Come on a short journey to experience self-awareness and understand how powerful the practice of meditation can be to live a healthy/happy life.

How do we change? In this pioneering talk, Dr. Shauna Shapiro draws on modern neuroscience and ancient wisdom to demonstrate how mindfulness can help us make positive changes in our brains and our lives.

Mindfulness is a practice that involves focusing your awareness on the present moment, while acknowledging and accepting without judgment your feelings, thoughts, and bodily sensations.

Kasim teaches and presents on the use of mindfulness for creating healing, transformation, and peace.

Instructions:

• What the video and write a paragraph explaining how meditation changes the brain.

Instructions:

• Watch the video and follow the instructions. Then answer the following:

• Identify your experience being completely still. Was it easy? Difficult? Summarize any emotions or experiences you felt.

• Have you ever done quiet sitting before? Describe that experience.

Instructions:

• Click on the link above and follow the narrator’s instructions. She will guide your through a mindfulness exercise. Complete this is a quiet place.

• How did you feel through the guided mindfulness?

• Practice this several times this week.

Instructions:

• After watching the video, answer the questions below:

• What do you think about the police department using this as a break and then going back to work?

• How do you think this helps police officers in their job?

• What makes you feel stress, or frustration and anger?

• Where could you go when you’re at home to breathe and relax after a stressful situation?

Instructions:

• Get into mindful body – hands free and relaxed, sitting proud, feet on the floor, gaze down to the ground or eyes closed

• press play on the video and just listen.

• When the video is complete, answer the following – how did you feel?

Instructions:

• Watch this short video carefully and take notes on the change possible in the brain’s gray matter.

• Watch the video again and devise an “elevator speech” on the benefits of Mindfulness. You can be funny, serious, but always factual (like Dan). An “elevator speech” is a one-minute description…something you could teach in a super short amount of time to someone who has never heard of your topic before. As you probably know, mindfulness is a new idea to many people.

Instructions:

• Watch the video and practice the hand model of the brain

• Demonstrate the hand model to someone at home

• Explain what it means to “flip your lip” and what you can do to help yourself when you experience strong emotions like disappointment, anger, etc.

Instructions:

• Watch the video and answer the questions below:

• What can you do about your attention getting hijacked?

• What are the weapons out there for you?(cell phone? friends, thought of the past that are out of your control? what else?)

• How can mindfulness help you with your attention?

• Write a letter of commitment to yourself about what you have learned about mindfulness and how you plan to use it in your life.

Instructions:

• After listening to the short news broadcast, add to your own “think tank” by researching the website that the newscaster mentions

• Identify at least three facts you learned today from both the newscast and the website on Mindfulness practice in education.

Instructions:

• Watch the video and notice your emotions.

• How did it feel to do the exercise?

• When could you use this practice?

• Teach this exercise to someone in your family or someone you know. Describe the experience in 5-8 sentences.

TAKE FIVE: Use this simple breathing practice to anchor your awareness back to the present moment. You can practice TAKE FIVE when you wake up to a new day, are waiting in line, or just feeling challenged and wanting a break away from thinking and doing.

TIME TO BREATHE: By training yourself to return to the breath over and over again you create new neurological connections that support many positive outcomes, such as clearer thinking, better self-management, increased immunity and stress reduction.

TUZA: Similar to TIME TO BREATHE, this breathing practice is intended as a stopping and noticing practice, TUZA was named by one of our students in Kigali Rwanda - meaning to slow down in one of the local dialects.

MINDFUL LISTENING: Listening seems like a natural skill, yet it requires attention training and practice to truly hear what is being communicated. With this mindfulness practice, the idea is to keep your listening ears wide open and attune them to both your internal and external experiences.

BODY SCAN: This core mindfulness practice focuses your attention on the physical sensations throughout the body. Through the experience of placing, sustaining and releasing attention on your different body parts, you become better attuned to your body’s wisdom as well as come to know yourself better.

EVERYDAY GRATITUDE: Gratitude is consistently associated with greater happiness. In this practice, the intention is to take time to notice and reflect upon the life you lead, as well as offer thanks and appreciation to the people, places and environment that surround you.

LOVING KINDNESS The intention of this mindfulness practice is to experience what it feels like to allow a genuine sense of kindness and love to arise in your heart. With this meditation, you first place your attention on the love that you hold for yourself, followed by extending your love to family and friends, and concluding the practice by sending your love to people everywhere.

MINDFUL WALKING: This mindfulness practice involves moment-to-moment awareness of the lifting, moving and placing of each foot. The intention is to focus less on the destination and more on the process of the body in motion.