STRONGER TOGETHER
5-Day Meditation Challenge with Lynn Curry
Courage. Strength. Resilience.​
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Welcome to learning one of the most important SKILLS you can learn in life. Learning to meditate and cultivating a daily habit of meditating a little bit every day has the potential to change your life in profound ways. At its essence, meditation is substituting our discursive mind for another object of attention. Meditation teaches us to FOCUS and how to work with our minds. Meditation teaches us to be present and be okay with what is. Meditation teaches us how to attach less to our thoughts and step more fully into the present moment.
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In this 5-day challenge, you will learn what meditation is and is not, the biggest misconception about meditation, how to build a daily practice, how to handle challenges when they come up, and most important, how to maintain momentum once you start your practice. You’ll learn a very basic meditation technique focusing on the breath and how meditation can be as simple as brushing your teeth. You’ll also learn the difference between cultivating a meditation practice utilizing a specific meditation technique and listening to a meditation app when you feel like it. There’s a big difference!
Most of all, you’ll learn that, through consistent practice, meditation has the potential to train our minds in profound ways. It’s exercise for our brains we know we need! Through meditation, we discover insight about ourselves and others, develop compassion toward ourselves and others, and the courage to step more fully into who we are as individuals. Yes, to all of that! I hope you will join me in exploring this age-old practice; the simple, but not easy, act of sitting and breathing a little bit every day as we train our minds to be more present and awake in our lives.
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-Lynn Curry
Meet Lynn
Lynn Curry is a McNair director at Central Michigan University and has been supporting low income, first generation, underrepresented students in their journeys to graduate school for nearly twenty years. Her specialty is teaching students how to prioritize their well-being and build a foundation of wellness to support their academic growth and LIFE. She is a certified meditation teacher through the Open Heart Project and intent on teaching as many students and faculty as possible the skill of meditation to not only better handle daily pressures in life, but to help deal with the mental health crisis in higher education. Learn more about Lynn’s offerings @ www.365mindfuldays.com.
Day 1​
Today, Lynn will give you an introduction to the idea of meditation and how it's benefits can translate into your everyday life.
You'll learn a basic breathing technique, and then you'll meditate for one minute.
Let's get started!
Meditation is substituting our discursive mind for another object of attention.
-LC
Day 2
A common misconception is that one has to completely stop thinking to properly meditate, which might seem daunting to most people. Today, Lynn shares with us that instead, meditation allows us to develop a new relationship with our thoughts.
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Using the basic breathing technique you learned yesterday, you'll meditate for two minutes.
By quieting, sitting with ourselves in stillness, we are learning to focus and let go, not attach, and simply be ok with what is."
-LC
Day 3
Today, we'll explore our minds and meditate for three minutes, but first, Lynn will answer the question,
"How do you start a daily practice?"
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By starting small, keeping it simple, connecting with others and coming back to the practice in hard times, we can create a daily practice that will support our daily lives.
My meditation practice really helps me to let go of some of those expectations, and even when things are chaotic and driving me crazy, I can still be ok because I feel this greater sense of ease, centeredness, a groundedness that I can tune into.
-LC
Day 4
Meditation can be boring, hard or anxiety-producing. Most people lose sight of the potential for transformation. But Lynn says that if we can trust ourselves, the practice and this process, we can find the potential for transformation.
Expand your practice by meditating for four minutes today.
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Meditation is not about striving to be better or striving to be anything other than what we already are.
-LC
Day 5
You made it to the last day of the challenge!
But the work doesn't stop here. Today, Lynn will teach us how to maintain momentum by making this a practice of experimentation.
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You'll end this challenge by meditating for five minutes (WOW!) and cultivate a practice you can make part of your daily routine.
We are learning to be gentle so we can grow compassion...and as we become gentle and we open and we soften to ourselves and ultimately others, that's when we can have the courage to simply be who we are.
-LC