful Way Through Depression Books on/of myth or story: Remen, Rachel Naomi Kitchen Table Wisdom Whyte, David The Heart Aroused Poetry: Berry, Wendell Oliver, Mary Rilke, Rainer Maria Rumi Whyte, David Selected Poems of Wendell Berry New and selected Poems Selected Poems The Essential Rumi Open Secret: Versions of Rumi Fire in the Earth PLACES TO MEDITATE/PRACTICE: Sunday: 8:30 AM 9:15 AM 45 minute silent meditation. All are welcome, some cushions and chairs are available. Held at the home of Angelika Schulz. E mail Angelika for directions and more information. Location is a few blocks off Market St. on North 19th St. in Wilmington.

11 Tuesday: 6:50 PM 8:00 PM The Wilmington Zen Group meets at the Unitarian Universalist church and is well attended. Click here for a map and driving directions. See the Wilmington Zen website. Wat Carolina is a Thai Buddhist Monastery, located near Bolivia, North Carolina or about 20 miles west of Wilmington, North Carolina. The Wat Carolina Monastery continues to grow, both physically and spiritually, under the most excellent leadership of Phrakru Buddamonpricha, abbot. Retreat centers: Barre Center for Buddhist Studies Insight Meditation Society Omega Workshops Spirit Rock Meditation Center FOR HOME PRACTICE: online source for recordings of dharma talks by a number of meditation teachers. emindful.com brings live online classes in stress reduction, complementary healing, and personal growth, via video conferencing, into people's homes and offices. An Internet connection and computer are all that is needed. Several of the interactive classes offer Tara Brach is a leading western teacher of Buddhist meditation, emotional healing and spiritual awakening. She has practiced and taught meditation for over 35 years, with an emphasis on vipassana (mindfulness or insight) meditation. Tara is the senior teacher and founder of the Insight Meditation Community of Washington. A clinical psychologist, Tara is the author of Radical Acceptance. pemachodronfoundation.org American Pema Chödrön became a Buddhist nun in 1974 and has since become one of the nation s leading teachers of mindfulness. Jack Kornfield is an American who was trained as a Buddhist monk in Thailand, Burma, and India. He is a clinical psychologist, cofounder of the Insight Meditation Society in Massachusetts, and founder of Spirit Rock Center in California.