For various reasons, we at the Mindfulness Centre have been stressed! It can then become stressful to be mindful. 

Speaking about myself, I got infected with a nasty virus that attacks the neurocircuits of the left brain and gave me a bad case of the 'Ihavesomuchtodo syndrome'. Its hallmark is interesting - walking through life I felt as if I was constantly leaning forward against a headwind, except that the headwind was literally in my head, deeply embedded in my neurocircuitry, not outside. It was a very embodied experience affecting me from the realm of physical sensations, through my emotions, all the way up to my cognition and beyond to my relationships. It became a self-imposed obsessive-compulsive storyline, a wickedly insistent one at that, providing me with the perfect rationale for believing in it as if it was the Gospel's truth. There was surprising comfort in this madness, in part because it made me feel important - or more accurately, it made me forget the important fact that in about 6-8 billion years our solar system will have vanished (let alone the more time-sensitive and rather important fact that I am apparently going to die one of these days).

Referrals to our Centre have exploded (one of the main reasons for our stress), but I have fortunately been blessed with Reena's and Sneh's good-natured and patient assistance, and Linda's hands-on engagement as a teacher. As you can see on our website, our programs have expanded to accommodate the increase in demand.

However, mindfulness has now also become a fad. Everybody and their uncle seem to become mindful. Mindfulness is beginning to lose its meaning, in exactly the same way religion has lost its meaning for the masses of people who attend church on Sunday and continue to scream at their kids when they come home from church. This is what happens when the left brain is out of touch with the rest of the organism and hijacks reality into a pure representation of it. In the same vein, and sadly so, I am regularly contacted by people who have no awareness of the fact that the human capacity for self-deception is limitless, and think they can teach meditation after having taken an 8-week program. This culturally sanctioned left-brain hypertrophy has its roots in our biology, which has bestowed on us very tricky left-brain attributes. The left brain is overly optimistic, unrealistically positive in its self-appraisal, in denial about its shortcomings, unreasonably certain, black and white, argumentative and deluded in its assumption that it knows it all and can go it alone.

Mindfulness practice is an intricate, delicate, difficult, tricky and deep discipline that is difficult to embody. Talking the walk is easy, walking it an entirely different matter. Fortunately, our work at the Centre has attracted a great number of serious explorers, who are deeply dedicated to mining the depths of the mind, and the Mindsight Intensives are flourishing. It is refreshing to see a few budding mindfulness teachers grow among the ranks of our students, who by virtue of their own experience in the exploration of mindfulness are fully aware of the complexity and responsibility involved in becoming a teacher. It takes at least 4-5 years or longer of intensive training to begin to feel one might be ready to teach.

My students' wisdom inspires me, as they keep reminding me of my mortality, of my vulnerability, of the fact that I am in the same soup with all of them. That is my medicine against my 'Ihavesomuchtodo' virus - the fact that I am a beginner like we all always are, that there is nowhere to go except for now, that I can always rely on one of my fellow travelers to know more than me and guide me, that I am not alone, not a hero, not a student, not a teacher, both and neither, and I can relax my storyline, achieve less to live more .... and go sip my tea.

Dr. T. 

A 5-lecture series on mindfulness 101*:

Why and how to meditate

 

Over the course of 5 lectures we will explore the foundations and principles of mindfulness meditation. Why meditate? How do we best meditate? What is stress? How are meditation and stress related?

 

From lecture to lecture we will follow the gradual emergence of a new, invigorated approach to living, replacing our old, ingrained, rigid and stale patterns of suffering that have bogged down our lives, curtailed our creativity and undermined our passion and hope for life and the future.

 

Each lecture's journey begins with a short review of the previous lectures, followed by the exploration of one aspect of what and who we really are as living human organisms. Over the course of the lecture series we will gradually acquire a bird's eye view of how we are embodied, including how our brain is wired, and the relationship between body, mind and spirit. From this base we can then understand the tools we use to meditate, which we will learn to apply, one by one as we proceed from lecture to lecture.

 

* All lectures provide some common-sense directions about how to practice mindfulness.

Lecture 1: 

   WIND: