Mindfulness and Meditation Resources

 This is a titrated meditation program that we spoke about during training. It is one of my favourite programs for introducing people to mindfulness and is a great tool for therapists also! Each session begins with a five minutes overview of neuroscience for a story relative to the focus and meditation. The meditations themselves are about five minutes in length, so quite manageable and not overwhelming.  Most importantly they're structured sequentially meaning that you cannot access the more intrusive meditations that are available further along in the program before having completed the more basic and progressively embodied ones before them. This is very important to ensure that people are working through meditation material in a way that is titrated with regards to both content and duration. I purchased the program for $30 or so, one purchase which resulted in 40 meditations. You can listen to them over and over which is great and ideally, after listening to them for yourself, you will have a great sense of what meditations may work for clients organically as issues come up in sessions. Learn more at http://www.soundstrue.com/store/mindfulness-daily/free-access  

There are a wide variety of free meditation programs you can use. Something to keep in mind is to start with shorter and less intrusive meditations (i.e, meditations that focus on awareness of surroundings and breath rather than more emotionally charged meditations such as those focusing on emotional nurturance).  

Tara Brach: https://www.tarabrach.com/guided-meditations/ 
Elisha Goldstein: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zeAk0ztwaaI 
Jack Kornfield: https://jackkornfield.com/meditations/
Kristen Neff: http://self-compassion.org/category/exercises/#guided-meditations

McMaster University Student Mindfulness Resources: https://wellness.mcmaster.ca/stay-well/mindfulness-resources/