Home & Lifestyle, Wellness
Reclaiming Our Wholeness
Lesson time 15:30 min
Everything is right with you. Jon reveals why this realization is invaluable and shares art pieces that have had the biggest impact on his life.
Students give MasterClass an average rating of 4.7 out of 5 stars
Topics include: You Are Already Whole • The Healing Power of Poetry • Loving the Stranger Who Was Yourself
Teaches Mindfulness and Meditation
Mindfulness expert Jon Kabat-Zinn teaches you how to incorporate meditation into your everyday life to improve your health and happiness.
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[SOFT MUSIC] - Trauma can be anything that we have never been able to reconcile with or digest. So they often speak of little 't' trauma, like everybody experiences, like, sort of a lack of recognition at certain points in our childhood or whatever. But then there's also big 'T' Trauma, which is, like, major abuse or aggression or violence or just horrific things that happen to people that are totally not their fault, and whether as adults or as children. And then you're locked into a certain kind of narrative or body that doesn't want to go anywhere near anything that might replicate that kind of breach of your embodied integrity as a human being-- an assault. So how can mindfulness be of value in that kind of circumstance? And I want to make it very clear that mindfulness is not the answer to all life's problems. So like, 'all you need to do is meditate.' No. But one element of it is to actually recognize that you're already whole no matter how much trauma you've experienced. We're always looking for things to complete ourselves. But we never actually entertain the notion that maybe we're already complete. And the thought that you're not is the problem, and that that's a wonderful place to begin, to take a stand, to take your seat, to open to the actuality of things as they are no matter how they are, no matter how stressful, no matter how painful, no matter how terrifying. That's all scarring on something that itself holds the scars, but it's not scarred. That's why we're not trying to make ourselves better. What we're doing is we're learning to recognize and realize the nature of wholeness in the form of me, in the form of you, and to let that wholeness, in some sense, radiate in the world because the world absolutely needs every single one of us to be all we can be and to realize that each one of us is a flower, a blossom, and that the world needs absolutely every single one of its flowers, even those flowers that say, well, I'm not so beautiful. And I don't have the right numbers of petals. Or my colors are a little faded. Or nobody cares about this flower, and the world doesn't need it. That's just thinking. And it's really wrong thinking. The world needs all its flowers. And as you know, flowers are only here for a very brief time, a lot briefer than the time that we're here. So let's let our flourishing and our flowering really count by understanding the nature of our own hearts and our own minds. [SOFT MUSIC] So this is where your life becomes the poetry. And one of the reasons that I've been offering poems that I hope you've found inspiring from time to time is because-- not because they're nice poems but because they entrain us into a certain domain of being that is what we call holistic implicational domain, and where poetry is more the language than prose. So here are two of my favorites that I think really capture elements of our suffering and our potential to wake up. So the first is by Emily Di...
About the Instructor
A pioneer of the Western mindfulness movement, Jon Kabat-Zinn has spent more than 40 years studying, teaching, and advocating the benefits of mindfulness. In his MasterClass, he teaches you how to cultivate a mindfulness practice, reduce your stress, and soothe your thoughts with meditation and movement. Jon shares expert tips and guidance that meets you where you are. Let this class help you make the most of being alive.
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Jon Kabat-Zinn
Mindfulness expert Jon Kabat-Zinn teaches you how to incorporate meditation into your everyday life to improve your health and happiness.
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