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💻 Format: 2-hour Online event
🙋‍♀ Suitable For: All experience levels, including those new to mindfulness

Overview

Join Vidyamala Burch, founder of Breathworks, in conversation with psychologist and author Dr Rick Hanson, as they ask a question many of us avoid: what is the point of body awareness when the body is a place of pain, fatigue or discomfort?

The conversation moves between brain science, contemplative practice and honest personal experience. You'll come away with a clearer sense of why turning towards the body helps rather than harms, and some simple, practical ways to do it.

Includes a guided body awareness practice led by Rick and a Q&A with participants.

What You'll Gain

• An answer to the question "why bother with the body?": If you've ever hoped mindfulness might let you live from the neck up and leave a difficult body behind, both speakers explain, from science and from experience, why that doesn't hold, and what becomes possible when you come home to the body.

• A guided body awareness practice: Rick guides a meditation that begins by helping you get on your own side, then opens into a sense of the body as a whole, so that pain is held as one part of a wider field rather than the whole picture.

• A way to stop pain from spiralling: How to interrupt the second layer of worry and rumination we pile on top of pain, using a simple shift of attention that can settle the mind within seconds.

• States vs. traits: why beneficial experiences so often fade without leaving a trace, and how staying with them a little longer allows calm, warmth or steadiness to settle into something more lasting.

• A kinder relationship with discomfort: The difference between befriending your body and having to like how it feels, and why staying open to the hard parts leaves more room for pleasure and connection too.

• Six simple ways to come home to the body, three from each speaker.
  
  

Is This Event For Me?

This conversation is open to everyone, whatever your experience of meditation.

The conversation is especially welcome to anyone living with pain, illness or fatigue, and speaks honestly to the experience of feeling let down by your own body.

Mindfulness teachers may also find elements of this session useful for CPD, particularly the discussion of interoception and the default mode network, the "first dart, second dart" model, and Vidyamala's "River of Flourishing" as an adaptation of the Window of Tolerance. 

Practical Details

💷 One-time payment of £10.00
📲 Immediate access
⏳ No time limits — revisit whenever you need
👥 You don’t need to join our wider Community to access this collection (though you’re welcome to explore it later if you wish)

Accessing the Recording

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