Beginning Meditation and Mindfulness for Activists

"We can never obtain peace in the world if we neglect the inner world and don't make peace with ourselves. World peace must develop out of inner peace."

Mindfulness can simply be defined as being fully in the present moment and fully accepting anything that happens, just simply observing everything as it occurs. Within the larger concept of 'mindfulness' there are methods such as meditation, yoga, qigong, tai chi and others that help focus an individual more fully on the present moment.

My goal in this course is to help you to be happier and more peaceful by facilitating your own learning of these methods and you will be able to practice these methods quite easily on your own after even coming to one of these classes.

Meditation has been getting a lot of press in recent years thanks to recent advancements in brain imaging that has shown scientifically that meditation, yoga, qigong and other ancient practices have concrete, positive results for a person's health. Various benefits include greater calmness, lowered blood pressure, lowered stress levels, increased ability to concentrate and others (If you Google Scholar 'meditation' and 'Jon Kabat-Zinn' or 'Richard Davidson' you can get a whole list of research articles). The best way to learn about these benefits, though, is through first-hand experience.

Meditation and other practices are very effective ways to self-heal and find inner peace. Mindfulness is compatible with any belief or non-belief system, so whatever your belief or non-beliefs are, these practices can help you in relieving stress, having greater calmness, etc...which is pretty cool :)

There is a lot of activist work to be done in the world today with so much happening and taking care of ourselves is something we might be tempted to neglect. Yet the more at peace we are with ourselves and what is going on inside of us, the more effective and greater attention we can give toward improving the world outside ourselves.

Looking forward to meeting you!

(Note: I haven't decided a location yet for the class and plan to wait for some people to sign up to be able to pick a location close to those who want to be apart of the class, so just sign up and I'll send you a message about finding a central location once we get some people signed up. Sweet)