Guest Blog: Free Online Mindfulness Course

Post date: Oct 26, 2014 9:26:29 AM

This guest blog entry is written by Dave Potter, a mindfulness-based stress reduction teacher based in Idaho, US, whose desire to make mindfulness as widely available as possible resonates with the ethos of The Free Mindfulness Project. He runs the website: http://palousemindfulness.com/

Making Mindfulness Accessible to All by Dave Potter

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One way to learn mindfulness is to enrol in one of the hundreds of Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) courses that are offered world-wide. Learning mindfulness through a live, in-person class, where you have the benefit of interaction with the instructor and other class members, and the group support this provides, is the absolute best way to learn mindfulness, but sometimes this is just not possible. Not everyone has access to an in-person course, and even if one exists nearby, it may be logistically or financially difficult to participate in one of these 8-week courses. The free online course provided on the Palouse Mindfulness website began as a resource for students of the live course taught in Moscow, Idaho (U.S.), and has grown to contain all of the materials used in the in-person course, and then some. Included are audio and video for all the Guided Practices used in the course (body scan, sitting meditation, yoga, etc.), all of the weekly practice suggestions, and the materials to create an MBSR manual identical to the one we use in the course. Arising out of the desire to make mindfulness as widely available as possible, this online version of MBSR is provided at no cost and does not require any sort of registration or enrolment. Much of this material is drawn from the works of other teachers and writers in the spirit of making mindfulness accessible to all. There is a wealth of material here, including videos and writings by Jon Kabat-Zinn (Wherever You Go, There You Are), Pema Chodron (When Things Fall Apart), Tara Brach (Radical Acceptance), Sylvia Boorstein (Don't Just Do Something, Sit There), Sharon Salzberg (A Heart As Wide as the World), Robert Sapolsky (Why Zebras Don't Get Ulcers), Marshall Rosenberg (Non-Violent Communication), and Susan Bauer-Wu (Leaves Falling Gently).

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