MEDITATION

Class Description: Meditation is a simple practice available to all, which can reduce stress, reduce anxiety, increase calmness, develop gratitude, improve performance, improve sleep and promote happiness. Meditation is a practice – to train attention and awareness, and achieve a mentally clear and emotionally calm, and stable state.

DESCRIPTION: Mindfulness is quite the buzz word these days and can be seen in many contexts, including the medical system, psychology, neuroscience, education, sport, business and the correctional and legal systems. Mindfulness meditation is now widely used to reduce stress, anxiety, to lift mood and promote overall health and well-being. Moreover, growing evidence suggest that what’s good for the mind may also be good for the heart. Decades of research suggests that meditation improves risk factors associated with heart disease and can be a useful part of cardiovascular risk reduction. Please join Jennifer Innes from Ottawa Meditation & Wellness for this one-hour Mindfulness “Taster” session. Discover what mindfulness is and why so many people are incorporating this simple yet effective way to help quiet the mind, increase attention, manage stress and build resilience. Mindfulness is to the mind what physical exercise is to the body – a way to stay, fit, flexible and focussed. LEARNING OBJECTIVES: During this session you will learn what mindfulness is, why we practice and how to practice. The session will be both experiential and conceptual. You will be guided through different meditations and there will be some conceptual teaching, in particular around the theme of stress and resilience as one of the reasons for why we practice. We will explore the difference between acute and chronic stress, as well as adaptive and maladaptive strategies for coping with chronic stress and how mindfulness can help to reduce negative outcomes associated with stress reactivity. How we can learn ways of responding more positively and how mindfulness gives us a chance to pause and respond, rather than to react with our often automatic habitual (and at times unhelpful) patterns. People often report leaving these sessions feeling more relaxed and more aware of the importance of taking the time to practice. Come JUMP IN™ to what promises to be a very worthwhile session!

Class Description: Meditation is a simple practice available to all, which can reduce stress, reduce anxiety, increase calmness, develop gratitude, improve performance, improve sleep and promote happiness. Meditation is a practice – to train attention and awareness, and achieve a mentally clear and emotionally calm, and stable state.