Dave Potter offers a free eight-week course on mindfulness all online! Potter is a certified Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction instructor and psychotherapist who has been teaching mindfulness for over 12 years. On the website, Potter has collected videos, guided practices, readings, practice sheets, and other supplementary materials to get anyone interested in mindfulness through the course. You begin with an introduction to mindfulness through readings and videos to get a better sense of what it is. Potter recommends laying out about 30 minutes a day to really practice mindfulness as well as 60-90 minutes on one day of the week to complete the videos, readings, and worksheets. At the end of the course you receive a certificate that states that you have completed the course. Next, you fill out the “Getting Started” worksheet that asks you questions about what you hope to gain from this course, what your strengths are, when we will find time to practice, and where you will be practicing. After filling this out you are on your way to starting the course. There is a side bar that is categorized by week, practices, and resources which makes the website easy to navigate. At the bottom of each page are the collections of readings, videos, practice sheets, and other materials.
I have just completed the first week and I have truly enjoyed the course so far. In the first week, you are given four videos to watch. One was a video that I had already watched for this research collection which was a pleasant surprise. In the video titled “Befriending Our Bodies,” Dr. Jon Kabat-Zinn explains that mindfulness is not only about our mind but our entire body. Although I had heard of using your senses for mindfulness, I was stuck in the idea of mindfulness being a mental practice. There are also four readings to finish. I found the reading titled “7 Myths of Meditation” by Deepak Chopra to be extremely informational and interesting. One myth tacked by Chopra is that “It takes years to of dedicated practice to receive any benefits from meditation.” In this reading I learned that benefits from meditation can be both long-term as well as immediate. You are also asked to document your formal practice which is a body scan. You document this by writing the date you practiced and what your immediate thoughts and feelings were. You do this six times throughout the week. This course taught me what mindfulness means to me personally. I found myself noticing when my mind would wander, not only during my body scan meditation, but during class or in conversation with others. I am working towards bringing my thoughts to the present moment. This is a great resource that I highly recommend for anyone wanting to learn more about and experience mindfulness.
(2010, May). Retrieved July 10, 2019, from https://greatergood.berkeley.edu/video/item/befriending_our_bodies
Chopra, D. (2013, May 09). 7 Myths of Meditation [Web log post]. Retrieved from https://www.huffpost.com/entry/meditation-myths_b_2823629?guccounter=1
Potter, D. Palouse Mindfulness; Online Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR). Retrieved from https://palousemindfulness.com/index.html
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