Dedicated Practice Group on the Four Foundations of Mindfulness

My dear friend @DharmaApple from Edge Meditation Calgary and I have been discussing focus.  It's a long story (for both of us) as to what led us to this idea, and I recommend reading her post about her need for it.  For my part, I was listening to an Against The Stream PodCast by Noah Levine about The Seventh Factor of Awakening.  Some of the things he was saying about Mindfulness, and about sticking with practices for long periods really struck a chord with me.  I started focusing on some of this that day.  Meanwhile, Kayla (@DharmaApple) posted about feeling scattered.  All of these, and other things, were swirling around our heads and an idea formed.  When we discussed it, we decided to try something out. 

She already wrote up a blog post about the details if you want to see that here, but the nuts and bolts of it are as follows:

Four Months of Dedicated Practice on The Four Foundations of Mindfulness.  

• Starting on October 1st, One Foundation per Month for four months.
• Read only the section pertaining to that month of practice from The Four Foundations of Mindfulness in Plain English by Bhante Gunaratana.
• Devote your sitting meditation to only that ONE practice for that Month of Practice.
• Post your comments or thoughts regarding your experience in the Meditation Mob Facebook Group in the related thread or on Twitter using #4Foundations and whichever hashtag fits the month (#Body, #Feelings, #Mind, #Dhamma)
• No expectations (other than to devote to this practice) and just see how it goes!

Our hope is that this structured, dedicated practice of the basics will help us sort of free up from whatever habits we've gotten in to with our practice of trying to force things, or expectations of results.  Also, it's just a nice exploration of longer periods of dedicated practice.  It's a small time frame (in terms of dedicated practice), and will give us a taste of a longer such times.  Ultimately, for me, I'm viewing it as a reboot of my sitting.

We'd love to have you join us!  Please let me know if I can assist.

_/\_