Mindfulness Fundamentals @ Mindful Schools - Week 2

Photo Credit: David Miller

I recently enrolled in a six-week online mindfulness course called Mindfulness Fundamentals that is provided by a non-profit called Mindful Schools. They hope to share mindfulness tools and information with educators. Check out my other posts about my experiences in this course here, and here.

This week's focus has been on mindfulness of the body. I tend to be pretty disconnected from my body a lot of the time, so this was a good chance to get back in my own skin and pay attention to how my middle-aged body responds to day-to-day life.

I remain really impressed with the quality of the resources provided in this course. The text is insightful and there's a great balance of theoretical and scientific articles, videos of the instructors sharing their personal stories, and hands-on activities. The guided meditation audio files are top notch. I've never liked using recorded audio to meditate in the past, as I always found it distracting and sometimes, kind of cheesy. The Mindful Schools meditations are really well done and down-to-Earth. I actually dozed off during the first body scan, it was so relaxing!

I had a great chance to put some mindful walking into practice last Thursday. I met up with some colleagues from school during our winter break to take a hike through some of the mountains that surround Seoul. We were super lucky to have had a big snowfall the night before our hike, so the mountain was beautiful and the air fresh and cool. Slippy steps and hidden rocks were a great excuse to practice some informal mindful walking, and I was glad for the peace of mind to enjoy the great weather and company.

I'll be back next weekend with more mindful feedback from the course!​