“To affect the quality of the day, that is the highest of arts” – Thoreau.
Modern urban life is characterised by busy-ness, with much of our time taken up with external demands on our attention – work, other people, TV, radio, newspapers, internet, emails, billboard advertising – often taking us away from ourselves and what we really value.
The Present Moment
Mindfulness is a way of coming back to ourselves, of being fully present to our experience of our self, our surroundings and other people. It is a way of being in the present moment, of living in the now, rather than being pulled into the past or the future. And the present moment is the only moment we’ve got to be alive – the only time when we can be happy.
Of course we can learn from the past and we need to plan for the future, but these things can be done with a full awareness of the present moment. What is unhelpful is the almost constant, involuntary sliding away from present-moment experience into thoughts about the past and future that most people engage in. This leads to a feeling of abstraction - of life being only half-lived, and it is profoundly unsatisfying.
Have you ever stopped what you were doing for a moment and really listened to the sounds around you? Or really looked at something, not just glanced without really noticing it, but really looked? Or really tasted something you were eating? When we really listen, or look, or taste, or give anything our full, undivided attention, we enter a different dimension of experience – an experience of greater fullness, richness, simplicity, peace. And if we can then learn to act from that experience everything we do will have more significance, will be more effective, because we’re more aware, more present.
The Living Well with Stress course will help you to enter and dwell in that dimension of awareness and presence by teaching you the skill of mindfulness - everything we do on the course is centred around this skill, and all the techniques you will learn are ways of learning this skill, in all the different areas of your life.
Overarching Themes: Focus and Breadth
The first four weeks of the course will be about learning to pay attention to present moment experience, focussing on one thing at a time. This is what is meant by focus. From week five we will be broadening out our awareness to learn to hold our experiences within a wider perspective. This is what is meant by breadth. There are another two senses in which we will be broadening out awareness from week five – from the self to our immediate environment, and also to other people.
First four weeks: Awareness of self
In the first half of the course we’ll be developing our awareness of self - body, feelings and thoughts. We begin with awareness of the body in the first week then move onto emotions in the second week and thoughts in the third week.
In the fourth week we introduce the idea of dealing with difficult, that is, unpleasant bodily sensations, feelings and thoughts.
This awareness of self is developed through both formal meditation practices and informal moment-to-moment mindfulness in daily life.
From week five: Awareness of other people and of our immediate environment
From week five we will broaden our awareness, in three senses. Firstly in the sense of holding our experience of actual felt sensations within a wider perspective – for example, if a part of our body feels uncomfortable, to be aware of that, but within the wider perspective of our whole experience. Secondly to include the environment around us, and thirdly other people.
Week seven is a practice and consolidation week.
Week eight is a conclusion and an evaluation of the course, plus a look to the future – to the rest of our lives – what are we going to do? How will we keep up our practice (if that’s what we want to do)?
Sub-theme – The Five-step process
In addition to these main themes there is a sub-theme running through the course, based on what we call the five-step process:
- Awareness of moment-by-moment actual sensations
- Moving towards the unpleasant
- Broadening awareness
- Holding everything within a ‘bigger container’
- Choice – learning to respond rather than react
We’ll say more about this theme in week four
Week-by-week overview
- Week 1 – Awareness of the body. Sub-theme – paying attention to one thing at a time (step one)
- Week 2 – Awareness of feelings and emotions. Sub-theme – paying attention to one thing at a time (step one)
- Week 3 – Awareness of thoughts. Sub-theme – paying attention to one thing at a time (step one)
- Week 4 – Dealing with the difficult or unpleasant. Sub-theme – moving towards the difficult and unpleasant (step two)
- Week 5 – Kindly Awareness. Sub-theme – broadening out around the difficult and unpleasant (step three)
- Week 6 – Holding one’s experience with equanimity. Sub-theme – a bigger container (step four)
- Week 7 – Practice and consolidation. Sub-theme – choice – respond don’t react (step five)
- Week 8 – Conclusion – what have you learned and what do you intend to do?
