Mindfulness Classes

Mindfulness Classes

By Marvin Belzer, Mindfulness Instructor at the UCLA Family Commons in Santa Monica.
August 17th, 2011

At the UCLA Family Commons, we offer a variety of classes, including Mindful Parenting, Mindfulness for Youth for various ages, Mindfulness for Daily Living, and Teen Mindfulness Retreats. Mindfulness is a capacity that everybody has. It is paying attention to what’s actually happening as it happens with curiosity and openness. It’s a capacity that we can develop and refine. There are many different mental and physical benefits from doing this. Many people that are finding that doing some mindfulness practice (the meditations and integrating it into ordinary life) is really helpful, and the science supports many beneficial effects.

The way we begin is bringing attention to something in our experience that’s relatively neutral, meaning not to pleasant or painful, and so the sensations connected with breathing are really good, for most people, they’re good enough. Just trying to track what’s happening with the normal breath. Most of us can do this for a few seconds and then we realize the attention gets pulled away. So, try as we might, the mind won’t stay still. We’re not trying to make it still or rigid.

Realizing that the attention has drifted (daydreaming, planning, mowing something over) is perfectly ordinary; the mind is active. We try to notice what’s happening then; thinking, planning. Often there will be emotion that’s fueling these thoughts, and we try to tune into that emotion: fear, frustration, joy, whatever. We try to feel it in the body. For many of us, this is sort of a new thing to do. Sensations are there, but we’re usually not connecting with them. Connecting with them makes sense because it gives us more freedom in our response.

We work with both of these in the Mindfulness meditation: tune into the neutral, like how sensation is connected to breathing, and when the attention drifts away, pay attention to what’s happening there. When we can, we come back to the breath. Like a model of the pendulum, we’re going back and forth. We don’t have to rush, we just let the mind settle on its own and try to enjoy it. It’s a radically simple activity. For most people, the difficulty is letting it be that simple. Our minds are so active; we have so many to-do lists that it does take effort, a sort of gentle, patient effort that most people can learn.

We also teach a third type of practice where we consciously cultivate positive emotions: kindness, joy, gratitude, forgiveness, and so forth. These are great practices to complement the basic mindfulness.

Classes are taught at The Commons, and we have free drop-in guided meditations weekly: Mondays at six, and Wednesdays at noon.