Making our way in the all-hands-online era

This week we continue to settle into the online environment. Way up here online the potential to open up additional avenues of work on the 'mental ecology' side of things is great. It's a bit more difficult to advance the momentum on the 'physical ecology' side, but with the keeping of daily practice logs and the optional use of extended practice yoga+ video on Thursdays (and possibly on other days as well) this too can be done. In some ways our timing is spot-on. At a time in the semester when the focus turns to establishing and maintaining one's own practice, we have a great opportunity to do that due in part to the extenuating circumstances.

Part three commences online

Due to the current public health situation we will be finishing up the semester online. We will continue building and logging individual bodymindfulness practices on a daily basis. We will also continue our Tuesday check-ins (via online discussion forums in Canvas), and our conversations about selected topics (also via online discussion forums in Canvas).

Putting the wraps on part two

This week we conclude part two of the course -- a three-week adventure into ideas and practices of embodiment and disembodiment. In the run-up to spring break, we'll conclude our pre-break work with a presentation that features the work of Marshall McLuhan, Jean Baudrillard, and Jacques Lacan.

Opening up part two of our course

This week marks the beginning of part two of the Mindfulness Meditation and Education course. In this part we delve deeper into bodyfulness and mindfulness in alternating weeks.

In the first week we focus on deepening our forays into bodyfulness by discussing the work of Bessell van der Kolk on "How Trauma Lodges Itself in the Body." And we also discuss research studies that isolate the deep-physiological benefits of meditation.

In the second week we switch our focus to mindfulness by exploring cultural ideologies that in various ways have come to inform what we currently refer to as 'mindfulness meditation.' For this exploration we will employ a documentary film "Yoga: The Architecture of Peace."

Then in a third week we return to bodyfulness through an examination of the work of Marshall McLuhan, Jean Baudrillard, and Jacques Lacan.

In a fourth week, we brainstorm topics for "pop-up research" projects that we will engage in as a class.

Wrapping Up Koru Basics

This week we complete our adventures in Koru Basics by reviewing what we've learned from the book, from check-ins, and from practicing a varied array of mindfulness meditation techniques and exercises on a daily basis.

This week we also launch the second part of the course -- a four week or so timeframe that features selected content pieces, instructor presentations, and discussion on Tuesdays, and an extension of our practice-intensive Thursdays.

Week three: adding options to our repertoire

On Tuesday of this week we added two more types of mindfulness meditation to our repertoire -- Labelling Thoughts Meditation and Guided Imagery Meditation -- and on Thursday we added a form of bodyfulness meditation to our repertoire as well. Looking ahead to next week, we will add a Labelling Feelings Meditation and a Loving Kindness Meditation to complete our 'big picture' menu and draw our exploration of the Koru Mindfulness program to a fittingly open conclusion.

Then in subsequent weeks we will explore a few selected topics to deepen the 'mind' side of our mind/body work, and we will also return to and deepen selected practices on the 'body' side of the body/mind matrix.

Week two -- continuing to broaden and deepen

This week we explored Walking Meditation and Gatha Meditation on Tuesday, and we continued to develop concepts and practices around yoga-based 'bodyfulness' meditation on Thursday. Our goal continues to be to expand our repertoire by adding options while deepening our experiential understanding of the basic aim of all forms or types of meditation.