Here you will receive an overview of the course and establish the learning context for the rest of your experience. You’ll be experientially introduced to mindful eating, mindful breathing, and the body-scan practice, with a special emphasis on what it means to be fully engaged in the present moment.

This week you will learn to use the body-scan practice to cultivate a greater degree of awareness of how you react to stressful situations. The skill of being able to move from “Doing” to “Being” modes is discussed.  We also explore being present for the pleasant experiences in our lives.

In this session, we will practice both Sitting Meditation and Gentle Mindful Movement.  This is an ideal time to share your insights about your experiences with formal practice and integrating mindfulness into your daily life.  We explore how we experience difficulties in our lives, and look to see if there is a benefit in “being with” these experiences rather than automatically pushing them away.

By practising mindfulness, we cultivate curiosity and openness to the full range of our experience, and through this process our ability to pay attention becomes more flexible. This week we learn about the physiological and psychological bases of stress reactivity, and experience mindful strategies for responding in positive, proactive ways to stressful situations.  We introduce the Three Step Breathing Space, a practice designed to help bring Mindfulness into everyday life.

This week we continue to practice Sitting Meditation, as well as introducing the practice of Mindful Walking.  We learn how to apply mindfulness at the critical moment when you experience a physical sensation, intense emotion, or condition, with special attention to exploring the effect of reactivity in health and illness.  We also explore how Mindfulness can help us respond skillfully during difficult communications.

At this stage we practice the full version of the Sitting Meditation, moving through the steps of looking at: the breath, the body, sounds, thoughts, and the practice of open awareness.  We examine the nature of thoughts in particular and explore the idea that “Thoughts are not Facts”.

Mindfulness is most effective when it is a lifetime commitment. This week, we explore the many ways that you can integrate mindfulness more fully and personally into your life.  We look at our daily schedules in particular, noticing the activities that we tend to find Draining and the activities that we find Nurturing.  From this, we gain insight into changes that may help us cope better with the challenges of life.

This day-long guided retreat will take place between weeks six and seven. This day allows us to settle more deeply into practice.  It is a very spacious nourishing day, where we are encouraged to practice self-care.

In the final week of the program, we go through a complete review of everything we have learned over the course.  The emphasis then is on carrying the momentum forward into the coming months and years. You’ll learn about resources available to you to pursue mindfulness in new directions as your life and practice evolve, as well as the support systems that exist to help you continue to integrate, learn, and grow. The final lesson creates a satisfying closure by honouring both the end of this program and the beginning of the rest of your life.