How do we move beyond our stress habits--to inhabit the heart?
I love to write. You can find me on Substack sharing my writing as well as the stories I curate on my podcast, “Live Well. Be Wise!” AND I am also a Mindfulness-Based Health Educator and Coach, who loves group learning and facilitation…maybe more than anything! (though sometimes that depends on the moment-HA)
My “why” around the mental health work and teaching Mindfulness is simple. Meditation was one of the key practices that changed my life forever. From the ages of 18 to 32, I had what seemed to be intractable depression. Even though I am on the other side of that disease now, I teach from a place of lived experience.
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I know what suffering is and I know what can help.
Fast forward to 10-years ago. I had been meditating on my own and in groups for well over a decade before I stumbled onto the gold standard of mindfulness courses, “Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction” (MBSR). And as luck would have it, it was being offered in my hometown. Also at a time when my stress was at an all-time high. I had a solid practice and yet I desperately needed a community of accountability to hold me steady at a difficult time.
And what I didn’t know I needed came crashing into my world—at just the right moment.
What came during that MBSR course, is the exact thing I feel is often missing in the stress management and mindfulness education conversation. That is the role of the heart. Not the organ. But the energetic field where we feel love, heart-break, and dance in wild abandon.
It was there in my meditation posture that I first noticed this space. The very first taste was an experience that was warm and soft, even kind and friendly. It was not a physical sensation and it was not my thinking mind either. It didn’t feel like an emotion but did have an emotional quality—of grounded peacefulness. But the whole experience wasn’t emotional in that classic sense of “Oh I feel sad, mad or happy.” So I kept noticing and as time went by it came to me.
This was my heart opening. Creaking open. After a long period of having been shut. This was an awakening to my soulful self. To the layer of me that mattered most.
Spending time sitting in relative silence and being with myself, was exactly what was required to open the doorway to my heart.
To come home to ourselves, to find wholeness and compassion within, we must come into relationship with our deepest heart and soul.
So wherever you are now, you are welcome here. Maybe you are beginning with, “I’m a stress case and I need help.” Or, “I need tools to cope with my world, my family, my job.” Or maybe you feel there is a deeper you that is calling to be seen and heard. We all have to start exactly where we are, but the most important thing is to start.
Join us online in a deeply welcoming and grounded space where you can find your way, your truth, your Soulful Self.
Here is the Offering:
Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) Lite
5-Wednesdays: Oct 14th to Nov 11th, 4:30 pm to 6:30 pm
+1 Individual Coaching session with yours truly during the course!
Click on the link above to read more on the website and when you’re ready to register simply text or email to schedule a call with me. I look forward to meeting you this season—to learn and grow in community.
With my deepest gratitude and wish for us all to be Well,
Kari