Week 2 - Beginners Mind Parenting

This week you will be exploring:

  1. Observe a beginners mind parenting experience

  2. Observe how we appraise experience as pleasant, unpleasant or neutral

  3. Use anchors of attention to support mindfulness practice

  4. Honour and accept all of your experiences, not just the ‘good’ bits

Hā ki roto

BREATHE IN

Hā ki waho

BREATHE OUT

Home Practice

This Week's New Meditation

Formal Mindfulness Practice:

Body Scan - 10 mins daily or alternate daily with sitting Meditation (use recording from Week One)

Practice the Body Scan record your experiences in your notebook

Sitting Meditation – Anchors of Attention - 10 mins daily or alternate daily with body scan

Follow the recorded meditation to focus on Anchors of Attention for 10 minutes in silence

Informal Practice:

·“Savouring Pleasant Moments Calendar”

Each day, note a pleasurable experience and write it down on the “Savouring Pleasant Moments Calendar”. 

Savouring pleasant moments can be really small things, such as really savouring the first sip of coffee, enjoying when someone smiles at you, and listening when your child is singing or talking.

You can savour pleasant moments which are related and unrelated to parenting or your child.

Choose a routine activity with your child or partner to practice with full awareness.

Make a deliberate effort to bring moment to moment awareness to that activity each time it happens. Some examples are combing your child’s hair, reading to your child, waking your child up in the morning, asking your child how his or her day was, eating a meal , putting him or her to bed or … another activity that you prefer. Simply focus in on knowing what you’re doing as you are actually doing it.

Neurodivergent Education - Default Mode Network (optional homework)

If you would like to learn more about the Default Mode Network and Task Positive Network you may explore the additional resources that have been included above.