 Hello everyone, welcome to this final mindfulness session of the All Together Better Conference. My name is Kim Siao for those of you who have not been joining me in the previous mindfulness session. Due to my other commitments, this session is delivered to you pre-recorded. And also if for any reason there is any slight disruption due to internet issues, please do bear with me. Having said all that, I believe that this should not detract from your mindfulness experience of being here and now. Now I want to first acknowledge the importance of the country. So I'm delivering this from the land of the Ghana people in Adelaide. So I would like to acknowledge that I recognise the importance of their connection to land, water, culture and community and I respect their elders past, present and emerging. In terms of the structure of this session, I would first like to take the first 10 minutes or so getting us all on the same page of what is mindfulness and I'd like to bust some myths about mindfulness and also share with you the benefits of mindfulness that has been found through research. For those of you who have heard this before because you've been joining me in this mindfulness sessions, then I just suggest and encourage you to imagine that you're a five-year-old again listening to this as your favourite bedtime story. I will then, after the talk, give you a guided mindfulness practice. I would like to emphasise that you please look after yourself and stay safe. If for any reason during the meditation you are experiencing some strong emotions, then please do resource yourself and you could do this by opening your eyes and then just taking in your surroundings, listening to sounds and even just get up and go and get yourself a drink of water. Main thing is that you stay safe. Now I'd like to think that this wouldn't happen because the aim of this session really is to help you feel grounded and also hopefully more uplifted by the end of the session. Okay, so what is mindfulness? I'm going to use joint abutments, whom I'm sure many of you would know, definition. So he says mindfulness is awareness cultivated by paying attention in a sustained and particular way on purpose in the present moment and non-judgmentally. So if you think about it, it sounds so simple, right? Just paying attention to right here, right now and being open, not judging whether it's good or bad. But really whilst it's simple, even joint abutments used to say it's simple but it's not easy. And it's not easy because our conditioned mind is such that it thinks and it likes to go back to the past and replay old stories, old worries and it likes to go into the future, planning, being anxious about what's going to happen next, worrying about uncertainties. So what we do need in terms of getting our mind to pay attention to what's here right now is giving it an anchor. So there are many ways for us to anchor our attention and the one that is most readily available and accessible to most of us is the breath. So coming back to the breath helps us to anchor which I'm sure many of you have experienced before. You might even tell your clients take some deep breaths. The other one is the five senses. So it could be listening to sounds. It could be while we're eating, tasting our food, seeing our food, smelling or it could be when we're walking. When we're walking our dogs, when we're walking from our desk to the toilet, we really paying attention to the steps that we're taking. And of course there's sensing the sensations we feel in our body through a body scan, through the practice of mindful movements such as yoga, tai chi and qi kong. Now what's really important and this is the myths is that people think that they can't do mindfulness. They can't do mindfulness because their mind's too busy or they think that they are successful in practicing mindfulness when they don't think, when there are no thoughts. That's actually not true. The mind will often and constantly think. So mindfulness is not really about getting rid of thoughts or just feeling blissful all the time and so we don't want to feel the sadness or the pain in our body or the anger within us. In fact, the attitude we want to cultivate or embrace using joint combat scenes work again is the attitude of just allowing, letting things be, accepting, not judging while we're practicing. We're just really being aware. We put on that beginner's mind. So bringing curiosity to that experience, even if it's our breath. Every breath is a fresh breath and being patient with ourselves, not striving for anything, not closing our eyes and saying, I must be peaceful. So we're not striving and then we're trusting, trusting that we all have that capacity to do this, to be present. So what's the big deal about mindfulness? Well, there are now 17,000 publications showing the positive effects of mindfulness and the evidence are showing that practitioners of mindfulness improve their well-being. They have better self-regulation and people who are depressed and anxious when they practice mindfulness, it lowers depression and anxiety. People are better able to manage their pain and stress through mindfulness. And the reason for that is that when we're able to ground and centre ourselves, whether it's through our breath or through mindful walking, what it's actually doing is that it's activating our parasympathetic nervous system. So while we're focusing on our breath, our heart rate is slowing down, blood pressure is slowing down and the fight, flight and freeze part of our brain, the amygdala, is also coming down. So while it's calming down, it meant that our prefrontal cortex, that part of our brain that can have the responsibility of emotional regulation, executive functioning, making decisions that get activated. And in a therapeutic environment, when you might be interested to know that mindfulness can improve your therapeutic presence. So in other words, you are much more there with your client and as a result, it cultivates compassion, self-attunement and gives you a broader perspective to suffering. And what this means is that you can then build a stronger therapeutic alliance with your clients because your clients can sense that you are there with them and that you are empathetic to their suffering. So in fact, the evidence are showing that therapists who meditate are getting better improvements in terms of simple symptom reductions and rate of change for their clients. So I hope that you are convinced now that mindfulness really does work. So what's the difference between meditation and mindfulness? Well, meditation is just really a more formal form of practice of mindfulness. So it's that deliberate training of our mind to pay attention, but we're also strengthening our awareness. So in other words, there's that concentration aspect, that one point of focus aspect of our mind. But at the same time, we're also training our mind to be more spacious and more aware. And so there are different types of meditation, there's mindfulness meditation, there's mantra, there's loving kindness, and there's visualization. So what I'll be taking you through today is sort of a combination of mindfulness meditation and gratitude and joy meditation. Ultimately, whether it's mindfulness or meditation, the point is that it's awakening us to our conditioned mind and our conditioned behavior. And once, you know, awareness is the beginning of transformation. And so we can also then begin to be aware of the impermanent nature of things. And ultimately, over time, with a lot of practice, what we're really cultivating is acceptance and openness, and it increases our window of tolerance. So we're much more open to what's what we're facing. So I like to share this little anecdote about the fact, you know, one meditation teacher actually says it's like, if we put a table of salt in an added into a cup of water, it will be very difficult to drink. But if that same tablespoon of salt is added to a clear pond, we can drink from it with no difficulty, even though the salt is still present. So mindfulness practice really does that for our brain. It transforms our mind into a larger pond. And even though difficult emotions and our challenges may still be there, but they don't have that power over us, and it doesn't have that power to disturb the openness of our mind. So we become larger containers. I especially like this quote from my teacher, Jack Confield, who said that you have within you unlimited capacities for extraordinary joy, love, and for communion with life and for unshakable freedom. And I especially like this unshakable freedom aspect because that's what mindfulness gives us. It gives us that open awareness to then have that choice, choice in choosing how we want to feel and choice in choosing how we want to respond to a situation. So on that note, I would like to take you through mindfulness practice. And given that today, this session is the final session, and we're drawing towards the close of the All Together Better conference. I thought it's fitting for us to do a gratitude and joy meditation, and also, in a way, it's an mhpn's way of thanking you for your engagement and your participation during the conference. So I invite you now to sit in a way that you're comfortable sitting, maybe closing your eyes, and just tune into the breath using our breath as an anchor, so taking in some long and slow deep breath, and then making the exhale really nice and long. And with every exhale, I'd like you to imagine that all that stresses or tension you may be holding are getting washed away, so allowing your body to be relaxed. So check in and make sure you're not clenching your teeth, so let your jaw drop, let your breath be natural, let your heart be easy. So we're going to begin our gratitude practice by acknowledging how year after year you have cared for your own life, and we acknowledge quietly within ourselves that we have looked after ourselves. If not, you wouldn't be here, and the fact that you are here in this mindfulness session, you have that desire to look after yourself. Now we're going to, in our gratitude practice, acknowledge all that has supported us in this care. With gratitude, I remember the people, animals, plants, insects, creatures of the sky, and sea, air and water, fire and earth, all whose joyful exertion blesses my life every day. With gratitude, I remember the care and labour of a thousand generations of elders and ancestors who came before me. I offer my gratitude for the blessing of this earth I have been given. I offer my gratitude for the measure of health I have been given. I offer my gratitude for the family and friends I have been given. I offer my gratitude for the family and friends I have been given. I offer my gratitude for the community I have been given. I offer my gratitude for the teachings and lessons I have been given and I offer my gratitude for the life I have been given and just as we are grateful for our blessings so we can be grateful for the blessings of artists. We're going to shift our practice to the cultivation of joy so continue to breathe gently naturally and then again breathe into the heart space and bring to mind someone you care about someone who is easy to rejoice for and so with each breath we offer that person your grateful heartfelt wishes may you be joyful may your happiness increase may you not be separated from great happiness may your good fortune and the courses for your joy and happiness increase I'll invite you to bring to mind yourself and if it's easier imagine yourself as a child and as I say these phrases feel them for yourself these heartfelt wishes may I be joyful may my happiness increase may I not be separated from great happiness may my good fortune and the courses for my joy and happiness increase and finally I'd like you to bring to mind everyone in this mhpn community everyone who is here meditating with you together let's wish each other these heartfelt wishes may all of us be joyful may all of us have happiness may our happiness not be separated may our good fortune and the courses of our joy and happiness increase take a moment to dwell in this feeling or sense of joy contentment within you thank you everyone I hope that that was a pleasant experience for you that at some point you were able to feel the gratitude and appreciation and joy in you I just want to leave you with this little poem it goes little by little I'll learn to know the treasured wisdom of long ago and one of these days perhaps we'll see that the world will be the better for me and do you not think that this simple plan made him a wise and useful man and the reason I'm sharing this little poem with you is because I like to think and hope that I've convinced you to practice a little bit of mindfulness each day and just like we know brushing our teeth is really useful for our teeth we do it every day some of us twice a day without thinking whether we have time or whether we should do it we just do it I'd like to hope that mindfulness is a practice that we all embrace so naturally just like brushing our teeth because we know it's good for our mind our mental health our general well-being so just a couple of minutes a day or five minutes a day come back to your breath look at the sky and finally dearly the thing I want to share is that I also offer a free online meditation on Wednesday morning Wednesday mornings seven to seven thirty a.m. at late time and I call it a midweek research if you're interested you can email me and I will send you the zoom link and also you can check out other guided talks and blogs on my website www.chitterlift.com I wish you all the best and thank you again for being a mental health professional the world needs people like you thank you bye namaste