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Class OverviewMeditation and mindfulness are essential parts of the practice. We’ll talk about common myths, practical considerations and ways to integrate meditation into our daily lives. (Check out the Top 10 Big Ideas from the class below!) Your ProfessorFrank Forencich is an internationally-recognized leader in health education and performance training. Frank has over 30 years teaching experience in martial art, performance and health education.How to Create A Beautiful Practice: Stress, Mindfulness and MeditationAs we drop deeper into our beautiful practice, we begin to wonder about our experience of stress and what meditation and mindfulness might do for us. It’s a big topic, but the promise is very real. Research has clearly demonstrated a substantial benefit to our lived experience as well as to the physiology of our bodies. In this class, we’ll avoid the term “stress management” and instead focus on “stress education.” Stress isn’t something “out there” that needs to be controlled. Rather, it’s a function of how we live, think and feel. It’s about our relationships, attitudes and interpretations of events. Meditation and mindfulness are essential parts of the practice. We’ll talk about common myths, practical considerations and ways to integrate meditation into our daily lives.    The Top 10 Big Ideas1Know Your History The human stress response system is literally hundreds of millions of years old; it’s been sculpted by evolution to deal with physical challenges that demand swift and powerful physical movement and performance. In short, the system helps us deal with “lions and tigers and bears.” Today, our minds and bodies are still vigilant for “lions and tigers and bears” in any form.2Know Your System Most of us are familiar with the two branches of the autonomic nervous system: one for physical action and movement, the other for tissue healing and repair. The crucial fact to remember is that this is largely an either-or system: you’re either in “fight-flight” or “feed and breed,” but not both. The percentage of time we spend in these modes over the course of our lives can spell the difference between health and disease.3Think “Stress Education,” Not “Stress Management” The term “stress management” implies that stress is something outside of ourselves, something that needs to be controlled. But stress is not an object or a thing. Rather, it is an outcome of our relationship to our bodies and the world. The trick is to adjust our relationship. 4Beware False Tigers Circumstances are one thing; interpretation is another. The meaning we give to the events in our lives is crucial. Our biggest problem in the modern world are the so-called “false positives,” instances when we see ferocious tigers where there are only house cats. The trick is to see threats as they truly are, without inflating our perception of danger.5Seek Control, Relinquish Control Research shows us that animals have better health outcomes when they have a greater sense of control and predictability in their lives. The same holds true for humans. Thus, increasing control would seem to be the prime solution. But this holds true only up to a point. Spiritual teachers tell us that the path to equanimity is all about relinquishing attachment and the desire for control. Both are essential skills.6Inhabit This Moment The mental simulator of the brain makes it easy to time travel; we can inhabit the past or the future as we choose. Occasional excursions into the imagination can stimulate our curiosity, our intelligence and our performance. But to dwell in either place displaces our present-moment experience and leads to a lack of fulfillment. We need to learn how to let go of the chronic mental activity that keeps us out of the now. 7Feel What You Feel The body has something important to say, but we often miss the message, especially in our frantic, modern quest to get it all done. This busy-disease or time sickness leads to a kind of somatic blindness and mind-body disconnect; we’re experiencing a stress response but may not even know it. This in turn leads to reactive behavior that’s out of our control. 8Have a Destination Research with non-human animals demonstrates that chronic stress with no apparent end point is far more debilitating than occasional or acute encounters. This suggests that we look for end points to the races we run, or set up mileposts along the way. By breaking our efforts into manageable pieces, we can get our minds and spirits around the effort and relax. 9Synchronize The speed of life and circumstance is always changing. Sometimes there’s a lull in the action; other times we’re called upon to move at top speed. Unfortunately, most of us are stuck with one temporal style: we’re “hard-chargers” or we’re “laid-back.” A fixed sense of identity can cause us to fall behind the pace of events or race ahead of the action. A fluid and adaptive sense of identity works better. 10Distinguish Between Challenge and Threat There’s a very real psycho-physical difference between conditions that are perceived as challenging and those that are perceived as threatening. Challenge stimulates changes in the body that also lead to better health and performance. Threat, on the other hand, compromises both performance and health. Be aware of the difference. Seek the one, avoid the other.