Learning To Breathe

Each week we welcome spiritual seekers and practitioners alike as we learn the ways of meditation. Learning to Breathe: Meditation and Conversation for a New Earth continues on a drop-in basis every Wednesday from 6:00 to 7:00 p.m. Each one hour session includes a talk on grounded spirituality, twenty minutes of meditation and an open discussion of issues and observations arising from our practice. This is an introduction to basic spiritual practice and its implication for our lives. Wednesdays from 6 – 7 p.m in the Chapel, everyone is welcome.

Our time together is separated into three segments of twenty minutes each, with only the middle twenty minutes being a structured time slot. Each week there is a leader. Leading the group is done entirely on a voluntary basis.

In the first part of the gathering the leader presents a topic for discussion, or an activity that will prompt discussion. The topic may come from a poem, a reading, a memory, or anything that will initiate a conversation around meditation. My first experience leading the group was to compare the feeling I am able to achieve during shava-asana in yoga to be akin to what I expected in meditation and that is basically a sense of relief, even if temporarily, from the stress of everyday life and as Brian calls them, “…the nattering monkeys we have in our heads.”.

The second stage is twenty minutes of meditation and the goal is to have nothing going on in your life for that period of time. It requires time and practice to reach this state of mind. All who attend the group agree that doing it regularly in the group setting is a great assistance to being able to do it alone. The meditation segment is begun and ended when the leader rings the Tibetan Mediation Bowl. There is a single candle burning to focus your attention. The leader takes responsibility for keeping track of the time and for dealing with any distractions that may arise in the church during the meditation phase.

The third stage is usually shorter than twenty minutes and often involves discussion of strategies that have been effective for group members, of times outside the group when meditation has been effective, or recognizing that an Ah Ha meditation moment has taken place.

“Meditation is a strategy used to help alleviate depression and anxiety, to lower hypertension, to alter the perception of pain, lower sensitivity to pain and to lower emotional responses to stress.”

Michelle Currie M. Ed., Alive Canada’s National Health and Wellness Magazine, August 2010.

For more information please contact:

The Rev. Brian Pearson
403-244-4879 ext. 3
rector@ststephenscalgary.org

Open Chapel

Churches are, among other things, places of refuge and prayer. They are also part of the community in which they are located. To be these things, they need to be accessible to those in need of refuge, to those who feel inclined to pray, and to the residents of the community who may be wondering what goes on inside.

Chapel is open Tues 5-7pm, Wed 5-6pm and Thurs 5-7pm

For more information or to volunteer to chapel sit please contact:

Jill Coggins