The Importance of a Mindfulness Teacher

On the importance of a mindfulness teacher: “Learning is finding out what you already know. Doing is demonstrating that you know it. Teaching is reminding others that they know as well as you. You are all learners, doers, teachers.” - Richard Bach, Illusions

Mindfulness of Grace

A mindfulness practice can help us cultivate awareness of and gratitude for grace - unasked for and unmerited, life-affirming, and inspirational forces that make themselves available to every being without discrimination, helping us to face difficulty, remain in alignment with our highest values, begin anew, and accept endings.
tree and roots

Sowing What We Wish to Reap: The Four Cs of Engaged Mindfulness

Through a foundation of caring, capacity building, courage, and willingness to make contact, engaged mindfulness can help us make a paradigm shift needed for deep and lasting beneficial change.

Mindfully Embracing Our Role in the Web of Existence

Mindfulness can help us live more fulfilling lives through developing a more accurate understanding of and inviting an active interest in the intertwined causes and conditions that create suffering and make happiness possible.

Star Trek, Mindfulness, Diversity and Inclusion

Midwest Alliance for Mindfulness teacher and film buff Shane Ledford, CMT-200 talks about the influence of the original Star Trek series on his mindfulness journey and it's groundbreaking portrayal of diversity at a time of emerging social change.

The Inner and Outer Work of Engaged Mindfulness

Mindfulness can be a powerful ally in doing the prerequisite inner work and moving into the necessary outer work of beneficial change toward a more just and sustainable world.
Prairie Center Nature Reserve

Land Acknowledgement

The Midwest Alliance for Mindfulness wishes to recognize and offer respect for the Native Peoples who were forcefully displaced from the land we now inhabit. We offer deep gratitude for the ancestors, current and future keepers of this land.

Mindfulness of Fear

Our reactivity to fear is at the root of many of the worlds most pressing problems. Fortunately, there is an antidote to fear and our mindfulness and heart practices can help.

Mindfulness of Backlash

Mindfulness can help us avoid being swept away by backlash and create space for wise responding in alignment with our highest values.

Mindfulness as Planetary Death Doula Training

Our mindfulness practice resources us for opening to the truth of the present moment and for remembering it in service of the next, for the sake of the world.

Riding Life’s Ebb and Flow with Mindfulness

Just like waves in the ocean, the cyclical push/pull of forces within our orbit and friction and at the surface of our lives transmit energy through us, but are not us. Mindfulness can help us contact the refuge of stillness and silence that is ever present deep beneath the surface, when we’re awakened to it and if we practice how to access it.

Taking the Self Out of Self-Righteousness

Most of us understand the importance of doing good and standing up for what is just, but how might we discern being "upright" from being self-righteous? A dedicated mindfulness practice can help.

Anatomy of a Mindful Apology

An apology, when well intended and mindfully applied, can be one of human beings' most powerful elixirs for both the giver and the receiver. Yet like many concepts, it has been misunderstood and misused.

Mindfulness of Self-Fulfilling Assumptions

Assumptions are one of the many mental habits that can cause us and those around us much suffering. A practice of mindfulness can clarify this, offering us a wider range of choices for wise responding.

Mindfulness of Good and Evil

The practice of mindfulness allows us to think more broadly and flexibly, going beyond the dualities of us or them, black and white, and all or nothing thinking.

The Case for Community Mindfulness Practice

At the Midwest Alliance for Mindfulness, we honor thousands of years of wisdom tradition in elevating the importance of community in the development of a robust practice.

Six Years of Ashtanga Yoga

In year six, the evolution of an Ashtanga yoga practice and the difficulties faced amidst a pandemic creates opportunities for insight and wisdom.

Mindfulness of Useful Fictions

Useful fictions are mind tools that help us understand and navigate the world, but we can inadvertently cause harm to ourselves and others when we're not mindful of them.