Facilitated by Meg Krejci, WashU Wellness Consultant

This three-part series will provide you with tools and practices to support less stress and greater appreciation for life.

All sessions will take place in Becker Library (Medical campus) room 201 from 11:30am-12:30pm and include boxed lunch. An attendance prize to support your wellness journey will be given to those who attend all three sessions. Capacity is limited.

Week 1 (May 23): What Is Mindfulness? And our experience in this moment

Reflection on the definition of mindfulness reveals how the development of this skill can help reduce stress in our lives.  Cultivating the ability to focus the mind in the present moment is a powerful antidote to the tendency to constantly replay past difficulties or compulsively worry about the future. 

Meditation Practice:  Introduce practices; mindful eating and the Body Scan

Week 2 (June 6): Changing Our Minds and Letting Go Into Life

A significant amount of stress arises not from the circumstances of our lives, but rather, from our perception of the circumstances.  Learning to distinguish between circumstance and perception allows us “change our minds” in ways that empower us.  The human organism is hard-wired to pursue pleasure and avoid pain.  The push and pull of wanting/not wanting creates stress, especially when what we want/don’t want conflict with life as it is.  Mindfulness is a practice of letting go that reduces the conflict and the stress.  Meditation Practice:  Mindful movement & walking and Mindfulness of Breath. 

Week 3 (June 20): Making Peace With the Mind and Mindful Living

Having explored the role perception plays in creating stress, we now expand the practice of mindfulness to be aware of our automatic reactivity, and, cultivating responding to life mindfully.  Mindfulness increases our awareness of conditioned patterns of thinking that lead to stress and empowers us to let go of them.   Mindfulness is a skill that is developed through practice of formal meditation.  That skill is meant to be applied outside of the formal meditation practice to our daily lives.  We conclude the class with a consideration of how we might cultivate mindfulness as a way of living.  Meditation Practice:  Meditation Practice:  Mindfulness of Physical Sensations & Sounds & Mountain Meditation