Building Resilience & Lasting Happiness

In this opening session, we'll define wellbeing and resilience. We will also introduce attitudes of paying attention that support both learning, and the nourishment of wellbeing and resilience in our lives. The guided meditation will explore applying these attitudes to your direct experience. We will also utilise body and breath awareness to cultivate wellbeing in the moment

This session will highlight the impact of the negativity bias and how we can transform it. We will explore the neuroplasticity of the mind and the possibilities it opens. In meditation we will play with re-balancing the negativity bias and deepening wellbeing by inclining our attention toward the positive events and feelings we already experience.

Building on the understanding and practice from previous sessions we will open to the practice of gratitude as another tool we can apply and enjoy. This is another way of re-wiring the mind towards wellbeing. In the meditation practice we will get to know the power of gratitude to deepen wellbeing and resilience.

Savouring is the capacity to be mindfully engaged and aware of our feelings during positive experiences. It has been shown to increase happiness in the short term and in the long run. This is because the more time we spend with something pleasant, and the more attentiveness we give to wellbeing, the deeper it nourishes us. In this session we will turn up the volume of wellbeing and resilience through including savouring and enjoying in the ways we intentionally pay attention.

When the unpleasant aspects of life arise we habitually find ourselves entangled and overwhelmed. It doesn’t have to be this way, in this session we will begin learning new skilful ways of opening to the unpleasant and being with it calmly. We’ll develop our capacity for having a pleasant, expansive awareness - within which we can more easefully pay attention to any sensation or occurrence, nourishing both perspective and a sense of flow.

The degree of unhappiness we experience in relation to a particular appearance or event isn’t fixed, rather it is affected by how we view and relate to that appearance. Habitually we relate to unpleasant phenomena with aversion and rejection. This aversion or resistance in the mind manifests as contraction such as a narrowing down in the body space. This is directly unpleasant and increases unhappiness. In this session we will practice attending directly to this habit of rejection by recognising contraction in the body and inviting expansion and relaxation.

In this session we will continue to open our ways of relating to experience by introducing practices that bring welcoming and friendliness to the fore. We will taste for ourselves how this impacts our sense of wellbeing. Then we will investigate our capacity to meet the full range of human experience, from the pleasant to the unpleasant, within the expansive openness of kindness.

We are never alone. As living beings we exist in relationship with others, whether we know them or not. Life cannot exist in separation, it is dynamic and interrelated. Opening to our interconnection can be a great resource for us. In this session we will cultivate attitudes of goodwill and friendliness towards ourselves and others. The practice today opens us up to the relational and interconnected nature of our existence in wholesome and healing ways.

This session will further explore the ways in which interconnection supports wellbeing and resilience. This can sound counter to our logic but when we attend to the difficult in life with compassion and care we feel less overwhelmed. And when we take joy in the happiness and wellbeing of others we find more joy in ourselves. Let’s see what happens when we apply that to our own joys and sorrows.

Over the course we’ve practiced different ways of relating to experience. These have prioritised attending to the full range of human nature in ways that nurture wellbeing and resilience. In this session we will explore widening our expansive awareness further than before, finding ways of living that support balance amidst the changing circumstances of life. The culmination of this course is how we practice now, in the midst of life, with an open heart resonating with resilient wellbeing. This session also includes a review of the various practices we have developed, and how to best take what has been of value and interest to us forward.