This week our practice invites us to listen to and sit with a Maya Angelou poem.  Reading ahead isn’t necessary to join in.

This week and next, we will use a poem to ground our practice.  Poetry and mindfulness practice go together so sweetly. Our practice will begin by listening to a single poem, read aloud slowly…with the  invitation to notice what words and images catch your attention…and to gently hold awareness on this word or image, in the quiet that follows the reading.

After some quiet, we’ll have an opportunity to share, without cross-talk, whatever we might like to say about what we noticed, how it went holding it with quiet attention.  Speaking is always optional and it’s okay to simply listen and not say any words at all. 

In the last part of our practice, we’ll have a conversation. We might talk about the practice, perhaps about the poem, and, as we often do, about whatever is going on in our lives, our communities, and the world at large. 

No experience with mindfulness practice (or with poetry) is necessary.  This practice is easy and enlivening.  Anyone can do it and it’s fun when more people join in.

Looking Ahead

On September 4, Friday Mindfulness will make use of a book, Wherever You Go, There You Are:  Meditations in Everyday Life, by Jon Kabat-Zinn.

A few changes to what we’ve done before:

• We’ll use short chapters of this book, and stay with the book for only 13 weeks.  Not every book speaks equally to everybody.  There are so many mindfulness books and teachers that it benefits us not to stay too long with any one.

• Jon Kabat-Zinn writes about mindfulness practice from a health and wellness perspective.  We won’t encounter as much Buddhist-adjacent language as we have in other books.

• In the fall, I will offer a virtual, four-week workshop on Starting and Sustaining Your Own Mindfulness Practice.  It might be that sticking your toe in mindfulness practice, on Friday mornings, is enough for you. This workshop will offer a opportunity to take mindfulness practice a little further.  If you’re curious about what it would be like to practice “on your own,” maybe daily and in your own home, I will share some instruction and coaching on sitting quietly when you’re not sitting with others in supportive community.  More information coming soon.

Come on Fridays to connect and explore for yourself.  I look forward to seeing you!

— Jonathan