Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction; Group Practice

The next Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction Group Practice will be held this Sunday January 15th from 3-5.   3018 Doan Drive, Regina, Sk.

We will be doing a full body scan, walking meditation,  sitting practice and some breathe exerciser. Bring a warm blanket for the floor and cozy socks!  Cost is 30$.  

Bring a friend and I look forward to seeing you there!   Peace.  Dr. Sojonky

Mindfulness Meditation Workshop

MINDFULNESS BASED STRESS       REDUCTION TRAINING

SUNDAY DECEMBER 18^TH 3-5     

MEDITATION TRAINING, TEACHING AND DISCUSSION: WALKING, STANDING, AND SITTING MEDITATION AND FULL BODY SCANS!

  CHRISTMAS CHOCOLATE MEDITATION !!!

WEAR WARM SOCKS AND BRING A MAT FOR THE FLOOR!   MINDFULNESS BASED STRESS REDUCTION IS EVIDENCE BASED BEST PRACTICE FOR ANXIETY, PAIN AND DEPRESSION!

 TO RESERVE A SPOT PLEASE REGISTER ONLINE AT MINDFULNESS REGINA ON FACEBOOK; COST IS 30$

Mindfulness Meditation Practice

We will be having a Mindfulness Meditation practice this Sunday the 15th from 3-5.  Location is 3018 Doan Drive, Regina, Sk.  Practice will include outdoor walking meditation, full body scan, breathing practice and Loving Kindness practice. Wear warm socks and bring a mat or blanket for the floor.  Recommended donation is $30.

I look forward to seeing you there.  Peace.  Dr. T

Workshop Opportunity

Sunday March 20th from 3-5!
Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction

Join us for a group practice in meditation.  We will be doing a laying down body scan meditation, walking practice, breath work and the practice of Loving Kindness meditation.

Wear comfortable clothes and bring a mat/blanket for the floor.

Recommended donation is 30$.  We look forward to seeing you there.  Please register at Mindfulness Regina on Facebook.

Mindfulness Meditation Community Practice

Our next Mindfulness Meditation Community Practice will be held on Sunday January 17th from 3-5 at the office of Dr. Todd Sojonky.  Suggested minimum donation is thirty dollars.  We will practice walking mindfulness, full body scan, sitting meditation and the practice of Loving Kindness.  Hope you come and enjoy our Caring Community.  Please register at Mindfulness Regina on Facebook.

Mindfulness Regina

A wonderful group open to all people interested in practicing meditation.  We meet monthly for two hours to practice mindfulness; sitting, walking and laying.  Individual sessions are available.  Check us out on Facebook.  Peace.  Dr. T

Harvard Unveils MRI Study Proving Meditation Literally Rebuilds The Brain's Gray Matter In 8 Weeks

Test subjects taking part in an 8-week program of mindfulness meditation showed results that astonished even the most experienced neuroscientists at Harvard University.  The study was led by a Harvard-affiliated team of researchers based at Massachusetts General Hospital, and the team’s MRI scans documented for the very first time in medical history how meditation produced massive changes inside the brain’s gray matter.  “Although the practice of meditation is associated with a sense of peacefulness and physical relaxation, practitioners have long claimed that meditation also provides cognitive and psychological benefits that persist throughout the day,” says study senior author Sara Lazar of the MGH Psychiatric Neuroimaging Research Program and a Harvard Medical School instructor in psychology. “This study demonstrates that changes in brain structure may underlie some of these reported improvements and that people are not just feeling better because they are spending time relaxing.”

Sue McGreevey of MGH writes: “Previous studies from Lazar’s group and others found structural differences between the brains of experienced meditation practitioners and individuals with no history of meditation, observing thickening of the cerebral cortex in areas associated with attention and emotional integration. But those investigations could not document that those differences were actually produced by meditation.”  Until now, that is.  The participants spent an average of 27 minutes per day practicing mindfulness exercises, and this is all it took to stimulate a major increase in gray matter density in the hippocampus, the part of the brain associated with self-awareness, compassion, and introspection.  McGreevey adds: “Participant-reported reductions in stress also were correlated with decreased gray-matter density in the amygdala, which is known to play an important role in anxiety and stress. None of these changes were seen in the control group, indicating that they had not resulted merely from the passage of time.”

“It is fascinating to see the brain’s plasticity and that, by practicing meditation, we can play an active role in changing the brain and can increase our well-being and quality of life,” says Britta Hölzel, first author of the paper and a research fellow at MGH and Giessen University in Germany. You can read more about the remarkable study by visiting Harvard.edu.  If this is up your alley then you need to read this: “Listen As Sam Harris Explains How To Tame Your Mind (No Religion Required)”

Go to site for audio:http://www.feelguide.com/2014/11/19/harvard-unveils-mri-study-proving-meditation-literally-rebuilds-the-brains-gray-matter-in-8-weeks/

Taking care of our 'self'...

"It is astounding how much the immune system is strengthened by reducing daily mental stress levels with either visualization or meditation. The other great tonic for the immune system is love—loving ourselves as well as others.”   ---Dr. Bernie Siegal

Meditation

When people begin to meditate, they often say that their thoughts are running riot and have become wilder than ever before. But I reassure them and say that this is a good sign. Far from meaning that your thoughts have become wilder, it shows that you have become quieter and are finally aware of just how noisy your thoughts have always been. Don’t be disheartened or give up. Whatever arises, just keep being present, keep returning to the breath, even in the midst of all the confusion.    ---Rigpa

Finding Yourself

If you find that meditation does not come easily in your city room, be inventive and go out into nature. Nature is always an unfailing fountain of inspiration. To calm your mind, go for a walk at dawn in the park, or watch the dew on a rose in a garden. Lie on the ground and gaze up into the sky, and let your mind expand into its spaciousness. Let the sky outside awaken a sky inside your mind. Stand by a stream and mingle your mind with its rushing; become one with its ceaseless sound. Sit by a waterfall and let its healing laughter purify your spirit. Walk on a beach and take the sea wind full and sweet against your face. Celebrate and use the beauty of moonlight to poise your mind. Sit by a lake or in a garden and, breathing quietly, let your mind fall silent as the moon comes up majestically and slowly in the cloudless night.

10 Minute Guided Meditation to ease Anxiety, Worry, and Urgency,

Breathing is the key to meditation.....

When you meditate, breathe naturally, just as you always do.

Focus your awareness lightly on the outbreath. When you breathe out, just flow out with the outbreath. Each time you breathe out, you are letting go and releasing all your grasping. Imagine your breath dissolving into the all-pervading expanse of truth.

Each time you breathe out, and before you breathe in again, you will find that there is a natural gap, as your grasping dissolves.

Rest in that gap, in that open space. And when, naturally, you breathe in, don’t focus especially on the inbreath but go on resting your mind in the gap that has opened up.

Meditation

Everything can be used as an invitation to meditation. A smile, a face in the subway, the sight of a small flower growing in the crack of cement pavement, a fall of rich cloth in a shop window, the way the sun lights up flower pots on a windowsill. Be alert for any sign of beauty or grace. Offer up every joy, be awake at all moments, to “the news that is always arriving out of silence.”

Slowly, you will become a master of your own bliss, a chemist of your own joy, with all sorts of remedies always at hand to elevate, cheer, illuminate, and inspire your every breath and movement.   ---Rigpa

Meditation

When people begin to meditate, they often say that their thoughts are running riot and have become wilder than ever before. But I reassure them and say that this is a good sign. Far from meaning that your thoughts have become wilder, it shows that you have become quieter and are finally aware of just how noisy your thoughts have always been. Don’t be disheartened or give up. Whatever arises, just keep being present, keep returning to the breath, even in the midst of all the confusion.  ---Rigpa

Mindful Walking

Our Inner Being

We are so addicted to looking outside ourselves that we have lost access to our inner being almost completely. We are terrified to look inward, because our culture has given us no idea of what we will find. We may even think that if we do, we will be in danger of madness. This is one of the last and most resourceful ploys of ego to prevent us from discovering our real nature.

So we make our lives so hectic that we eliminate the slightest risk of looking into ourselves. Even the idea of meditation can scare people. When they hear the words egoless or emptiness, they think that experiencing those states will be like being thrown out the door of a spaceship to float forever in a dark, chilling void. Nothing could be further from the truth. But in a world dedicated to distraction, silence and stillness terrify us; we protect ourselves from them with noise and frantic busyness. Looking into the nature of our mind is the last thing we would dare to do.   ---Rigpa

Negativity

We often wonder what to do about negativity or certain troubling emotions. In the spaciousness of meditation, you can view your thoughts and emotions with a totally unbiased attitude. When your attitude changes, then the whole atmosphere of your mind changes, even the very nature of your thoughts and emotions. When you become more agreeable, then they do; if you have no difficulty with them, they will have no difficulty with you either.  ---Rigpa

What is mindfulness?

Mindfulness

What really matters is not just the practice of sitting but far more the state of mind you find yourself in after meditation. It is this calm and centered state of mind you should prolong through everything you do. I like the Zen story in which the disciple asked his master:

“Master, how do you put enlightenment into action? How do you practice it in everyday life?”
“By eating and by sleeping,” replied the master.
“But Master, everybody sleeps and everybody eats.”
“But not everybody eats when they eat, and not everybody sleeps when they sleep.”

From this comes the famous Zen saying, “When I eat, I eat; when I sleep, I sleep.”

To eat when you eat and sleep when you sleep means to be completely present in all your actions, with none of the distractions of ego to stop you from being there. This is integration.   ---Rigpa

Jon Kabat-Zinn Defines Mindfulness