Just started the MBSR program :)

My name is Ngoc, I am based in Vietnam - but I am French.

Wish you all great learning!

I thought I'd start this thread as I feel a bit lost with the Unpleasant Event Calendar. Being asked to focus on unpleasant events every day, I'm not sure what to do with these feelings I am focusing on. I'm not entirely sure what the purpose of this practice is, and if I'm doing it the right way. I've had quite a bad week this week and I'm not sure whether just collecting all these unpleasant experiences and writing them down is really helping. Welcoming any guidance!

Feel free to choose the recoding for the week you are at that resonates best with you.
I will continuously add more links to high-quality recordings to cover a broader spectrum of voices and personal styles. Like the posture, the teacher that works best for where you are at today might differ.
Yet in their core, those different meditation are the same.

We offer a free guided meditation once a week live on zoom. Onve a month we offer a free FAQ session for this course. To see the time and dates and sign up for a session please checkout Tine's profile.

Some recordings are by Dave Potter, an experienced MBSR teacher and psychotherapist who put together this online course.
Jon Kabat-Zinn is the founder of the MBSR course.
Emma Reynolds is an experienced MBSR teacher with the Mindful Academy, Solterreno, Spain. This is where I got my training too.
Lynn Rossy is a health psychologist, author, researcher, and Kripalu yoga teacher specializing in mindfulness-based interventions.

Week 1: Bodyscan

• Bodyscan 29min by Jon Kabat-Zinn (the founder of MBSR)
• Bodyscan 15min (YouTube) Bodyscan 15min (InsightTimer) by Tine Steiß
• Bodyscan 33min by Dave Potter
• Bodyscan 45min by UC San Diego Center for Mindfulness
• Bodyscan 20min by Emma Reynolds
• Compassionate Body Scan 24min by Kristin Neff

Week 2: Sitting Meditation

• Sitting Meditation 32min by Dave Potter
• Sitting Meditation 40min by Jon Kabat-Zinn (the founder of MBSR)

Week 3 and 4: Mindful Yoga

• Mindful Yoga 1 37min by Lynn Rossy PhD
• Mindful Yoga 2 36min by Lynn Rossy PhD

Week 5: "Turning towards" the difficult, Soften, Sooth, Allow

• Turning Towards - Meditation for difficult emotions 23min by Dave Potter
• Turning Towards - Meditation for physical pain 25min by Dave Potter
• Soften, Soothe, Allow 16min by Dave Potter
• Soften, Soothe, Allow 9min by Happiness Insight
• RAIN 11min by Dave Potter

Week 6: Mindfulness and Communication

• Mountain Meditation 20min by Dave Potter
• Lake Meditation 20min by Dave Potter

Week 7: Mindfulness and Compassion

• Lovingkindness Meditation 13min by Dave Potter

Other meditations that are closely related to the MBSR curriculum:

• Taking a breath - taking a break 13min by Tine Steiß
• Breathing Meditation for Beginners 10min by Jack Kornfield
• Labelling emotions 20min by Emma Reynolds
• the RAIN of Self-Compassion by Tara Brach (PhD in Clinical Psychology, founder of the Insight Meditation Community of Washington and author of Radical Acceptance, True Refuge, Freedom In Your Own Awakened Heart)
• Oneness Meditation 35min by Jon Kabat-Zinn (the founder of MBSR)

How do these topics show up for you - if at all - in relation to the first formal practice, the body scan?

I'm interested in hearing about your experiences with the bodyscan in the first week of the MBSR course. 

Personally, I remember that I used to perceive the bodyscan as the most boring of all practices and only after many tries, I did start getting a feeling for it. I still zoom out once we get to the back, and I tend to miss the arms and hands, and I am back when we get to the neck.

What helped was the bodyscan sitting up or starting at the head and working down to the toes. This was it's easier for me to not "just relax". I now also fall asleep sometime during the practice which I do perceive as a good thing because it shows to me that all in all I am more relaxed as falling asleep rather spontaneously is not something I used to be able to do. 

For me the voice in my head telling me that I should be doing something "useful" instead and that I know it all already is the loudest during the bodyscan. At the same time, I know better as I only became an MBSR teacher as I realised the profound changes in my life after having taken the course and established a regular meditation practice.

As we practise applying the skills we are learning in this course to our everyday lives; we are cultivating our natural capacities to be more flexible and to recover more quickly during challenging interpersonal situations.  As we grow our awareness of emotions, we may better understand the messages we are sending to others and receiving from others and the barriers to being with ourselves and others in heartfelt and authentic ways.

“Once you can communicate with yourself, you’ll be able to communicate outwardly with more clarity.”

Thich Nhat Hanh

Psychological stress arises from the interaction between us and the world, so we need to take responsibility for our part in relationships with people who “cause us stress” By this, we mean taking responsibility for our perceptions, thoughts, emotions and behaviours. If we react unconsciously when we are having a problem with another person, just as with other forms of stress, this usually makes matters worse in the long run.

One of the most useful insights was reading myself when I was about to shut down in a conversation. These days I feel my chest getting tighter, and I become aware that I am no longer listening with an open heart but that I start feeling attacked and I am putting my armour up which will not allow the conversation to come to a satisfying result as I do not hear the other person anymore. Depending on the situation I might take a deep breath and open up again, or I'll explain that I am closing up and need a pause, sometimes I'll excuse myself to the bathroom for a bit to reconsider. If I get to walk the dog for an hour through the forest that's best but that's not always possible. It can also be helpful to repeat what I understood that the other person said in my own words, so we are both sure to talk about the same thing. This shows the other person I am listening and gives us both a chance to be clear about what we are talking about to avoid misunderstandings and assumptions.

Have you noticed any changes in how you are communicating with people since you started this course? What have you noticed?

Pain of any kind (physical, or mental) is our primary experience which can cause suffering and heartache. We may have no control over the situation that caused the pain; however, when we push this away by resisting it, we generate more pain and suffering. Although all life has pain, a mindful life can be free of the additional burden of suffering.

If we can gently move towards acceptance of our pain, even a little by saying perhaps “this hurts…  can I be OK with this”? We can avoid or reduce suffering. In other words, we can gently pay attention to our experience as it is at that moment without trying to block it out or feeling overwhelmed.

I am curious about the experiences you share with the practice of "turning towards" the unpleasant. If you did this course in it's early stages it was the "Soften, Soothe, Allow" practive which is very similar so this is a good space to also share you rexperiences with it here.  Are you aware of how resistance shows up for you? Can you describe it?

I remember doing this exercice a lot around the feeling of unworthiness, of not being good enough. I was so afraid that if I would look into those feelings they would grow and overwhelm me, crush me. It took me lots of different attempts to finally have the strength to look at them and the closer I looked the more I realized that there was no big, no valid reason behind them, just some notion I picked up from an abusive relative. Only my fear of looking at them, investigationg them made them strong.

This has a physical componet too. As I tried to push them away, hide, ignore the feeling of not good enough I made myself small, crouched down, let the shoulders sink and when I dared to look I rose up to my normal size - nothing more than that. I don't think of myself as flawless or anything the like, but I accept myself as a lovable human with good intentions who fucks up sometimes, but now as I see myself as lovable I can also apologize more easily and make things right again. Before with the strong feeling of unworthyness a mistake did feel like I lost my right to exist now it's just that - a mistake which I make up for but which doesn't make me a bad person.

For week 4 it's "Learning about our Patterns of Stress Reactivity: Wherever you go, there you are."

In the two Mindful Yoga exercises, we tune in closely into our bodies which is similar to the bodyscan yet completely different as we are moving. What came up for you during the exercises? How do the practices evolve as you get more familiar with them? Share your experiences during the Mindful Yoga/ Movement exercises with your fellow participants.

Personally, this is the exercise where I lead most from my own experience when guiding a group. Like for any other mindful exercise I have a script and a dramaturgical arch for the practice (yes, you do have that in mediations too) but here I let the practice and the group to guide us more. Where, what do we move next?

While I enjoy mindful yoga, I struggle with mindful walking. I was mindfully walking in the most beautiful surroundings, in busy streets, even in Plum Village, and yet I struggle to find any sort of engagement with the practice I seem to be stuck with boredom. Now that I have said it out loud, I wonder if it'll change. Acceptance precedes change. 

During the sitting meditation, we allow ourselves to be curious about our perception to fully listen to ourselves. We practice stepping back, watching the breath while the bodily sensations, thoughts and emotions roll through us. Our thoughts, emotions and body sensations tell us many stories and give us hints that are of great value when navigating the physical as well as the emotional and intellectual world when we are able to consciously watch them and see them as such. Only when we are aware of how we perceive things do we get the freedom to choose our response instead of an automatic reaction.

I'd love to hear about your experience while watching your breath during the sitting meditation. Experiences during the bodyscan can be shared here and are much appreciated as well.

During the sitting meditation, I often hear my thoughts telling me all the things I should be doing right now. Once those things are done, I can still sit around and do nothing. Those thoughts can be loud and convincing. That's one reason why group meditations are so important to me. During a group sitting - even online - I will not walk away, knowing that I get into a deeper state of meditation as it's easier to leave my nagging thought behind.

After many years of meditation, I still struggle with that voice. If I didn't meditate for some time, it gets much harder to get back into it, and I struggle with those thoughts more. Once I am back into a daily routine it becomes much easier. I think this is comparable to doing some sort of sports on a regular basis.

I've just started the MBSR course and have just got to the 7 myths of meditation, but there only seems to be 2? I can't find the other pages,  as it then goes on to another video? Am I doing something wrong? ??‍♀️

"A human being is part of a whole, called by us "universe" a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and emotions as something separated from the rest....a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness. The delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest to us. Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty." 

Albert Einstein

In this weeks' formal practice - the loving kindness meditation -, we include every living being in our good wishes. Everyone - including ourselves, people we have troubles with and people we will never meet. Some days this might be harder than others. Some days the main challenge might be to with well to ourselves when the waves of self-criticism and the all too popular "not good enough" or "who do you think you are" thoughts have power over us. Don't let them shame us, we all deserve well wishes. On other days it might be hard to feel warmth towards people we have troubles with. What works for me in those cases is a thought I heard first from Jack Kornfield. It goes something like this: "Wish for the people you have troubles with to be happy because if they would be truly happy, they'd be way easier to deal with."

Please share your experiences with the practise here.

Please check all the days and times that would work for you.

The time is CET - Central European time - as that's where I live. So please change your prefered time to CET, and I hope there are some time slots covered. Guiding a meditation online at 4 in the morning is theoretically possible, but I hope you understand that I'd rather not offer that. ?