Lesson 1
Pausing For Presence
In the first section of this 40-day course called “Mindfulness Basics” Jack and Tara will be discussing the concepts and key skills you will need for integrating mindfulness in your daily life. It begins with understanding how to pause for presence.
In the noise, haze, and demands of modern life, it’s far too easy to get caught up with everything that seems to be pulling you from all different directions. This makes us lose connection to ourselves and what truly matters - the present, where life actually takes place.
Today, we explore pausing for presence so we can feel more at home with ourselves and others.
Lesson 2
Conscious Relaxing
On the first day, we explored the process of arriving in presence by pausing to become more aware of our states of mind. But the many demands of life tend to hinder this from becoming our habitual way of being. In Day 2, we touch on how to pivot from the cacophony of stress to consciously choosing, not just to pause, but to actually relax. When we take time to step back from all the “doing” and consciously take the time to relax our bodies, our mind follows suit - and presence comes soon after.
Lesson 3
Day 3 - Coming Back To Your Senses
In modern life, we are often lost in thought, worrying about future tasks that we’re no longer able to focus on what’s in front of us. The habit of being lost in thought can also mean missing out on parts of your work that make a difference. Today, Jack explains how to be mindful of our senses in order to better engage with and experience life.
Lesson 4
Attitude Of Friendliness
Today, Tara speaks about the key predictor for whether mindfulness will be a rewarding experience or a struggle for someone - the attitude of friendliness. To get an idea of how mindfulness will work for you, reflect on how you generally treat yourself, especially during times when you’re anxious and stressed. This opens the door to how you can nurture your attitude of friendliness.
Lesson 5
Mindfulness Of Breath
This session focuses on the most universal of mindfulness practices. Jack discusses how connecting with this primal function does wonders for calming and steadying our attention and improving our ability on whatever we’re doing - strengthening our ability to work, interact, relax, and heal. By learning to steady our attention on the breath, we’re giving ourselves the freedom to where we focus our attention on. So when stressful situations arise, we can always choose to come back to the breath. This awareness allows us to be more mindful wherever we may be.
Lesson 6
Calming And Steadying With The Breath
By now, you might have a sense that with mindfulness training, living, learning and growing with greater vibrancy are increasingly available as you arrive in a relaxed and clear presence. In this session, we work to develop a skill that’s central to remaining present in any endeavor - the ability to steady and calm your mind. From the ability to focus on the breath, we now move on to learn how to make it calm both body and mind.
Lesson 7
Counting The Breath
As you practice mindfulness of breathing, you may notice that the breath changes depending on your thoughts and feelings. In this session, Jack provides pointers on how to be better acquainted with your breath in every situation you may face. The access to this awareness of breath will enable you to translate it into all the other parts of your mindfulness practice.
Lesson 8
Deepening The Focus
In the past lessons, we discussed the integral role mindful breathing plays in the ability to be more mindful in any situation you encounter in life. Today, we work on furthering that relationship with the breath - noticing the gaps in the breath and learning to be comfortable in dwelling in those moments of stillness. This will be a powerful tool when you feel the need to rebalance yourself.
Lesson 9
Mindfulness Of The Body
For the next four sessions, we now widen the experience of mindfulness of our body by exploring the realm of physical sensations in a direct, non-judgmental way. Mindfulness of the body at work allows you to gain deeper insight into sensations and emotions in the body. These provide invaluable data you can access and use in the different situations you face in everyday life.
Lesson 10
Feeling From The Inside-Out
As we mindfully experience the actual sensations in our body, we’re planting ourselves fully in our own lives - at work, at home, and in all domains. Today, we’ll do a mindful survey of our bodies. This allows us to find sensations that we’re generally unaware of, which in turn enables us to develop a deeper relationship with our bodies.
Lesson 11
Body Scan
There’s a simple reason why mindfulness of the body translates into being more mindful in our lives - your body is always present in the living moment. In this session, Jack delves into how performing a body scan allows you to find a deep sense of peace where both the body and mind are in the same space.
Lesson 12
Naming Sensations
In this session, Tara opens with the questions: “What is happening in my body right now?” “Can I let this be?” Noticing what you’re experiencing in your body and naming that sensation redirects your attention inward, allowing you to connect more fully wit
Lesson 13
Working With Intense Sensations
In the previous sessions, we worked to develop noticing and feeling the different sensations in the body. But what happens when we come across intense sensations such as pain? Today, Jack discusses how mindfulness can give you more control over how you respond to these kinds of sensations with greater ease.
Lesson 14
Mindfulness Of Emotions
In this part of the course, we extend our mindfulness of the breath and body to the whole river of human emotions and feelings that continually flows through our lives. Today, we lay the foundations for being able to better navigate these feelings and emotions, allowing us to better maneuver life.
Lesson 15
Naming Emotions
Just as we did earlier with the sensations we feel, naming emotions can be a powerful tool in developing mindfulness. This allows us to have a better grasp of what it is we’re actually feeling with non-judging mindfulness. Today, Jack touches on how naming emotions and feelings allows you to acknowledge them without being overwhelmed by them.
Lesson 16
Working With Difficult Emotions
After acknowledging and naming emotions, this session tackles how to actually work with these strong feelings and emotions. Whether it’s hearing that your flight’s been delayed or having a personal project fall to the wayside, it starts with recognizing the challenges brought about by these situations, feelings and emotions - eventually understanding how to work with and not around them.
Lesson 17
Fostering Positive Emotions
In the past few sessions, we’ve developed our awareness and dealings with emotions, particularly difficult ones. Today, we focus on positive emotions like gratitude, confidence, and inner strength. The practice of deliberately cultivating kindness has shown to be especially effective in enhancing these emotions. Fostering positive emotions allows us to transform our approach toward work and all other aspects of life.
Lesson 18
Recognizing Thinking
In these next few sessions, we’ll be exploring bringing mindful attention to thinking. Our thoughts are like a waterfall - unceasing in its flow. When we don’t recognize our thoughts, we can be driven by our tedious thoughts, like worry and fear. But when
Lesson 19
Wise Relationships To Thought
As your mindfulness practice opens to include awareness of thoughts, you might find yourself considering your thinking as an adversary - the unwanted distraction to a good meditation practice. But thinking is natural - it is essential. In this lesson, Jack helps us understand how to nurture a wise relationship with our thoughts.
Lesson 20
Life Under Thoughts
Some thoughts are easier to become more aware of than others. As you develop the skill to become more present in the moment, you worry less about things like a troubling conversation you had at work. In this session, Tara guides us on how to manage these types of sticky thoughts.
Lesson 21
Beyond Thoughts
When we start a mindfulness practice, we’re often caught in the internal dialogue it entails. But it’s the gaps within those thoughts that are filled with the brightness and openness of awareness. In this session, Jack touches on how to live beyond the limiting beliefs instilled by our thoughts, enabling us to thrive in the vibrant, alive presence beyond thoughts.
Lesson 22
Mindfulness: The Core Practice
In this session, we’ll bring together the mindfulness training you’ve worked with so far into one unified practice - your core practice. This uses the power of mindfulness and kind attention to notice experience just as it is with a spacious, non-judging attention. This helps us further open to the whole play of experience - being a relaxed witness in the midst of it all.
Lesson 23
Self-Judgment And Self-Compassion
Today, we’ll explore how mindfulness can help unhook you from one cluster of thoughts of feelings that can be particularly difficult - self-judgment. Even on the path toward mindfulness, you come across instances when you judge yourself. Here, Tara helps us develop self-compassion to be more comfortable with what is without judgment.
Lesson 24
RAIN
The times when we’re most caught in reactivity are the times we are least inclined to call on mindfulness. It’s hard to be present when we’re angry, scared or hurt. Today, Tara shares a mindfulness tool that helps us deal with these emotions: RAIN - Recognize what’s happening, Allow life to be, Investigate your experience with gentle attention, Nurture with kindness. This serves as a support for when you’re in the trenches with those challenging situations.
Lesson 25
Emotions And Inner Resources
At one point or another, everyone deals with a storm of difficult emotions such as fear, trauma or despair where mindfulness may not even be possible. When our coping strategies are overwhelmed, we feel frozen and powerless. In this session, Tara discusses how to use our inner resources to deal with utterly intense emotions so that when we’re brought back to these traumatic experiences, we’re able to respond better than we initially did.
Lesson 26
Beginner’s Mind
In this session, we’ll explore the beginner’s mind - the mind that sees with fresh eyes, with interest and openness, the many possibilities. This is an excellent way to approach different facets of life while opening us to a natural joy for almost everything we do. This allows us to approach life with a clear mind and a heightened presence.
Lesson 27
Spacious Awareness
One of the great benefits of mindfulness practice is that you have greater access to a more spacious quality of mind. When your mind is spacious, it doesn’t get disturbed by passing thoughts and feelings or even what’s going on around you. This allows you to be clear and non-reactive even when you’re in the midst of potential stressors in daily life. Today, Tara helps us gain access to this spacious awareness.
Lesson 28
Equanimity
All across life, there are ups and downs that we enjoy and need to deal with. Whether it’s rent coming up, a promotion you’ve been eyeing, or the birth of a child, we need to face these things with a balanced mind. In this session, Jack discusses developing equanimity, or the composure to deal with the good and the bad - responding to it all with a peaceful heart, clarity, and wisdom.
Lesson 29
Who Am I? (Mindfulness Of Awareness)
We tend to define ourselves by our successes and failures. This can be very limiting to the concept of our identity and the experience of life. In this session, Tara discusses how to go beyond this by focusing on the ocean of awareness, which allows us to shift our perspective by investigating awareness itself. When we learn to be aware of those beyond the obvious or those on the surface level, we’re able to perceive the essence of who and what we truly are.
Lesson 30
Empathy And Compassion
Our ability to empathize and respond with compassion to each other is one of our precious capacities that’s hardwired into us. But when we’re faced with too many competing demands, this compassion circuit can be blocked, leading to us being less compassionate to those around us. Today, Tara guides us in maintaining that capacity in the face of challenging situations and responding with care.
Lesson 31
Forgiveness
As you continue your practice of mindfulness, you may find that the pains you carry from the past occasionally appear, including those situations you’ve not been able to forgive. Today, Jack discusses a necessary dimension of wellbeing - forgiveness. This allows us to move from the past and live in the present with more compassion.
Lesson 32
Seeing Goodness
Focusing on the good doesn’t usually come naturally to us. We’re wired to scan the world for danger, not for what we might appreciate. While this may have saved our ancestors from the dangers in the wild, this doesn’t quite apply in the modern world. Today, Tara touches on the benefits of being able to focus on the goodness that pervades life and nourish it in ourselves and others.
Lesson 33
Intention
In this session, Jack introduces the powerful tool to move mindfully through daily life - mindfulness of intention. When you become aware of intention before you act, you’re able to make wise choices that lead to clarity, well being, and harmony. Your intentions have a powerful impact on others and shape their responses. It also lets you move away from being on autopilot or too reactive to daily situations.
Lesson 34
Conflict
What happens when you find yourself locked in conflict and mindfulness goes out the window? Today, Tara discusses mindfulness practices that can help us when faced with conflict - allowing us to process emotions under stress removed from the primal response of fight or flight.
Lesson 35
Listening
Mindfulness is a way of listening to our lives, taking in what’s happening with a receptive and kind awareness. When we purposefully bring mindfulness to listening to each other, we nourish our relationships in a wonderful way. In this session, Tara delves into the value of truly listening with presence and how to cultivate that skill within us so we’re truly in the experience we’re facing.
Lesson 36
Mindful Speaking
Today’s session is about mindful speech - something that has a significant impact on the quality of our relationships. Our words carry great power, having the ability to hurt or empower others. Mindful speech begins by bringing a kind presence to what we’re saying - allowing us to speak not just what is true, but what is helpful.
Lesson 37
Trusting And Inhabiting Your Being
Even as our mindfulness practice deepens, it’s natural for old habits such as obsessive thinking, defensiveness and worry to still take over sometimes. In this session, Tara touches on how to forgive ourselves when we stumble and go back to trusting the growth we’ve nourished.
Lesson 38
Generosity And Service
Mindfulness and compassion help you be present with yourself and connect more fully with others. When you feel connected to someone, your concern and generosity grow, stemming from a natural relatedness. This session discusses how we can translate this generosity to our everyday lives - making it a happier, richer life experience.
Lesson 39
Nourishing A Grateful Heart
In these final sessions, we explore how mindfulness helps us align each day with a positive purpose. In addition to the ways we serve, our purpose includes savoring our moments, feeling that sweetness of gratitude that allows us to arrive most fully in our lives.
Lesson 40
Aspiration And Vision
In this final lesson, Jack delves into how to appreciate all you’ve learned during this course and how to continually find ways to enjoy it, to always find moments of ease, release, and stillness that you can enjoy. The difficulties in daily life may be all too consuming, but you can always live with a more mindful, creative and joyful spirit.
