Courses

Sometimes it can be refreshing to circle back to the basics. Mindfulness practice has two essential qualities: awareness of the moment as it unfolds and kindness or compassion. Simply put: curiosity and care. In these two 45-minute sessions, we’ll explore each of these qualities using foundational techniques. Register using this form.

Weds, Nov 13 and 20 | 5:45-6:30 pm PST (7:45-8:30 pm CST). 

With the holidays approaching, might it be time to brush up on basic mindfulness skills that can help you work with stress and re-examine habitual patterns? Yes, it might! In this 60-minute session, we’ll work on practical mindfulness skills you can apply right now. No better time for human being; no better way than together. Registration open.

Thurs, Nov 21 | 5-6 pm PST (7-8 pm CST). 

Some foundational practices in mindfulness can be learned by taking the elements—earth, fire, water, and air—as metaphors to help us be with our experience. In part two of the Short ‘n Sweet series, you’ll receive five 10-15 minute meditations, one for each element and a bonus practice designed to prepare you for sleep. Enroll at your convenience and start or restart a daily practice today.

Even the most active or worried mind can pause. In these 15-minute morning meditations, give yourself a taste of presence. Learn how to catch yourself when you get swept away and bring practical mindfulness skills into other parts of your day. Designed to help you start or restart a daily practice.

Five meditations, each delivered the night before, for one week. Enroll at your convenience.

What do you value about friendship? Friends play innumerable roles—coach, cheerleader, confidante—and the best of friends offer us a kind of connection we don’t find anywhere else. Yet making time for friendship can be challenging. In this 90-minute session, friends reunite around the practice of mindfulness. While we typically think of meditation as a solo act, practicing together (even online) connects those gathered as they share in and support each other’s individual experiences. Kind of like a heart-centered spa. 

No mindfulness experience required. Email, phone or text to schedule a session with 4-6 friends. mindfulpause.center@gmail.com 209.840.6049

In the midst of loss, have you ever felt like, “I can’t do this?” A wise friend once told me, “You don’t have to. Grief does you.” And it’s true. Grieving is a process, with many iterations and cycles. When we give ourselves over to it, we learn how to honor the hurt and transform our pain–in time–into the grace of having loved.

Make space for where you are now and how grief currently holds you. Appropriate for old or new loss. Appropriate for loss due to death, divorce, illness, or other changing life circumstances.

Enroll and you’ll receive three audio recordings via Google drive (an arriving practice, a short talk, and a formal practice) along with an overview of the session.

Grief is often accompanied by a sense of unfinished business. Maybe we didn’t get to say everything we wanted to say, or maybe our relationship was in the middle of changing when death arrived. By taking time to offer loving kindness to ourselves, our grieving process, and who or what we’ve lost, we can bring healing to that unfinished process.

Enroll to receive the 16-minute mindfulness practice via Google drive.

Transitions often feel shaky and unreliable. One day we taste the open wakefulness of change; the next we feel again the harsh bite of habit. Can we trust that we are gaining ground? 

In this four-session course, build your confidence to weather change and transformation with foundational practices in mindfulness of the body, the heart, the mind, and all phenomena.

Audio practices delivered once a week. Enroll at your convenience.

September tilts us from summer to fall. Many of us strongly associate the month with transitions: watching kids go back to school, reentering classrooms ourselves, or packing away travel gear. Join us online at Mindful Pause Center to consider your own transitions. Mindfulness can steady you in the midst of change and plant joy & gratitude at the foundation of what’s next.

Are fear and worry guiding your concerns this election year? Every day, the media offers up more evidence of danger and division to our already stressed out nervous systems. It is possible to shift away from the habit of catastrophizing and live with more freedom. Join me in this 60-minute session to explore mindfulness practices that can support you in broadening your view and cultivating compassion without forsaking your values. 

Picture someone meditating—what do you see? Likely someone cross-legged, spine erect. And this traditional pose offers a lot of support, but there are other ways to practice mindfulness. Different postures support us in different ways. Join us online at Mindful Pause Center to experientially learn what poses can do for you.

In this month of remembrance and parades, join me and other LGBTQIA2S+ folk for a 60-min mindfulness session. Let’s make space to celebrate, to raise our fists, to honor life outside of norms.

We can always begin again—in our practice, in our daily lives. Learn to replace self criticism with care and judgment with grace in these 45-minute sessions. Each session focuses on a foundational technique for returning to an “anchor” whenever we’re swept away. Sign up for individual sessions or the series. Ideal for people new to mindfulness or anyone wanting to refresh their practice.

When harm is real and change feels urgent, how do we work from a place of care that sustains us and those we work alongside? Mindfulness practices, by helping us shift from fixing to healing, train us for the marathon. We learn how to respond rather than react. We tap into our compassion systems and generate the support and creativity we need for wise action. In this 75-minute workshop, you’ll reflect on fixing versus healing and learn foundational practices to initiate this shift.

With all that’s going on in our lives and the world, resource yourself with gratitude and cheer. Make space for what’s difficult with the cultivation of joy. 

In these short mindful bursts, I invite you to pause the endless to-do list and give yourself the power to choose how and when you take it back up. Then, if you’re up for the challenge, repeat the practice daily. What shifts will you notice over the month? Will there be more ease around the list? more space to breathe? more capacity for joy?

February: month of quickening. When we watch over what we’ve planted and fiercely wait upon our hopes. Meet this moment with the practice of the four immeasurables. Explore each inexhaustible resource in a 60-minute session and prepare for the season to come. Join for the series or sign up for single sessions. 

The turn of the year inspires us to new habits and ways of being; it also quickly devolves into the hectic pace of life we knew before the holidays. Mindfulness can support you in this time of transition. This introductory course focuses on developing foundational aspects of mindfulness, like working with thoughts and emotions and cultivating a wise heart. As you learn to incorporate mindfulness into daily life, it may even become your new habit!

The soil of winter anticipates the gestation of seeds. What will you plant?

What might it mean for our lives to rest in longing—our longing for happiness, well being, safety, and ease? Longing doesn’t promise outcomes, but it does incline our hearts and minds toward compassion and care, qualities at the foundation of healing and justice. Explore the power of longing and intention in this 60-minute session on the traditional practice of loving kindness.

Can you have an illness and still be healthy? Can you suffer injury and still be whole? Can you fail at work or in relationships and still be worthy? Seen through the lens of fixing, the answer is no. Something’s gone wrong and it needs to be corrected. Seen through the lens of healing, the answer is yes. We don’t need perfection before we discover health, wholeness, and worth. We only need to meet the conditions of life—even the most painful—with love and care, bearing witness to the dynamic nature of existence that allows there is more than one way to be. When we work with conditions as they are and not how we wish them to be, wise action becomes possible.

Topics in this four-week course include investigating the nature of emotions and thoughts, bringing care to seemingly unfixable situations, and uncovering the support and wellbeing already available.

It takes courage to pause in the midst of all that demands your time and attention, and yet pausing can interrupt habits and introduce space and freedom for wiser action. Get introduced to a variety of foundational practices in mindfulness during this 4-week series and learn how powerful it can be to pause. Each 30-minute session includes an introduction and a guided practice.

Stress is a natural response to life, but even ordinary levels of stress can lead to burn out. Add to that family and workplace dynamics, concerns over climate crisis and political polarization, a deep need for justice and healing in our world, and many of us feel overwhelmed. Through mindfulness, we can learn how to respond wisely to the conditions causing stress. 

Topics in this four-week course include mindfulness itself, working with emotions, developing a wise heart, and incorporating mindfulness into everyday life. Each one-hour class will include a short teaching, a guided practice, and a Q&A session.