Mindfulness & Well-Being Online Course

Living Deeply: Transforming Your Life for Greater Health and Wellbeing

You are invited to join a special Pacific Pearl course offered by our Clinical Psychologist, researcher at UC San Diego, and former President of the Institute of Noetic Sciences, Dr. Cassandra Vieten.

This eight-week course is focused on Living Deeply – in body, mind and spirit. It offers tools to support your journey toward health and well-being and will help you chart the course for the next chapter of your life.

No matter who you are, where you come from, or what your current path is – whether you seek to transform your life completely or simply make adjustments that will add a layer of richness and depth to your life – exploring the many ways that transformation is stimulated and sustained can hold great power. Weaving together cutting-edge science with wisdom from teachers of the world’s transformative traditions, this course explores how people experience deep shifts in their consciousness, and how those shifts can lead to healing and wholeness.

Opportunities to actively engage in your own transformation and that of others are woven into the fabric of your everyday life. Learning more about the terrain of consciousness transformation can not only give you a map but can help you become the cartographer of your own transformative journey. Dr. Cassandra Vieten and her colleagues Institute of Noetic Sciences (IONS) has systematically surveyed hundreds of people’s stories of their own transformations, as well as conducting over 50 in-depth interviews with teachers and masters of the world’s spiritual, religious, and transformative traditions.

This is an intensive eight-week course with a 1.5-hour session each week and a set of recorded guided practices you will be able to keep and use after the course.

 Please contact us at 858-459-6919 or email us at reception@pacificpearllajolla.com for more information, or leave us a  message on our contact form here.

The Mindfulness for Well-Being (MWB) course

 

Curious about how mindfulness could help you become more caring, calm, centered, and confident?

Looking to reinforce and reinvigorate your current mindfulness practice?

The Pacific Pearl La Jolla’s Dr. Cassandra Vieten is bringing an 8-week, online Mindfulness for Well-Being (MWB) course to all members, patients, and friends. Adults and teens over 16 are welcome to join.

As an added bonus, all course participants are invited to join the Pacific Pearl La Jolla’s ongoing private Lifestyle Change Support Group taking place via Zoom every Tuesday from 5:00 to 7:00 pm Pacific Time.

This course is appropriate for beginners as well as experienced mindfulness practitioners who want to bring their practice more explicitly into their daily lives. It aims to help you:

  • Improve your overall well-being using evidence-based mindfulness practices
  • Reduce stress, distress, and mood disturbance
  • Improve emotion regulation & increase positive emotion
  • Encourage mindful eating, body movement, and an active lifestyle
  • Increase your ability to tolerate and regulate stress without resorting to unhealthy behaviors
  • Treat yourself and others with kindness and compassion, including healthy boundaries
  • Increasingly approach your experiences, regardless of their content, with acceptance, and willingness to meet things as they are, with open eyes and an open heart
  • Make decisions and take actions that are in alignment with your values and long-term goals

Dr. Cassandra Vieten and Dr. Guarneri Discuss the Mindfulness for Well-Being Course in this 5-Minute Video

Ask your questions or sign up by calling 858-459-6919 or leave us a message on our contact form and we’ll call you.

“After attending 40+ years of transformational workshops, it is rare to find an experiential workshop that is THIS immediately applicable, useful and grounded in scientific research.”

Alexandra H, Palo Alto, CA

Mindfulness for Well-Being Course Details
Lotus flower signifying mindfulness

Time:  Next class to be announced in the future

Location: Online via Zoom. Participants will need enough space to stretch while standing in place.

Supplies Required: a high-speed internet connection, video-capable device, notebook, and the capacity to periodically print off materials for written exercises.

Course Structure: Each 90-minute evening session will include instruction, mindfulness practices, experiential exercises, dyads/small groups, and discussion. Weekly homework is assigned and discussed at the next week’s class.

Tuition: $590. You will receive a certificate of completion upon request.  Tuition includes free participation in The Pacific Pearl La Jolla’s online Lifestyle Change Support Group.

Refunds: If after the first session a participant decides to cancel, we will refund tuition less $150. Because there are limited spaces, please make sure you have the available time and energy for the class before committing.

Platform Details: We will be using Zoom. Attendees’ faces will appear, but feel free to change your name on the Zoom platform to preserve anonymity if you prefer.

“Cassi’s presence, knowledge, amiability, and acceptance of everyone and every question was an extraordinary example of how to BE. Truly, I felt inspired from the first day!”

Karen B, San Francisco, CA

Mindfulness for Wellbeing Course Outline

Private Introductory Session – A 15-minute online private session prior to the course with the instructor will help to clarify your goals, support your commitment, and personalize the course.

Private Lifestyle Change Support Group – Running Tuesday nights online via Zoom from 5:00 to 7:00 PM starting January 11, the Pacific Pearl’s Lifestyle Change Support Group is led by our expert staff facilitators. This group provides a safe space for all Mindfulness for Well-Being participants to share feelings about everyday issues that can get in the way of positive emotional and physical health habits. It is not “group therapy,” but a therapeutic resource in a group setting.

Session 1 – What is mindfulness? This session focuses on the subtle yet profound shift in perspectives and ways of being that mindful awareness can bring to our lives. It explores the core tenets of mindful awareness, using mindful breathing practice, mindful eating, mindful movement, and mindfulness in daily life. We will set intentions and personal commitments, and orient to the supported at-home practices.

Session 2 – Acceptance-Based Coping. Strangely, what we resist, persists. Acceptance of our reality is actually a courageous and active stance toward approaching all of our experiences, inner and outer, with open eyes and an open heart. We can fight the waves, we can give up, or we can learn to surf. Participants build a path for skillful changes in behavior and thinking patterns.

Woman thinkingSession 3 – The Observing Self. All experience is made up of thoughts, feelings, and body sensations. Right? But, there is also a fourth element of our experiences – the witnessing awareness within us. In this session, we will become familiar with the witness, through sitting and movement practices, as well as illuminating exercises. With an orientation to the witness, we become less buffeted by the waves of daily ups and downs. We can pinpoint the right actions that serve both our present-moment needs and long-term health goals.

Session 4 – The Train of Thought. Our minds are hives of activity, with an endless narration of our daily lives. Sometimes this voice can be like a news announcer, filling our experiences with running commentary. And just like today’s news, it can tend toward the sensationalized, inaccurate, repetitive, and negative. Mindfulness for Well-Being Session 4 helps to defuse ourselves from our ongoing story.

Session 5 – Qualities of Mindful Awareness. Session 5 goes further into the territory of mindful awareness to learn how it differs from our typical, default way of being. We will investigate how a curious, beginner’s mind, non-striving interactive dance with life could feel. We will test this approach with mini-stress inductions so we can shape our well-being and the well-being of others.

 “What a wonderful workshop! So happy to be a part of this community. A truly enlivening experience.”

Kameron T, Portland, OR

Apple coated with raindrops as focal point for mindfulnessSession 6 – Present-Moment Focus. This session explores the power of attending to the present moment. What might it be like to spend 80% of your time here and now, and 20% planning for the future, or reflecting on the past? For most, the present only gets 20% of our attention. The present moment is the only time you can make decisions, take action, or engage in behaviors for your well-being.

Session 7 – Compassion Practices. While self-compassion and compassion practices appear throughout the course, Session 7 takes a deep dive into participants’ needs. We miscalculate that being hard on ourselves will force a new and improved self to emerge – like a boot camp for well-being. Research shows that paradoxically, this whip-cracking approach leaves us less healthy, less happy, and less likely to follow through with our goals. In this session, we will learn several practices to cultivate the skill and well-being involved in enhancing the state of compassion for ourselves and others.

Session 8 – Bringing it Home. In Session 8, we build a personalized ecosystem that supports our mindfulness for well-being practices at home and into the future. We anticipate what might get in our way, or how we might forget, and how to stay conscious of our intentions and overcome barriers. We will identify practices that we have an affinity for, and those that are more challenging for us. And, we will discover our greatest allies in our well-being journey, whether they are places, people, or activities.

C Vieten Licensed Clinical Psychologist for Guarneri Integrative Health, Inc. at the Pacific Pearl

Dr. Cassandra Vieten’s bio covers her extensive work with mindfulness, consciousness, and therapy.

Private Follow-Up Session – A 15-minute online private session following the course with the instructor will assess any changes in your goals, review progress and challenges, and create a plan for ongoing integration into your daily life.

Mindfulness for Well-Being has been adapted from Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR), Mindfulness-Based Cognitive Therapy (MBCT), Mindfulness-Based Eating Awareness Training (MB-EAT) and Mindful Self-Compassion (MSC) and is informed by research and interventions that emphasize acceptance-based coping skills, including Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) and Dialectic Behavior Therapy (DBT).

We’d like to especially encourage people of color and people identifying with any or no gender or sexual orientation.

Ask your questions or sign up by calling 858-459-6919 or leave us a message on our contact form and we’ll call you.

X