Week 1
Awareness of Automatic Pilot
In a car we can sometimes drive for miles on “automatic pilot” without really being aware of what we are doing. In the same way, we may not be really “present” moment by moment, for much of our lives.
Week 2
Living Our Lives in “Our Heads”
Our aim in the program is to be more fully aware, more often. We can have a tendency to judge our experience as being not quite right in some way- that it is not what should be happening. Often these thoughts will take us, quite automatically down some fairly well-worn paths in our minds. They are not always helpful.
Week 3
Gathering Our Scattered Mind
The mind is often scattered and lost in thought because it is working away in the back-ground to complete unfinished tasks from the past and to strive for goals for the future. We need to find a reliable way intentionally to “come back” to the here and now.
Week 4
Recognising Aversion
Difficult things are part and parcel of life its self. It is how we relate to these things that makes the difference. A change in attitude and relationship to difficulty can make the difference between difficulties controlling our lives, and relating more lightly enabling us to more mindfully and more skilfully respond.
Week 5
Allowing/letting it be
In this session we begin to gently explore the possibility of being more present with difficulty, “turning” gently towards the experience with kindness. Through cultivating a “willingness to experience” we settle back into an awareness of what is already present. We let it be-we simply notice and observe whatever is already here.
Week 6
Thoughts Are Not Facts
Our thoughts can have a very powerful effect on how we feel and what we do. Often these thoughts are automatic.
“From thoughts come actions. From actions come all sorts of consequences. In which thoughts will we invest? Our great task is to see them more clearly, so that we can choose which ones to act on and which simply to let be.”
Joseph Goldstein 1989
Week 7
How Can I Best Take Care of Myself
What we actually do with our time from moment to moment, from hour to hour, from day-to day can very powerfully affect our general well-being and our ability to deal skilfully with depression and anxiety.
Week 8
Maintaining and Developing New Learning
A recurring theme throughout this course has been, awareness, acceptance, and responding mindfully to situations.
Deciding on a regular pattern of practice that you feel will be helpful to continue with now that the course has ended.