Getting Started: Mindfulness Meditation Tips

Some “How To” Tips for Mindfulness Meditation


For the next several weeks you are invited and encouraged to practice the Body Scan Meditation with the disc once a day for the amount of time you are able (45, 30 or 15 minutes).

This is your homework or home-practice. Remember, it does not work to promote stress reduction if you do not do it. No guilt or blame, just non-judgmental fact.

Just simply returning to the “object of focus or attention or awareness”, in this case the sensations of the body, strengthens concentration and the positive effects of the meditation practice.

Remember Mindfulness is conscious moment – to – moment
non-judgmental awareness, cultivated by systematically paying attention in a particular way.

Mindfulness is about waking up to your life moment, by moment by moment…

Are you ready to practice Mindfulness?

What would support your readiness for practice?

Some examples might be things such as;

• Setting a regular daily time to practice

• Using guided instructions found on the internet.

• Start small with short periods of time and slowly build

• Ask for support of family, friends or other household members to assist you in creating the space, time, quiet etc.

• Invite family or friends to do it with you

• Give yourself a break if need be

AND most of all know that
There is more right with you than wrong with you

Mind Body Connection

This new field of study is called Psychoneuroimmunology and treats the brain, central nervous system, and the immune system as one inter-related unit to study the effects of stress on disease.
The central nervous system is linked to both bone marrow and thymus - where immune system cells are produced

The Mind – Body Connection

Neuroscientists and others are discovering neuropathways, and hormonal responses that make connections between our thoughts and emotions and our physiology.

• There are nerve endings in tissues of the immune system

• Changes in the brain and spinal cord affect how the immune system responds and vis versa

• Lymphocytes ( important immune cells) can produce hormones and neurotransmitters

• Emotions trigger release of hormones such as adrenaline, endorphins, and corticiods (cortisol)

• Immune system is influenced by stress and can make the body more susceptible to infectious disease

What we think and feel are connected and affect our bodies.

Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) has been studied for over 30 years as a modality useful in medical settings for pain management, heart disease, immune disease, depression and anxiety, menopause symptoms & many health conditions.

Mindfulness Meditation is a powerful way to restore and maintain balance and develop skills to avoid emotional & physical depletion, thereby reducing stress.

Introduction to Mindfulness

Mindfulness is simply described as;

• To see clearly

Mindfulness is the practice of being intentionally aware of thoughts and actions in the present moment, without judgment

And the "without judgement" is key here.

• How many of us have the experience of being our own worst critics?
• Is that your experience"

Its no small thing to suspend this judgement and its an important component of mindfulness.

Mindfulness cultivates the ability to be more present with our actual living experience rather than simply reacting to experiences without noticing what is actually going on.

Sound familiar? That freedom between the stimulus and the response

Mindfulness - Meditation
Is one way to explore waking up from or coming out of an “automatic pilot” way of living.

We are so often either rehearsing a possible future or rehashing something in the past that we often move through our lives without noticing the moments of our lives that could be significant right now – we never know what we have missed and the depth of our own possibilities for transformation or making different choices.

Most of us are quite surprised at how active our minds actually are - jumping around to these thoughts of rehearsing or rehashing, spinning all kinds of stories, judgements and scenarios. When we practice mindfulness meditation it is quite amazing to experience this mind chatter. Sometimes its even called "Monkey Mind" because the mind's thoughts are like a monkey jumping from tree to tree.

In Mindfulness meditation the focus is on This Present Moment
because it is the ONLY time we have to perceive, grow, learn, or actually change to answer the challenges and opportunities arising in our lives.

We can not learn, change , grow in the past or future, only right now in this moment. We only have right now accessible to us.

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Although Mindfulness meditation has its roots in ancient Buddhist meditation disciplines, it is also a universal practice that anyone can benefit directly from.

Cultural and religious traditions and practices from all over the world have various practices that cultivate attention of the present moment.

Can you think of a practice in a tradition familiar to you the cultivates present moment awareness?

How about silent prayer, chanting, and ritual movement, all cultivate present moment awareness.

Any others you know of or practice?

 Health and Stress in Society.

I think the topic and experience of stress is so common to us all and so very important to understand how it impacts us individually, as communities, and as a society. And most importantly, how we can reduce and manage the impact of stress on our health and well being.

The blog will look at stress through two lenses.

The first lens,is at the individual level - what stress does to our bodies and health and what we can do as individuals to reduce and manage our stress personally.

The second lens,is at the community & societal level - the impact of our environment, social and political structures on stress and how structural issues impact people, communities, and how society is organized or could be organized to increase stress or alternately, how to prevent or reduce the stress we experience.

If I start out with this quote from Victor Frankle, what do you think?

"In between the stimulus and the response, there is a space, and in that space lies freedom" 

• What does this mean to you?
• Do you know that space of freedom? Is it familiar to you?
• How do you access it?
• Do you have to "tune out" to have that freedom?

When it comes to stress, you may have heard it said that although we can not control what may happen to us, or the circumstances we are living in that cause stress……we can control our own individual response to it (that stress).

And on a individual level the class is about gaining the skills and resources to do just that - find the freedom in that space between the stimulus (what stresses us - also called the stressor) and our response to that stress in order to minimize its negative impact on our health and well being.

And the class is also about gaining the critical thinking skills to analyze the larger structural barriers and inequities in society that underlie the causes of much of our stress and resulting chronic disease. And with these skills we can develop and create stress reduction interventions that work on reducing these structural barriers and issues thus reducing stress back down on the individual level.

The Ecological Model is a way of looking at an issue from these multiple levels.

A little preview of whats to come - actually working together to create social connection in support of positive social change has the potential to reduce individual stress as well as reduce the structural stressors that are actually the main causes of stress in the first place…….. WOW - right?


I wanted to start with with this introduction to Mindfulness and with instructions for practicing Mindfulness so you can get started right away.

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One thing is for sure - if you don't practice stress reduction it does not work to reduce your stress. And it does take practice, like learning how to shoot hoops, drive a car, cook a meal, or write a paper for school.