Intro to Playful Mindfulness
a joyful journey to confidence, calm, and connection
How can you connect easily and naturally?
What’s the best response in any circumstance?
How do you find and feed your zest for living?
ONLINE VERSION
Mondays, May 26th — June 30th 2021 (6 weeks)
11am – 1:15pm PST/2 – 4:15pm EST/7 – 9:15pm BST
Class conducted online via Zoom
$397
(Payment Plan and/or Scholarships are available. Click here for more information.)
Why Playful Mindfulness?
The world has changed with the coronavirus–and that reality is leaving many of us feeling breathless, anxious and frustrated. Mindfulness–paying attention to the present moment with curiosity and kindness–helps us pause, take a breath, and reconnect to a deeper wisdom that helps us meet this unprecedented stress with honesty and resourceful resolve–and even with a spirit of discovery, delight, and contentment.
While many think mindfulness training has to be somber or pious (this is serious stuff!), this course offers a different approach. Here, we learn to *play* attention through traditional methods and also through humor, games, and easy shared improv exercises. We’ll acknowledge the truth of challenging feelings–and make choices to build the strength of the positive.
In just one course, you’ll learn how to:
- change your relationship to “failure”
- train the “puppy mind” with patient, kind, and firm repetition
- develop an “ANIMA Attitude” of kindness and curiosity toward every experience
- employ Ninja detective skills for greater body awareness
- turn off autopilot and turn on a fuller range of experience and expression
- transform your thoughts and feelings—from hardened facts to ever-changing events
- unhitch from self-sabotaging “snowball stories”
- choose from a range of nuanced responses rather than relying on hair-trigger reactions
This course incorporates insights and practices from the secular Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) model first developed by Jon Kabat-Zinn at the UMASS Medical School, the .b Foundations course run by the Mindfulness in Schools Project, and decades of improvisational theatre training.
Formal practices strengthen the awareness “muscle,” helping us notice how experience changes in the mind, body, and emotions moment to moment.
Informal practice brings that awareness to daily life: when we’re eating, driving, dating, arguing, working—or improvising.
Shared inquiry uses small and large group discussions to draw experienced-based wisdom from each participant in service to the group.
Playful exercises give us the chance to experience firsthand the skills we’re exploring—and to laugh while doing it.
We will refer to improv principles and techniques and use some improv exercises, but all are welcome regardless of improv experience. Students are expected to commit to daily practice at home for the duration of the course (or for two months following for the Immersion version).
Who is the course for?
- recovering perfectionists who want to lighten up
- adult learners stepping into the stress and uncertainty of life’s transitions: leaving or starting a job, letting go of a relationship, making a big move
- people who struggle with anxiety or want more confidence
- parents who want more patience with their children
- leaders who want to model calm, confidence and collaboration
- introverts who long for connection
- people considered abrasive or reactive and who actually want to put others at ease
- improvisors or actors who want to add depth and presence to their on-stage work
- mindfulness students or practitioners who want a new, playful perspective
What’s included?
- six classes online through Zoom software (works best if participants have a quiet, concentrated space)
- 20-30 minutes of daily home practice
Who will guide us?
Ted DesMaisons has been synthesizing innovative approaches to teaching and learning for over 25 years. A graduate of Stanford Business and Harvard Divinity Schools, he is a UMASS-trained Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) instructor and teaches several courses through Stanford Continuing Studies. He trained in the tradition of renowned acting and voice coach Patsy Rodenburg and has studied improvisation with Patricia Ryan Madson, BATS Improv of San Francisco, and the Loose Moose Theatre of Calgary, Alberta. Ted released his first book, Playful Mindfulness in mid-March, 2019, and co-hosts the Monster Baby Podcast (“A Curious Romp through the Worlds of Mindfulness and Improvisation”). He lives in Daly City, CA with his two quirky and charismatic Ocicats, Luna and Marley.
To register, click on the above blue box or click this link.
To apply for a scholarship or payment plan, please visit www.playfulmindfulness.info/scholarship.
