Learn Effortless Mindfulness With Our Course:

Train Your Brain, Change Your Life

Overview of Course

In this course, you’ll learn a variety of breathing, relaxation, and effortless mindfulness practices that change the physical structure of your brain so that it can:

 Pills or Skills?

People all over the world have long been turning to a variety of medications to help them deal with the stresses of life in the modern world. The list is very familiar: 

• Weight loss drugs when endless efforts at dieting have failed

• Anti-depressants and anti-anxiety drugs for coping with debilitating depression and anxiety

• Sleeping pills to overcome a persistent problem with insomnia

• Pain pills to cope with debilitating acute or chronic pain

People are also turning to psychedelic drugs such as psilocybin, MDMA and ketamine – not only to deal with depression, anxiety, substance abuse, ADD, and trauma – but to help them find deeper meaning and purpose in their lives.

Imagine if all these problems could be greatly helped – or in some cases even resolved – by a kind of brain training that had no negative side effects (but many positive ones), was freely available, and which in many cases has proven to be as or more effective than medication? What if that brain training worked by rewiring your brain in a way that led to more inner peace and contentment, and a happiness that didn’t depend on outer things? And what if that same brain training also made it easier to change old habits, create new ones, made it easier to focus your attention, helped you feel more connected to other people, and even gave rise to a radically new sense of meaning and purpose in life?

Sound far-fetched? Actually, such a brain training does, in fact, exist – and we have brought together some of its most powerful components in our online cohort course, Train Your Brain, Change Your Life.

The Power of Mindfulness

One component of that brain training is the practice of mindfulness. Over the past 15 years, mindfulness practice has been proven so effective that it’s been incorporated into many forms of psychotherapy, including: 

• Mindfulness-Based Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (“MCBT”)

• Dialectical Behavioral Therapy, (DBT)

• Acceptance and Commitment Therapy, (ACT)

• Positive Psychology (specifically, “Mindfulness Based Positive Psychology” or “MBPP” for short)

• Cognitive Behavioral Therapy For Insomnia, (CBT-I)

• Internal Family Systems Therapy (IFS)

 
Dr. Michael Perlis, an expert in CBT-I, refers to mindfulness as a “Jedi master skill” for insomnia,. It could also be said that it’s a Jedi master skill for many of the other mental, emotional and physical difficulties mentioned above. 

Mindfulness is the foundation of our brain training course. However, what we teach is a particular form of mindfulness which has come to be known as “effortless mindfulness.” Effortlessness mindfulness has been shown to be both more powerful and more enjoyable than conventional mindfulness for addressing the issues mentioned above.

Conventional Vs. Effortless Mindfulness

We’ll look first at the extraordinary power of mindfulness as it is often taught, and then look at how it differs from effortless mindfulness.

The essential power of mindfulness lies in training the way we pay attention. The part of our brain that has to with directing our attention is the prefrontal cortex (or PFC for short). Extensive scientific research shows that the PFC of people who practice mindfulness on a regular basis, actually grows thicker and has a higher number of neural connections with parts of the brain that relate to thinking, emotion and instinctive responses to hunger, pain, addictive cravings, etc. When our PFC is more developed and more connected to these areas, we have the ability to more readily exert a positive influence on our thoughts, our emotions, our habits of behavior, as well as the way we respond to the various challenges described in the opening paragraph above.

The list of physical, emotional, interpersonal, and cognitive benefits that come with developing our PFC through the practice of mindfulness has been growing year by year. Here’s a partial list: 

Physical Benefits

Relief from insomnia, better quality of of sleep, more energy and alertness during the day, greater ease in losing weight, higher resistance to cold and flu viruses, improved blood sugar levels in people with Type 2 diabetes, lowering of high blood pressure, relief from gastrointestinal difficulties (including IBS, constipation and diarrhea), improvements in symptoms of asthma, age related problems with memory, sense perception and muscle control, relief from a wide variety of pain syndromes including migraines, lower back pain, and the pain associated with fibromyalgia and endometriosis

Emotional/Interpersonal Benefits

Decrease in feelings of loneliness, improvements in the quality of relationships and relationship satisfaction, higher levels of self-confidence and job satisfaction, an enhanced sense of meaning and purpose in life. There is also a reduction or elimination of symptoms related to anxiety, depression, PTSD, ADHD, substance abuse, and a reduction of stress and tension in occupations such as law enforcement, teaching, firefighting, health care, and military service. 

Cognitive and Executive Functioning

Reductions in negative and obsessive thinking, improved capacity for decision-making and planning, better self-control, improved capacity for attention and focus, increased creativity, and increased academic success.

 The Enhanced Power of Effortless Mindfulness

 As we mentioned above, research on the benefits of mindfulness has become so persuasive that in recent years, it has become an essential component of just about all major psychotherapeutic approaches. Several of these have been called “second generation mindfulness therapies.” What’s different about these is that they use the form of mindfulness increasingly being referred to as “effortless mindfulness.” 

So what is effortless mindfulness?

Effortless Mindfulness involves training our attention to recognize a quality of deeply calm, peaceful and joyful awareness which is always already present in the background of our experience. Rather than trying to direct our attention to our breath, aspects of the world around us, our thoughts and emotions – without judgment (which is how mindfulness is usually practiced) – effortless mindfulness gently directs our attention to this background awareness.

Anytime a glimpse of that background awareness comes to the fore, there is an unparalleled experience of ease, harmony and joyful intimacy with whatever or whomever you’re involved in at the moment.

You may think that sounds lovely, but that it’s not something you’ve ever experienced. But you may, in fact, have had momentary glimpses and just didn’t recognize them.

Psychologist Mihalyi Csikszentmihalyi has been studying these passing experiences for decades and has given them the name “flow.” Over the years, he’s chronicled the stories of countless people, in all walks of life, and in the midst of all sorts of activities – from dancing, playing music, playing soccer, creating art, working on an assembly line, or doing virtually anything at all that absorbed their attention – who felt a sudden shift in their experience. They described it as if something just clicked and suddenly they knew just what to say, what to write, where to kick the ball, or just had a sense of how to do whatever they were doing more skillfully, more gracefully – with total ease and sheer joy.

You may have experienced moments – perhaps having a conversation with a dear friend, being struck by the beauty of a sunset, playing with a child or pet, communing with the silence of the night sky, working intensely on a project, reading a book, dancing, singing or playing a sport – when things just began to flow on their own and you felt intimately connected to whatever or whomever it was in a way you could hardly have imagined moments before.

Such experiences seem to come and go spontaneously, but they can be consciously cultivated and gradually become a more prominent aspect of your experience with some simple practices.

Open Focus 

Physiological psychiatrist, Dr. Les Fehmi, discovered many years ago that the flow experience could be quite readily evoked by learning simple ways of shifting how we attend to ourselves and the world around us. For nearly 50 years, he taught patients how to develop what he called “Open Focus Attention, a practice which integrates the functioning of different regions of the brain.  

As patients practiced this, they reported discovering an experience of inner silence, stillness, spaciousness, peace, and happiness. In our Train Your Brain, Change Your Life course, we refer to this experience as “open heartful awareness.” Learning to develop your capacity to experience open, heartful awareness is the foundation of the course.

By virtue of learning to shift their attention, Fehmi’s patients were able to reduce or eliminate symptoms of depression, anxiety, chronic pain, attention difficulties, and much more in a relatively short period of time. One compelling story he tells is of Paula, a nurse who was working 12-hour shifts in the high-stress environment of a coronary care ICU.  The only thing Dr. Fehmi taught her was one of the practices we teach in our course: “Noticing Space.”

The Wheel of Awareness

 
Psychiatrist Dan Siegel teaches his patients a similar shift of attention using a metaphor he calls, “The Wheel of Awareness.” What he does is guide the patient to tune into the experience of simply being aware by imagining they’re seated at the hub of a wheel – and from there, to direct their attention to the various elements of their inner world (thoughts, feelings. sensations) and the various elements of their outer world (people, things, events), all located out on the rim of the wheel. This simple way of attending – having the attention anchored in the hub of the wheel – gave many of his patients access to the calm, peaceful background awareness of “open heartful awareness.”

Siegel has gone all over the world and taught the “Wheel of Awareness” practice to large groups (now numbering over 30,000 people ) from a wide variety of backgrounds, cultures, and life experience.

Here are some of the ways those people have described their experience of the Wheel of Awareness:
 

 More About Our Course,
”Train Your Brain, Change Your Life”

 Our online cohort course, Train Your Brain Change Your Life, is all about teaching you two things:

1. How to recognize the unbalanced brain programming that keeps you from enjoying your inborn capacity for experiencing the calm, ease and joy of “open, heartful awareness”

1. How to train your brain to harmonize your brain programming so that the experience of “open, heartful awareness” can gradually begin to blossom in all areas of your life.

As you learn to more regularly access this inner state, it can feel as though you’re stepping out of a crowded, noisy, smoke-filled room onto a wide veranda in the hush of twilight with a view of the ocean stretching endlessly to the distant horizon. Effortlessly, your mind becomes calm, your heart softens, and a sense of peace and joy comes over you. 

An Invitation to the Joyful Experience of
Open Heartful Awareness

The “sky” of open, heartful awareness is always potentially available to us. It’s only the “clouds” of our negative or distorted instinctive, emotional, and mental programming that prevent us from recognizing it. 

Thanks to our pre-frontal cortex, or “PFC,” we have the capacity to become aware of the antics of our out-of-balance brain programming, and – rather that allowing it to control our lives – we can train our brain to replace the old programming with new, more balanced programming.

Since open, heartful awareness is by nature calm, content, and peaceful, and it’s always just a shift of attention away, the ultimate source of our happiness is always right at hand. And the ultimate cause of our suffering is only our own reactive programming. 

As you begin to have glimpses of open, heartful awareness, you’ll become gradually freer from the habits that create stress and suffering, and your life will become increasingly infused with a sense of beauty, meaning, and purpose. 

Train Your Brain, Change the World

People often say that making a practice of things like mindfulness or cultivating positive emotions is somehow selfish, that it’s “navel-gazing,” or being too preoccupied with yourself.

But we see it very differently. For one thing, to the extent to which you become more mindful, experience more positive emotions, and have more frequent glimpses of open, heartful awareness, it will show up in your behavior. You can be a positive example to others of how one can meet the challenges of life with grace, compassion, and equanimity. As your own brain programs become harmonized, you’ll be more open to a deeper intuition that guides you to act spontaneously in ways that are less likely to trigger the negative brain programming of other people – ways that will be more supportive of their well-being.

If you’re involved in working to change organizations, communities or other institutions, you may find that the positive changes in your own brain programming and your increasing experience of open, heartful awareness make you far more effective.

In a world that is changing at a dizzying speed, a growing sense of insecurity can intensify our anger and fear, making it harder for us to come together to find effective solutions to whatever crisis may arise.

No doubt, all kinds of external steps will be needed to address these problems. But if we try to address them with the same mindset that created them, any solution we come up with is likely to be partial or short-lived.

Open, heartful awareness – the experience of the still, quiet space at the center of our experience – enables us to see and relate to our problems in a new way. As more and more people train their brain and develop their capacity for this different way of relating, the world we create can gradually come to reflect the peace, joy, and compassion of open, heartful awareness. The abiity to develop our innate capacity for open, heartful awareness is available to all – regardless of our race, religion, nationality, gender identity, or political affiliation – because we all have a brain that is equipped with that same potential.

You have an amazing brain, and the more you train it, the happier you, and all those you come into contact with, will be.

Testimonials

I’ve been practicing meditation for over 40 years and have found that with your “Train Your Brain” course I am better able to access that place of calm within, and that I have more fluidity and ability to change. The understanding of neural pathways has helped motivate me to be less obsessive, more able to let go of habitual ways of reacting and doing things. Understanding how the instinctive, emotional and mental programming affect my personality also helps me be more conscious and in control of my thoughts and feelings, and how I express myself.

Several years ago I had an injury that was very debilitating, and I realized that before then, I had never really lived in the present moment. Initially after the injury, most moments of my life were so difficult that when a good moment occurred, a moment of relief, I really lived in it fully and ate it up! Your course has definitely encouraged me to sense the present moment on a more regular and happier basis – and not just as a relief from difficult ones.

The whole presentation of open-hearted awareness has been greatly healing for me, in teaching me to access it directly even in the midst of the most challenging resistance or turmoil.  I have found a way of doing Ocean Breathing that is very calming for me and I certainly am remembering to breathe a lot more.

Liz I.

The music and videos are works of art, enjoyment, and instruction.  The course clarified much of what has been unclear to me about mindfulness – and gave me a much deeper understanding of what "non-judgement" means experientially.  I have also learned to distance myself from my thoughts to have a much healthier relationship with them.   

I noticed some changes in how I live my life. The brain plasticity theme and details were very helpful to not only give me a better understanding of what I am doing, but to help motivate me during each section of the course. Yes, at age 73 I am modifying and improving my brain functions.

This is the best psychotherapy I have ever had.  And I had lots of different kinds over my long life.   

Paul S.

I found the instructions and practices were easy to understand, fun to do, and very effective for opening my heart and deepening my general appreciation for day-to-day life.  And I loved the soothing voices and music in the instructional audios.

I also really appreciated all the choices and supplementary material Don and Jan provided for learning about the brain. I found them fascinating and very supportive of the practices.   

Dr. Shelley Thomas, Director, Center for Accelerated Language Acquisition, Middle Tennessee State University

Back in early 2017, Don and Jan participated in the planning meetings for the expansion of the Haw Creek Commons, an initiative to strengthen community bonds among the approximately 7,000 residents of the Haw Creek neighborhood of East Asheville. They offered to help bring a unique contemplative element to the project through a series of contemplative workshops that were based in neuroscience, and geared to people of all faiths, including those who do not subscribe to any particular tradition. As part of these contemplative evenings at Haw Creek, they shared illuminating wisdom, evoked a sense of deep peace and contentment, and inspired much joy through their music and meditative movement. It was special to spend time with them as they bring their whole selves to each moment of teaching.

Reverend Karen Doucette serves as Community Pastor for Haw Creek Commons, which includes the Bethesda UMC congregation in Asheville North Carolina, and is an ordained elder of the United Methodist Church.