Beginning Meditation Class May 2011

Hey ladies! This is a program being offered by one of my dearest friends (we've known one another since 2nd grade). I'm planning on being part of the virtual class and wanted to share the opportunity with the rest of the Professional Women's Network. If you'd like to participate, email me, and I'll give you the details on sending in your $20 payment for the month-long commitment.

Welcome to Beginning Meditation.
Program Dates: May 1st- May 29th, 2011

Why Meditate and Why This Program?
Scenario 1: The phone is incessantly ringing, you have 83 unanswered emails in your Outlook box, you worked 60 hours this week and it's only Wednesday, although you are 34, if someone just saw your blood pressure results, they'd think you were 72...

Scenario 2: Life is fun and busy, and you've tried to make time for meditation a few times a week, but the laundry needs to get done, the trash needs to go out, Modern Family is coming on shortly--all of which pushes out the time for meditation...

Scenario 3: You've heard about this meditation thing, you've tried closing your eyes once, but that didn't go well. You feel inspired, but are not sure how to start....

Whether you need to figure out how to deal with stress, you need help with a disciplined practice and/or you are just curious, the focus of this program is to help you with all of these things through beginning a meditation practice. Starting and sustaining a meditation practice is a difficult thing when there are a lot of competing messages and activities for our attention: think Times Square in our minds. The four weeks will be about developing awareness and consciousness by creating a meditative practice that helps you see/ manage what's going on inside and out.

Science, Spirituality and Meditation
If you need hard proof, there is a pool of scientific evidence demonstrating the outcomes of meditation. Science says that a few minutes a day has profound impacts on participants' states of mind. Meditation reduces the experience of pain in novice meditators. Meditation helps improve cognitive skills in beginning meditators. Click on the hyperlink for the articles. While there are spiritual aims of meditation, our focus is to simply quiet the mind. However, I will incorporate both spiritual and secular philosophers to illustrate points along the way.

Practice Makes Perfect
As with anything, sitting takes practice. Practice take time. Time is precious thing. Meditation/mindfulness, while important to sit for a few minutes, can take place out in the world when we are doing mundane things like walking to the grocery store. Even if you work 80 hours a week, there's room for practice, I promise.

What's Involved?
The commitment would involve the following:

• Sitting 3-5 minutes everyday on your own (during the program, I'll direct you to an online guided meditation or send you music to help with your practice);
  
• Engaging in one exercise per week;
• Responding once a week to an email to me as a reflection exercise (how many times you meditated, the quality of the meditation, reflection on the exercise, etc.) It can be as involved or brief as works for you.;
  
• $20 one time charge; and,
  
• Filling out an anonymous survey at the end of the program.
  

The Details
Every Sunday, starting May 1st, I'll send an email with helpful instruction, a short reading and an exercise. During the week, you will meditate for 3-5 minutes a day and would work on the exercise when out and about in the world with the idea to bring a state of mindfulness to your everyday experiences and respond to an email I'll send out on Friday.

What's Next?
Please send your address and $20 (cash or check is fine) to Jess Geevarghese. Email Jeannette Balleza for full mailing address and additional details. The first programmatic activity will be on May 1st.

About Jess
I've been meditating off and on for about 10 years (mostly off), but as of year ago, I've committed to a practice that ranges from thirty minutes to two hours daily. I've seen tremendous changes in my internal world and believe this is accessible to anyone who commits to a practice, whether 5 minutes or 25 minutes.

If there are people you think maybe interested in participating, please share the link to this post.

Let me know if you have any questions!