Cultivating Contemplative Skills

Contemplative learning and practice integrate introspection and direct experience, cultivating wisdom through the development of fundamental skills supporting individual and collective wellbeing. Mindfulness is an essential component underlying all of these skills.

Is Mindfulness Christian?

Mindfulness and the foundational determinants of wellbeing it supports, such as emotional regulation, attentional control, and resilience is an attitude, a practice, a state, a trait, or a way of living that doesn't belong to any religion, but to humanity as a whole.

Mindfulness of Worthiness

What if we measured worthiness through prosocial qualities such as kindness, compassion, empathy, and respect for others, rather than extraordinary abilities or achievements? These qualities can create beneficial feedback loops, helping others feel worthy through our own embodiment of unconditional love and positive regard.
Shane Ledford, CMT-200

Meet the Teacher: Shane Ledford

Meet Shane Ledford, CYT, Core Community Teacher for the Midwest Alliance for Mindfulness, Yin Yoga teacher, student of walking meditation (“Kinhin”) and Forest Therapy (“Shinrin-Yoku”), and avid movie buff.

A Mindfulness Center in the Midwest: Three and Thriving

The Midwest Alliance for Mindfulness is rounding out our third year as Kansas City's premier nonsectarian mindfulness and meditation center. The challenges of 2020 required us to practice patience, flexibility and courage in the face of uncertainty.
raven on the wind

Mindfulness of Renunciation

We all desire relief from the background of unease, dissatisfaction, or restlessness that tends to accompany us everywhere we go when we are in a mind state of wanting, or its mirror image twin not-wanting. Renunciation, or deciding not to act on our wanting, uncovers truths that may typically be camouflaged by our unexamined drives and habits.

Is Mindfulness Working for Me?

How can mindfulness teachers and practitioners embrace trauma sensitivity and welcome the diverse spectrum of human needs, while avoiding being overprotective or inadvertently reinforcing a mainstream, culturally sanctioned "me first, right now" attitude?