Wellbeing Unlocked: Five Keys to Lasting Personal Change
Week of December 21, 2024
Some of the keys to Inner Fitness are: Radical Acceptance, Mindful Presence, Self-Compassion, Gratitude + Kindness , and Embodiment. Once we unlock these keys, we have opened the gateway towards deeper focus, intimacy, and joy, and lessen the grip of anxiety, tension and worry. In each lesson, we will explore the keys through lecture, reflections, Q+A and fun exercises.
Lesson 1: Radical Acceptance: Tapping into Life
D.H. Lawrence says “we are like a great tree with our roots in the air.
We need to replant ourselves—in our bodies, hearts and spirit.”
Learning to quiet a restless mind and embrace the peace of the present moment is one of the most useful and effective things we can do for our well-being. We are often unaware of how much tension and pain are created by being caught in the stories of our lives. In this lesson, we learn the art of embracing the moment with acceptance, which helps us to change our story and experience our lives with profound newness.
Lesson 1 Keys:
1. Peaceful Presence Practice: Learning the Artform
2. Observing Your Own Thoughts: Changing the Narrative
3. Mindfully Feeling your Feelings: Dropping the Story
Lesson 2: Paying Attention: Using Mindfulness to come to PresenceOur habit of paying attention totally shapes our moods each day, and they are very repetitive. It’s said that we have 86,000 thoughts today, and we had the same thoughts yesterday. The Buddha said “whatever we think about regularly, that becomes the habit of our mind”. In this lesson we look at how we pay attention. We will learn the art of paying attention in a new way.
Lesson 2 Keys:
1. Loving Kindness Metta Meditation: The Gateway to Presence
2. Mindful Awe: Daily Exercises
3. Curiosity: Antidote to fear
Lesson 3: Self Compassion: Being Awake For Your Life
Dr. Kristin Neff advocates for treating oneself with the same kindness and understanding that you would offer to a dear friend. This shift in self-perspective transforms us from inner critics into inner allies, leading to greater emotional well-being. Embracing these elements helps us not only cultivate self-compassion, but in turn, leads to vastly improved mental and emotional health, core qualities of inner fitness.
Lesson 3 Keys:
1. Self Kindness vs Self Judgment
2. Common Humanity vs Isolation
3. Mindfulness vs Over-Identification
Class 4: Gratitude & Kindness: Twin Powers of Joy
The saying is “whatever we practice grows stronger.” When a negative experience happens it immediately goes down into our implicit memory and takes root and it gets recalled over and over. And when a positive experience happens, it takes far longer to install the positive trait. But, If you practice a lot of gratitude, true On Purpose Gratitude, the gratitude grows. Gratitude will change your biology.
Lesson 4 Keys:
1. Understanding Gratitude
2. Breaking through the Barriers to Gratitude
3. Gladdening the Mind; A new Happiness
Class 5: Embodiment; The Goal
James Joyce, in his short story A Painful Case, tells us: “Mr. Duffy lived a short distance from his body”. How many of us are living this way? And what are the ramifications?
We live in a mental world, with so much of our life happening in our minds. It’s virtual and we’re disembodied. It can be rare that we we really are awake in our bodies
Learn a powerful technique to help you come home to your innate aliveness.
Lesson 5 Keys:
1. Relax the body
2. Raise Your EQ: Embodiment Quotient
3. Micro Shifts: Daily Moves for the body
Meet Rachel Fleischman – licensed social worker, psychotherapist, registered expressive arts therapist, workshop facilitator and speaker who over the last two decades has supported thousands of humans to deepen their creativity, feel understood, and love themselves fiercely. Through her private practice, Bliss Counseling, and a unique movement system she developed called Dance Your Bliss, Rachel works with individuals and couples and has expertise in crisis management, trust, body image, premarital and marital issues, sex therapy, depression, anxiety, life transition, and panic disorder, to name a few.
Fleischman is currently developing new e-books and coursework surrounding; Sleep Health, Body-Centered Psychotherapy and Mindfulness Workshops. She has developed the Relaxed and Real model for psychotherapists. She can regularly be found leading international workshops and programs at conferences, corporate retreats, and wellness centers such as the Esalen Institute, the Omega Institute’s Women and Courage Conference, Canyon Ranch, the Naropa Institute’s Hakomi Conference, the Hollyhock Retreat Center, UCSF Women’s Health, Rancho La Puerta Spa, and the International Dance Therapy Conference.
Her sought-after mental health expertise has been featured on numerous podcasts and in magazines such as Verywell Mind, Best Life, Psychology Today, Martha Stewart, and Parade, to name a few.