Introduction to Mindfulness – The Four Foundations

A MINDFUL APPROACH TO CULTIVATING PEACE, EASE, AND CLARITY IN AN OVERWHELMING WORLD
5-WEEK ONLINE COURSE WITH INGRID CZINTOS SUNDAYS, 4:00 PM – 5:15 PM EST
OCTOBER 25 – NOVEMBER 22, 2020

This 5-week online course offers training in the Buddha’s Four Foundations of Mindfulness: Mindfulness of Body, Thought, Feelings and Consciousness. The course is designed to support you and bring the principles and practices of Mindfulness Meditation into your daily life and relationships. In this course you will learn and practice scientifically-proven ways to:

 • Enhance your ability to focus and calm your mind
 • Restore balance and general well-being
 • Notice when you are stressed and pause before you act
 • Strengthen your capacity for resilience and empathy
 • Lower your levels of stress and anxiety

Here’s what you can expect in the course:

Week 1: Waking Up – Introducing Ourselves to the Present Moment
In week one, we focus on deepening our capacity for presence and understanding mindfulness using a body scan meditation that stabilizes the mind and helps us see what unfolds when we focus our full awareness on just one thing at a time. We also explore the “automatic pilot” at work and experience what it feels like to “wake up “, in doing so we experience mindfulness in action and the power of being in the present moment.


Week 2: Waking Up to the Body – Learning to Stay in the Present Moment
In week two, we explore the difference between “thinking” about a sensation and actually “experiencing” it. Many of us spend so much of our time living in our heads that we almost forget about the world experienced directly through our senses. In this class we address how the default of all of our minds is to rehash the past and rehearse the future in a constant stream of mental activity. Learning how to clearly identify when the mind has begun to wander is an essential foundation on which all other mindfulness meditations are built.


Week 3: Waking Up to the World of Thoughts – Befriending Our storytelling Minds
In week three, we develop mindfulness of thoughts and explore meditation that progressively reveals how we get stuck in the rabbit hole of “overthinking”. We learn to see thoughts as mental events that are in a constant state of arising and passing away. When we are able to see our thoughts as merely items that come and go in the space of awareness, we no longer feel as powerless and overwhelmed by our mental experience. This new perspective provides us with clarity and enables us to stay calm amidst the busyness and uncertainty of our everyday lives.


Week 4: Waking Up to Our Feelings – Transforming How We Relate to Our Experience
In week four, we begin to explore meditations that help us face, rather than avoid, the challenges that may arise in our lives. It not only matters that we pay attention, but also how we do that. We address the challenge of self-compassion and investigate the possibility of what it might look like to meet our difficulties with kindness, curiosity, and openness. Ultimately, the difference between a joyful, happy life and misery has as much to do with the frame through which we see our experience as it does the events we experience.


Week 5: Waking Up to the Truth of Who We Are – Connecting to Inner Wisdom
In week five, the momentum we have gathered from the previous weeks of practice enables us to clearly see the connection between our thoughts and our daily habits, responses, and moods. We revisit all of the practices that we have learned throughout the series and further explore ways to incorporate mindfulness into our daily lives so that we can use it to sustain balance and well-being.