Back from the Beach

Pictured at left is the doorway to El Silencio, the  classroom at the Blue Spirit Resort in Guanacaste Province in Costa Rica where I just taught a week-long intensive called Mindful Living.    My old friend and teaching partner, Florence Meleo-Meyer and I have been offering this stripped-down version of the Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction program for 12 years, and my husband David Rynick comes with us to play on the beach.  This year, David took the class as our assistant.  We were all so touched by the dedication and sincerity of our 20 students.  It's not easy to look at stressful reactive patterns and undertake the discipline of sitting still with whatever arises while residing in paradise.  But we all did it, and at the end of the week we all reported feeling a little freer, more open and compassionate, and more willing to return to our busy lives with new skills.  The primary skill we teach is to learn to stop, and to bear whatever is happening, whether wonderful or terrible, without running away, fighting, fixing or freezing in response.    This simple instruction is not so easy to do, and the support of the community is an important ingredient.  And, being on the Pacific Coast of Costa Rica, we had many other assistants and community members, including howler monkeys, iguanas, butterflies, trees, flowers, the ocean, and of course, pelicans, as shown below in the video taken by David.