COURSE

Your Mindfulness Toolbox For Daily Living

By taking this course you will learn a collection of tools, techniques, concepts, and strategies that will help you to attain mindfulness, both on and off the meditation mat. Starting with breath-focused mindfulness meditation, you will be gradually introduced to both traditional and novel approaches to mindfulness. This will include an expansion of the focus of our mindful attention to different physical and mental objects, and the use of labeling, counting, and broad awareness to maintain our mindful attention. Through the use of mindful glimpses and focused study, you will also be introduced to many complementary techniques and analogies that will assist you in attaining mindfulness, including the practices of present state awareness, choiceless awareness, mindful walking, and true hearing. Y ou will learn how to integrate your practice into your life with advice on troubleshooting common issues, finding the time to practice, setting the appropriate context, and getting your family on board with your meditative goals. Finally, you will learn how to use the tools in your mindfulness toolbox to positively impact your life, reduce the impact of negative mental states like anxiety and anger, and to manage the symptoms of addiction. You will begin to see firsthand the workings of your mind in real time, and with that knowledge, begin to make positive long-term focused choices.

Clarity Happiness Stress & Anxiety Buddhism Contemporary Buddhism Energy-Based Secular Mindfulness Insight Meditation Mindfulness Meditation Vipassana Stress Performance Health & Happiness Spirituality Secular Mindfulness

Meet your Teacher

Zachary Phillips

Melbourne, Australia

Zachary Phillips is a poet, author, meditation instructor, and mindset coach. He is also a qualified teacher, Reiki master, and is currently studying a Master of Counselling. In these roles he helps people identify and release the limiting beliefs that no longer serve them, guiding them from surviving to passionately thriving using tips, tools, and techniques that enable them to process the past, accept the present, and embrace the future with positivity and purpose.

10 Days

3.1k students

4.8 stars

15 min / day

Clarity

English

Lesson 1

Building A Foundation Of Mindfulness

This lesson will primarily focus on establishing the traditional foundations for our mindfulness meditation practice. For new meditators, it will serve as a comprehensive introduction to mindfulness by both clarifying the fundamental components of the practice, and more importantly, getting you mindfully meditating right away. For experienced meditators, this lesson will serve to consolidate your previous learning and experience, providing us all with a common language to best proceed together through the later lessons. By the end of this lesson, you will be able to define and understand what mindfulness is, as well as be able to begin practicing breath-focused mindfulness meditation on your own.

Lesson 2

Establishing A Consistent Daily Practice

This lesson will dive deeper into the traditional approaches to mindfulness meditation, by looking at the importance of establishing the appropriate context to best foster your practice both internally and externally. You will learn how to prime yourself prior to beginning a session, thus enabling you to better sink into the session, and attain the mindfulness state more effectively. It will also look at the benefits of establishing a consistent daily practice, as well as address some of the practical considerations of doing so, including finding the appropriate time and location that suits both your meditation goals and your living situation. By the end of this lesson, you will have the knowledge and motivation necessary to start meditating daily.

Lesson 3

Expectations & Experiences

This lesson will break down the goals and expectations that we should have for our mindfulness meditation practice, highlighting how we can determine if we are indeed 'meditating correctly'. We will also look at some of the alternatives to the use of the breath as the object of our meditative focus, as well as introduce the techniques of 'present state awareness' and 'choiceless awareness'. By the end of this lesson, you will have a broad understanding of the potential breadth of your mindful focus, enabling you to expand your practice beyond the breath and onto other objects, physical sensations, and mental phenomena.

Lesson 4

Focused Attention Versus Broad Awareness

This lesson will introduce the use of broad awareness in conjunction with focused attention to best facilitate our mindfulness practice. On its own, focused attention may be laser-sharp but susceptible to distractions. Broad awareness assists this process by flagging distractions as they arise. Together, the use of these two tools results in significant improvements in mindful focus. This lesson will also introduce the analogy of 'using a splinter (mindfulness) to remove another splinter (illusion), and then throwing both away', as well as expand upon our mindful walking practice. By the end of this lesson, you will have experienced mindful walking, as well as added the tool of broad awareness to your ever-expanding mindfulness toolbox.

Lesson 5

Bringing Mindfulness Into Your Day

This lesson will highlight the multitude of opportunities we have at our disposal to be mindful throughout the day, as well as introduce the practice of mindful hearing. By the end of the lesson, you will be able to double or even triple your effective meditation time by adding mindfulness to your everyday tasks, including exercise, cooking, cleaning, and other mundane activities. Boredom itself can be used as a point of mindful focus. It will still be present, but rather than suffering through it, you will learn how to investigate it and see what it truly is. Once you know the basic form of mindfulness meditation, you can choose to change your focus to anything. This will help to enhance both mindfulness and qualitative experiences throughout the day.

Lesson 6

Addressing Anger, Anxiety & Addiction

In this lesson, we will start to look at mental phenomena themselves as objects of our mindful focus, as well as introduce the technique of 'labeling' to acknowledge and address potential distractions. You will learn how to build a catalogue of emotional knowledge, one that will enable you to identify feelings of anger, anxiety, and addiction as they are arising and thus, make better, long-term, focused choices. In addition, you will start to discover the reality of negative mental states. They are not desirable, yet they are manageable. Through the use of mindful focus, we can observe how these negative states feel, both physically and mentally, as well as the consequences of our observation and acceptance of them. Namely, a reduction in the severity and duration of their impacts.

Lesson 7

The Elephant In The Room

In this lesson, we will present the traditional analogy of the mind as a wild elephant running loose in a village, highlighting the importance of our practice as well as the benefits we can expect to see from a consistent focus on mindfulness. We consider the importance of setting an intention to bring mindfulness off the meditation mat and into our day, as well as dive deeper into the practices of 'choiceless awareness' and 'triggered mindful breaths'. By the end of the lesson, you will have a collection of tools that will help you to experience moments of mindfulness throughout the day, thus, exponentially expanding the benefits of your formal practice.

Lesson 8

What Is A Thought Exactly?

In this lesson, we will investigate the nature of thoughts themselves. What are they? Where do they come from and where do they go? Do we create them, or do we just respond to them once they appear? The more we meditate mindfully, the more we will discover that our preconceived notions about our minds and the mental phenomena they contain are either misguided or incorrect. By the end of this lesson, you will have the tools necessary to start answering those questions for yourself, not based on abstract theory, but on your first-person mindful experiences. We will also introduce the 'body scan' technique as another option for our mindful focus.

Lesson 9

Counting The Breath, Beads & Other Meditation Props

In this lesson, the technique of 'Counting The Breaths' will be introduced as a way to further enhance your ability to stay mindfully focused on the sensations at the nose. In addition, a number of potential meditation props will be introduced, and their uses will be explained along with the potential pitfalls in doing so. By the end of this lesson, you will have a collection of inner and outer tools at your disposal that will further assist you in reaching and maintaining the mindfulness state.

Lesson 10

Bringing It All Together

In this lesson, we bring together all the techniques, tools, concepts, and ideas from the entirety of the course into one cohesive practice; highlighting how to use them all to attain the mindfulness state both on and off the meditation mat. We reemphasize the importance of doing what works for you as an individual meditator over the strict traditional approaches to mindfulness meditation. By the end of this lesson, and indeed this course, you will know how to establish a daily mindfulness meditation practice, as well as have a collection of unique approaches to troubleshooting your practice, thus, enabling you to reap the benefits of mindfulness moving forward. This lesson ends with a guided meditation that could serve as a template for your future sessions.

Ask your teacher

This course includes 40 community questions and 24 audio replies from Zachary Phillips. The community classroom and teacher audio replies are only available via the app.

4.8 (126)

Recent Reviews

Rachel

April 22, 2025

Thank you Zachary. This introduction has been and will continue to be a wonderful resource. I feel well equipped to now begin this journey. Your work is appreciated!

Carolyn

April 20, 2024

A wonderfully structured class and instruction to bring mindfulness into everyday. I am very excited and encouraged to practice mindfulness and develop a more present awareness to the everyday.

Cindy

August 22, 2023

Wonderful course! Thank you! 😊

Jeff

August 13, 2023

Very informative

Pat

April 2, 2023

This was the best course for me so far. Been meditating for a while now but these basics are exactly what I needed to make better progress. Wonderful explanations and examples to work with. I found myself nodding “Ah yes,” on many occasions. Loved how you noted it’s not the props or lifestyle (or Nag Champa ;-) that make Mindfulness. Thank you very much for this down to earth toolbox. Looking forward to implement it in my daily practise. And will def check out your website and other work.

Simona

March 29, 2023

Useful indeed.

Kellie

April 29, 2022

Great course!!! Thanks tons!!!

Aidan

April 3, 2022

Clear, simple, great for beginners

Chris

March 31, 2022

Excellent course. Thank you for the great ideas and guides as those like me are working towards mindfulness.

Jocelyne

January 15, 2022

I found this to be a practical guide to everyday techniques to help me with learning mindfulness. It’s a gentle compassionate course that encourages the learner even when distractions arise. Thank you 🙏

Marit

January 10, 2022

Thank you so much! As someone who has been meditating daily for 5 years its super helpful to go back to the 'base' from time to time. I love the tip about the doorknob moment to help you be aware, im gonna try to use that! Happy meditating :)

Julie

August 23, 2021

So good. Thanks for this. Each day was full of practical strategies I can implement in my practice.

Ryan

August 23, 2021

I found this course to be very useful and the techniques to be very applicable to daily practice.

Tim

May 13, 2021

Thank you Zachary...I really enjoyed your course. Namaste Tim

vaishali

May 7, 2021

Wonderful course! Very soothing voice and clear understanding of goals and methods . Namaste 🙏🏼

Rosetta

April 29, 2021

great to know all the tools about mindfulness and how to practice minfulness in a non religious way, thank you so much!

ChiarAlma

April 27, 2021

Thoroughly enjoyed this course thank you will be following you.

Anne

April 18, 2021

Great course. Really enjoyed it.

Peter

April 6, 2021

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