Week 1
In the Moment Home Practices Week 1 (5/29/25)
**There will be an optional Q & A at 6:45pm. The class will start at 7:00pm.
Click here to view home practices as a PDF
- Cultivate Mindfulness: Mindfulness is a present moment experience. Mindfulness is knowing what is happening. Not to add anything to or subtract anything from our experience, not to improve upon it. To see things exactly as they are in the moment. Mindfulness is a wakeful presence and a willingness to learn in the moment. Wherever you are, is the perfect place and time to be mindful, to engage wholeheartedly with the moment and be taught by it.
- Sitting Practice: for a minimum of 15-30 minutes per day(more if you are able). Please practice your meditation in silence. (If you use apps-use them only a few times this week).
- Gratitude Practice. Text, or e-mail your buddies from the class, 3 things you are grateful for each day. Can be anything. Gratitude is the capacity to take delight in life, in this moment, here, now, in being alive! Gratitude is the ability to feel joy & wonder. Please send to office@cambridgeinsight.org the names of your gratitude buddies. *see below for inspiration
- Koan Questions: What allows you to be in the moment? What stops you from being in the moment? What is needed, now? Ask these questions a couple of times a day (or at least read them once a day). Pause, listen for the answers.
- Please contemplate- “Allow each moment to take its own time.”
- Please Be gentle with yourself! We are learning to explore our lives, to use our life, body, heart, mind too and to grow in wisdom and compassion.
- Thank you for your Practice and… HAVE FUN!!
- *Poem I didn’t get to read: Encouragement for Gratitude Practice!
Three Gratitudes
Every night before I go to sleep
I say out loud
Three things that I’m grateful for,
All the significant, insignificant
Extraordinary, ordinary stuff of my life.
It’s a small practice and humble,
And yet, I find I sleep better
Holding what lightens and softens my life
Ever so briefly at the end of the day.
Sunlight, and blueberries,
Good dogs and wool socks,
A fine rain,
A good friend,
Fresh basil and wild phlox,
My father’s good health,
My daughter’s new job,
The song that always makes me cry,
Always at the same part,
No matter how many times I hear it.
Decent coffee at the airport,
And your quiet breathing,
The stories you told me,
The frost patterns on the windows,
English horns and banjos,
Wood Thrush and June bugs,
The smooth glassy calm of the morning pond,
An old coat,
A new poem,
My library card,
And that my car keeps running
Despite all the miles.
And after three things,
More often than not,
I get on a roll and I just keep on going,
I keep naming and listing,Until I lie grinning,
by Carrie Newcomer
Blankets pulled up to my chin,
Awash with wonder
At the sweetness of it all.
Week 2
In the Moment Home Practices Week 2 (6/5/25)
**There will be an optional Q & A at 6:45pm. The class will start at 7:00pm.
Click here to view home practices as a PDF
- Cultivate Mindfulness: Mindfulness is a present moment experience. Mindfulness is knowing what is happening. To see things exactly as they are in the moment. Mindfulness is a wakeful presence and a willingness to learn in the moment. Wherever you are, is the perfect place and time to be mindful, to engage wholeheartedly with the moment and be taught by it.
- Sitting Practice: for a minimum of 15-30 minutes per day(more if you are able). Please practice your meditation in silence. (If you use apps-use them only a few times this week)
- Gratitude Practice. Text or e-mail your buddies, 3 things you are grateful for each day.
- Koan Questions: What allows you to be in the moment? What stops you from being in the moment? What is needed, now? Ask these questions a couple of times a day. Pause, Listen for the answers. Please contemplate- “Allow each moment to take its own time.”
NEW HOME PRACTICES BELOW: Thank you for your Practice and… HAVE FUN!!
- Morning: What is the best use of this day?
- Morning: What is the best use of this day?
- Evening: Did I move any closer to being more compassionate, loving, caring more fully awake? Is my heart more open? What did I do today?
- When hooked: when things are sticky, when on automatic pilot- What do you do next? Practice? Pause: 3 breaths? Look at the sky? At your surroundings?
- Pause Practices
- Stop. Tune into your heart. That is where love, wisdom, grace & compassion reside. With loving attention, feel what matters most to you. Yes, there maybe anxious thoughts, worry, grief, trauma, but don’t let your heart be colonized by fear. Take time to quiet the mind & tend to the heart. Go out & look at the sky.
Breathe in & open yourself to the vastness of space. Sense the seasons turning. Breathe out & rest in loving awareness. Practice Steadiness & Equanimity-learn from the trees. Nature-They are still in the center of it all- they are nature-you are nature .Be still in the center of it all. - Simply Pause—Feel your feet on the floor–Shift into relaxation
- Relax muscles anywhere you feel tension: shoulders, jaw, around the eyes, belly-
- Notice how the body feels-Widen attention over the entire body — Inhabit the body
- Pay attention as if listening to body and float the question what is happening right now?
- Listen to answer and let it go. Feel your feet on the floor.
- Stop. Tune into your heart. That is where love, wisdom, grace & compassion reside. With loving attention, feel what matters most to you. Yes, there maybe anxious thoughts, worry, grief, trauma, but don’t let your heart be colonized by fear. Take time to quiet the mind & tend to the heart. Go out & look at the sky.
The value of “the moment” of being in the midst of the moment- the intentionality that we bring to the moment of living, of embodying the practice, as best we can is how we learn to be free.
We all have choices- we can respond, instead of the habitual ways we react. So much of practice is learning to treasure that space between stimulus & response to cultivate those pause moments where we can listen inwardly. In that pause, in the space, in the moment- is the key to choosing – inner freedom– To see, to get to know that space -to respond with a pause. To choose a pathway a pathway that leads to inner freedom or a pathway that leads to despair– Learning to listen inwardly, to slow down, those inner processes with kindness, collectedness, caring- with knowing that choice of what pathway to follow really is available to us- Ahhh… What can we offer to ourselves, to each other, to the world?