Coming up in October
Our community explores the role of mindfulness in embracing the difficulties of life, letting go of the dictates of reactivity, experiencing the calm and clarity of spaciousness, and cultivating creative engagement as a way of being in the world.
Our in-person events continue at Alert Level 2.
All events are at the Wellington Friends Centre, 7 Moncreiff Street, Mt Victoria, Wellington. Doors open at 7.15pm and the sessions start at 7.30pm.
Wednesday 6 October – Beginner's mind - introduction to meditation
There's no better way to build a foundation in mindfulness than meditating with others. Join us for a relaxed session and discover the benefits in a beginner-friendly environment.
Our Beginner’s Mind session teaches basic meditation techniques and is a great introduction to meditating in a group environment. The session is suitable for those who are new to meditation, while more experienced mediators will also find it beneficial. You can ask questions and the session is broken into shorter meditations to ease you into the practice.
Wednesday 13 October – Contingency, change, the flow of your practice
In this session we’ll be practising meditation together as a group, and also discussing the nature and constancy of change in our lives: How change suffuses our lives and our ingrained cultural responses to change often lead to frustration and distress. We’ll be considering the perspectives of Buddhist philosophy and its views on change and linking this back to our meditation practice.
Wednesday 20 October – Group Meditation
On the 20th we’ll be practising different meditation techniques together as a group. The session offers a great opportunity to discuss your meditation practice, get tips and tricks, and delve deeper into the nature of your conscious and unconscious mind.
Wednesday 27 October – Practising with RAIN
Navigating through difficult emotions is a necessary step on our spiritual journey. In this session we’ll be discussing the RAIN approach to meditation. The acronym RAIN helps us become more mindful and have more compassion towards ourselves when we are stuck in thoughts of unworthiness. We’ll be going through the steps of RAIN together and end the session with a guided meditation.
Our Spring day-long meditation retreat is coming up!
Join us for a friendly and relaxed day long meditation retreat on 6 November 2021. It’s the perfect opportunity to deeply reconnect with your mindfulness practice, settle your mind, and to meet other practitioners. All experience levels are welcome, from beginners to more experienced meditators. Everyone can get something out of this retreat.
The retreat is always popular and is limited to twelve people, so register now! You can find all the details on the event Meetup page here.
What have we been up to?
It’s been great to be able to meet again in person following the change to Alert Level 2. Since we’ve been back to meeting weekly we’ve explored the idea of practising with a ‘complete intention’. We also watched and discussed Buddhist teacher Bernat Font’s talk on Buddhism and self-respect for a much needed reminder on the importance of compassion for ourselves. We also had a great session on embracing ‘dukka’, in particular the discomfort of uncertainty. We discussed the importance of being able to sit with uncertainty and let go of the desire to control our external environment, especially in such uncertain times.
Contributing to the OMB community
We believe that the benefits of meditation and Dharma practice should be accessible to everyone. We rely on the generosity of our community to keep our sessions going and to allow us to support worthy projects and causes, like our publishing house the Tuwhiri Project and the Secular Buddhist Network.
There are many ways you can support us:
Buying one of our books, either at a weekly session or though Tuwhiri.nz
Giving your time and skills to help expand or improve what we offer the wider community.
Giving a tax-deductible charitable donation to One Mindful Breath through a regular direct credit or a simple one-off transfer. Our account is 38-9019-0064662-03. We’ll send you a donation receipt after the end of each tax year.
If you’d like to help out, contact us at onemindfulbreathnz@gmail.com