Cocoa Mindfulness Meditation Group

This is a group for those who are interested in living life more fully through secular mindfulness. The meetings will focus on both mindfulness theory and meditations along with mindful tools, that will help us live life with greater awareness.

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TWO WEEK MINDFULNESS CHALLENGE

Each meetup will start a new 2 week mindfulness challenge. This challenge starts on August 20 2019 and ends on the date of our next mindfulness meetup September 3, 2019.

Body Awareness Challenge

This challenge focuses on Body awareness. Body awareness is an important foundation of any mindfulness practice, it helps us to be in the present moment.

Outline of exercises and frequency to meet this challenge

  1. Concentration meditation at least 5min up to 15min .. more if you like 3-5 days per week
  2. Body scan meditation 1 – 2 times per week
  3. Posture exercise – check in during the day .. as many times as you can remember, make it a challenge to do better than yesterday!
  4. Bring awareness to a routine activity 1 – 2 times per week .. find a trigger to remind yourself
  5. Walking meditation – EXTRA CREDIT Regular walking is good exercise, try bringing awareness to it.

Concentration Meditation

This meditation is an important practice to develop concentration and awareness. It should be practiced daily for 5 – 15mins. To be successful in the challenge you must practice at least 3 times per week.

  • Get comfortable in your seat
  • Close your eyes
  • Pay attention to your breath as it enters and exits the body
  • If you notice that your mind has wandered off, gently bring your awareness back to your breath

*Notice the temperature, length, and dryness, moisture of the breath to bring added concentration to this exercise.

Guided Meditation for Concentration

BODY SCAN MEDITATION

The body scan meditation is a mindfulness staple. Melissa has taken the traditional meditation and added our own twist to it that includes muscle tensing for stress relief.

  • Get comfortable
  • close your eyes
  • bring awareness to different parts of your body starting with your feet and ending with your head
  • as you bring awareness to each part of your body notice tension, tingling, tightness .. releasing tension as you go

Practice 1-2 times per week to meet the challenge.

Guided Body Scan Meditation

POSTURE EXERCISE

The posture exercise is the quickest and easiest way to bring your awareness to the present moment and you can practice it anywhere!

When you change posture: sitting, standing, walking, laying, etc. Notice the contact points with your body. Really feel the pressure at these points.

Example: while sitting, notice the sensation of your feet on the floor, feel the pressure of your back against the chair, feel the chair supporting the weight of your body in your seat.

There are no challenge requirements for this exercise. Try to apply it as often as possible as you go about your day. Keep track on your log and see if you can beat your previous day by grounding in your posture more frequently!

ROUTINE ACTIVITIES

Bring your awareness to your body as you perform a routine activity washing dishes, taking a shower, eating, etc.

Example:

While washing the dishes

Notice picking up a plate, bending to place the plate in the dishwasher, placing the plate, returning to a standing position, grabbing the next plate, and so on. You can label each action (noting in your mind) if it makes it easier, e.g. “picking up plate”, “placing plate”, etc.

To meet the challenge requirement, perform 1 – 2 times weekly.

WALKING MEDITATION

This is an optional activity (informal) for the two week challenge, but walking is great exercise, why not bring some mindfulness to it?

There are several ways to do a walking meditation

Easy labeling (mental noting)

As you walk, notice which foot is hitting the ground, e.g. left foot, right foot.

You can label each step as you take it or fully feel the sensation of each step as you place your foot on the ground.

Detailed labeling

If you are having difficulty keeping your focus while doing the walking meditation, you can turn up the volume (so to speak) by adding more detailed labeling.

Example:

When lifting your leg, label “lifting”, while bending your leg, label “bending”, and finally when you place your foot, label “placing”. Do this for each step as you walk. It’s a bit more challenging and you will likely walk at a much slower pace, but it will require your attention.

**please note: be safe while doing a walking meditation. The best place might be a park etc. where you have a strip at least 20 yards long. We don’t want you walking out in front of any cars :)

PRACTICE LOG DOWNLOAD

INFORMAL PRACTICE LOG DOWNLOAD

GALLERY

RESOURCES

Articles / Handouts

Mindfulness articles & handouts from the Cocoa Mindfulness Meditation group

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AUDIO / VIDEO