Wow.
Week 7.
Just take a moment to pause and reflect on all you have learned so far in Brilliant Mindful YOU!
- Mindfulness of breath, body and sound
- Finding your anchor
- Basic meditation postures and practices — eating, walking, etc.
- Dealing with thoughts in meditation
- Emotional awareness
- Nervous system and emotional systems basics
- Responding versus reacting
- Cultivating positive emotions
- Dealing with physical pain
- Understanding the mind-body-brain connection
- Awareness of stress and management of stress
- Mind traps and how some of our stress is “in our heads”
- Heartfulness, compassion, and lovingkindness
- Mindful communication
- Forgiveness
Whew! That’s a lot!
Consider all of this a starting point. Mindfulness is an eight-week course, and it is also the rest of your life.
This course isn’t about becoming an expert. It’s not about getting “good” at meditation.
This course is about learning to live with greater calm, balance, and ease. It’s about putting YOU back in control of your life.
I truly hope you are seeing these transformations in your life.
This week, we are coming full circle. Mindfulness is the same in the end as it is in the beginning. We return to the breath.
This week, we will explore how we continue with our practice — making mindfulness a natural part of our day. We’ll talk about gratitude and self-care and all the nourishing goodness we need for our modern mindful life.
We’ll return to our anchor. We’ll rest in awareness.
That’s the practice. There’s no AP Mindfulness.
Today, sit in awareness. Breathe deeply. For 25 minutes. Or 5 minutes. Or 30 seconds.
Breathe deeply.
Come back to the beginning.
“KEEPING QUIET” BY PABLO NERUDA
Now we will count to twelve
and we will all keep still.
For once on the face of the earth,
let’s not speak in any language;
let’s stop for one second,
and not move our arms so much.
It would be an exotic moment
without rush, without engines;
we would all be together
in a sudden strangeness.
Fisherman in the cold sea
would not harm whales
and the man gathering salt
would look at his hurt hands.
Those who prepare green wars,
wars with gas, wars with fire,
victories with no survivors,
would put on clean clothes
and walk about with their brothers
in the shade, doing nothing.
What I want should not be confused
with total inactivity.
Life is what it is about;
I want no truck with death.
If we were not so single-minded
about keeping our lives moving,
and for once could do nothing,
perhaps a huge silence
might interrupt this sadness
of never understanding ourselves
and of threatening ourselves with death.
Perhaps the earth can teach us
as when everything seems dead
and later proves to be alive.
Now I’ll count up to twelve
and you keep quiet and I will go.
—from Extravagaria (translated by Alastair Reid, pp. 27-29, 1974)