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.
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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?

Love, Empowerment and Clarity: The Mindful Trinity

Compassion as love, benevolence as empowerment, and wisdom as clarity are beneficial qualities cultivated through mindfulness that can help us make the world a better place.
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Mindfulness of Dissonance

In this post-fact era when uncertainty seems rampant, mindfulness can help us examine the dissonance that arises when evidence challenges our usual ways of thinking and being.
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Mindfulness of Social Media

It's temping to retaliate with cruel remarks or put-down humor when offensive posts come across our social media feeds. Mindfulness can give us the skills needed to respond more skillfully so that our online presence might become a force for good.

Mindfulness of Miswanting

One powerful benefit of a dedicated mindfulness practice is it can help us see through our problematic human habits and unconscious biases, including the miswanting that keeps us running ourselves ragged on a hedonic treadmill.

True and Authentic Freedom

Mindfulness may be one ingredient in the antidote to conditional freedom. When we cultivate the attitudes and practices of mindfulness in a dedicated and sustained manner, we begin to see through the delusions of ignorance, greed, jealousy, fear and anger that cause us to hold ourselves above, discriminate against, and harm others.

Mindfulness as Antidote

The practice of mindfulness can act as an antidote, helping us to counteract potentially harmful automatic processes such as ignorance, emotional illiteracy, indifference and hedonic adaptation.

Overhauling a Broken System with Mindfulness

The practices of mindfulness can help guide us toward a more profound and lasting kind of change, both individually and collectively, by addressing many of the foundational skills deficits underlying some of society's most pressing problems and adopting attitudes and practices that help us clear away illusions so we can respond from a place of wisdom.
Timo Volz

Mindfulness is Simple, Life is Complicated

Life can be complicated. A dedicated practice of mindfulness can help us open to life's complexities so that we can meet challenges with greater patience, courage and wisdom.

Mindfulness of Anger

Mindfulness of anger helps us understand our habitual reactions to threat, connect with our deepest intentions, and respond in ways that are more likely to get our needs met.

Meeting Crossroads with Mindfulness

There are many times in our lives when we come to a crossroads and we’re presented with a choice about the path ahead. Times of crisis or turmoil, such as the coronavirus COVID-19 pandemic, offer opportunities to reconnect with our deepest truths and to remember who we really are, if we are open to it. Mindfulness can help us notice choice points as they arise, manage fear and uncertainty, see experiences clearly, connect with our values, and choose responses wisely.

Mindfulness of Social Communications

Mindfulness can help us make space to examine the intentions behind our social communications and align them with our highest values.

Mindfulness and Loneliness

Mindfulness can help us be more resilient in a time of isolation by helping us to cultivate a new relationship with loneliness. The attitudes and practices can provide a clearer and more compassionate lens through which we observe experience.

Mindfulness as Dialectic

The dissonance we feel around the apparent contradictions we encounter in life can cause much of our suffering when we are resistant to it. Taking a dialectical approach to our mindfulness practice can help us open to all of life's apparent contradictions and find greater freedom.
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Mindfulness of Reactivity

The practice of mindfulness can help us reduce emotional reactivity by allowing us to meet challenging or enticing experiences with a more open and nonjudgmental attitude, calming the nervous system, weakening the conditioned response over time, and giving us greater access to higher thinking and wise decision making.
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Mindfulness of Mistakes

The practice of mindfulness can help us view our mistakes with kindness and self-forgiveness, acknowledging they are an essential component of learning and growth.