Course Orientation – Intentions
Welcome to Body Soul School: Rediscovering the Body:
Level 1: Foundations of Mindfulness
We are so glad that you are here. Investing in yourself is a courageous decision that can change every aspect of your life.
The purpose of this module is help you understand your own intentions as you start this experience. Please watch the video and then take our Pre-Course Survey to help you create your Course intentions.
We live in a world of quick fixes: you might mindfully notice throughout your day the barrage of messages telling you what you need and why you need it. Most of these messages offer a quick and easy solution to your struggles with too-good-to-be-true promises of a pain-free future.
Mindfulness is a different path with a different promise. You can think of it as a slow-cooker approach, rather than a microwave one. While the principles and practices we teach have been ratified by modern science and represent the cutting edge of mental-emotional health, they are actually ancient in nature. Everything you learn here rests on the shoulders of spiritual traditions and sages, and has been added to by modern neuroscience.
You can rest assured that the progress you make here will be something real, tangible, deeply personal, and all your own. Once you awaken to who you are, nobody can take that away from you.
But it’s also important to know that many people start on a path, and then fall off of it. We can expect a natural high as we start the program and experience the likely results–peace, clarity, connection and insight. As we start something new, we typically feel elated, thinking that all our problems are about to be solved and we have finally arrived.
Perhaps you have felt this before in other self-improvement endeavors? This high can be attributed to the ego–the False Self–grasping at the illusion of control.
As we progress through the Course, we can expect periods of let-down and discouragement as we inevitably return to the fact that we are still frustratingly human. We might recognize the urge to give up and look for something else to fix us. Or on the contrary, we might find ourselves feeling special, enlightened, or above our peers or parents. This is just another spin on the same False Self.
Watch for these ego tricks! As you observe these behaviors in yourself, simply know that you are becoming more aware of your own patterns, and this awareness alone is powerful. Change that happens from the inside out is slow-growth, deeply-rooted change: it represents a permanent shift. Aim for consistency in practice and trust the process!