- Sit every day. Try sitting for a minimum of 10-20 minutes per day (more if you are able). Please practice your meditation in silence (if you use an app, try to use it only a couple of times during the week. Explore silence).
- Do your best while sitting to: pay attention, welcome and open to whatever is arising. Is it possible to include it all?
- Gratitude Practices
- Text or email your buddy 3 things you are grateful for each day. Can be anything.
- Thank someone every day
- Generosity Practices
- For a half hour each day, try offering respectful attention to everyone you meet or talk to. Take the other person’s point of view. Let the person on the bus, T, desk next to you, your neighbor, child, partner, be the most important person around.
- Give your full attention to them physically. Put your device(s) away. Look at the person. Listen carefully. Open your heart. Be there without pushing an agenda. Simply listening.
- Text or email your buddy. Share what you learned. Only a sentence or two.
- Grace Practices
- Start to be aware of the heart space that can hold your life with tenderness and kindness.
- Do your best to notice, any moments when you know and experience the spacious presence that includes the ever-changing flow of life with a sense of wholeness or compassion or connection or balance or ease.
Have fun!
- Sit every day. Try sitting for a minimum of 10-20 minutes per day (more if you are able). Please practice your meditation in silence (if you use an app, try to use it only a couple of times during the week. Explore silence).
- Do your best while sitting to: pay attention, welcome and open to whatever is arising. Is it possible to include it all?
- Gratitude Practices
- Let gratitude be like a flashlight – lighting up what is already there and count your blessings each day.
- Text or email your buddy 3 things you are grateful for each day. Can be anything.
- Thank someone every day!
- Generosity Practices
- Each day ask yourself: What allows me to give? What stops me from letting go? What do I really need in this moment to be happy?
- Continue the practice of offering respectful attention to everyone you meet or talk to for a half hour each day. Let the person on the bus, T, desk next to you, your neighbor, child, partner – be the most important person around. Give your full attention to them physically. Put your device(s) away. Look at the person. Listen carefully. Open your heart. Be there without pushing an agenda. Simply listening.
- Text or email your buddy. Share what you learned about generosity. Only a sentence or two.
- Grace Practices
- Grace is the recognition that everything is connected and sacred. You are sacred! Please consider a lasting truce with yourself.
- Begin to notice that everything you do is sacred.
- Continue to be aware of the heart space that can hold your life with tenderness and kindness. Do your best to notice any moments when you know the spacious presence that includes the ever-changing flow of life with a sense of wholeness, compassion, connection, balance or ease. It’s the state of grace to be able to make room for things as they are.
- Have fun!
After Workshop
- Formal Practice: Sit every day. Try sitting for a minimum of 10-30 minutes per day (more if you are able). Please practice your meditation in silence. If you use an app, please only use it a couple of times a week. Instructions for newer meditators, see point 8
- Formal Practice: Standing & Walking: Practice standing meditation at least once in your day. Practice walking meditation at least once during the day as you move through the world.
- The Seven Factors of Awakening Handout: Please read it everyday until we meet on February 14th at 6pm. In addition, take some time to explore the book that you received.
- Gratitude Practices
- Write down, text or e-mail “your buddy” from the workshop
3 things you are grateful for each day. Can be anything. You can simply list tem or write a sentence for each one. - Thank someone every day
- Write down, text or e-mail “your buddy” from the workshop
- Ask yourself: What keeps you, from paying attention in your life? What keeps you from living more fully? What keeps you from living here in the present moment
- Remember your intention, vow, dedication. If you haven’t completed writing it please do so and store it in a “special place”
- Have fun!
- Instructions for newer meditator
- It is helpful to find a quiet space or room, a consistent time, and a chair or cushion that best supports your sitting practice. Please use a timer (if using your phone, keep it at a distance away from where you are sitting).
- Bring an attitude of kindness, curiosity and interest into your sitting practice. As you meditate, begin by settling into the body. Aware of sitting and of the sensations of sitting such as the body making contact with the mat or the floor, or your sitting bones on your cushion or chair. Then gently bring the attention to rest on the breathing either at the nostrils, the chest area or the abdomen. Use the breath as an anchor.
- This practice is a practice of remembering, so when your mind wanders and you notice it wandering or you wake up from the story/trance you are in: Delight that you are awake, ground in the body and simply escort the attention back to the breath, the anchor. Every time you bring your attention back to the present moment, you are developing mindfulness.