Mindfulness Meditation Lesson 1

About the Online Mindfulness Meditation Course

This mindfulness meditation course consists of 10 weekly sessions lasting about an hour to an hour-and-a-half each. Each session is structured along these lines:

• Start with a mindfulness meditation or practice
• Discuss and review that meditation or practice and the previous week's home practice
• Introduce and discuss a new topic
• Finish with a mindfulness meditation or practice
• Present the home practice for the coming week

In order to get the most out of this course it's important that you're able to give it your full attention. It can be difficult to not get distracted, especially when you're already on the internet, so please don't have other windows open in the background, or try to complete a lesson while multitasking and doing something else. This course is about learning how to be more mindful and present, and keeping your attention focussed on one thing at a time is a big part of mindfulness.

You'll also want to make sure to leave yourself enough time to complete each lesson without feeling rushed, so set aside about 90 minutes so you can go through the material at a comfortable pace. And you can always pause and complete a lesson over more than one sitting if that's more convenient. Some of the latter lessons cover a lot of material and would be difficult to get through all at once.

In each lesson there are natural places to take a break, indicated with a box like this:

It's beneficial to take a 10-15 minute break at these points rather than rushing through a lesson, and if you prefer to work through the material in shorter sessions, you can always stop at a break point and come back later in the day or even on another day.

If you complete a lesson over the course of more than one day, continue doing the home practice from the previous lesson until you've finished the new lesson, and then don't begin the next lesson until you've had at least a week to do the home practice from the previous lesson.