choosingchange - Counselling Sydney CBD - helping you to help yourself

Available modules

• Mindfulness in Practice

  What is Mindfulness?
  Mindfulness is paying attention. Focused awareness of what is without judgment. When Socrates talks about the unexamined life he is extolling the virtues of knowing the self and rigorously examining your way of being in the world... at the heart of mindfulness is "being present" so that we can appreciate the moments that make life understandable...  curiously and without judging.

  Mindfulness originated in Buddhist Meditation tradition...  awareness in order to achieve spiritual enlightenment. In this course, Mindfulness leans toward self-awareness accompanied by self/other-regard. To be here for the self and there for the other (person/people) in order to live peace-fully. Showing to self and other attention, care, consideration... love (Sanskrit: Love = प्रेम = prem = Sanskrit word for love.

  The cultivation of loving-kindness (mettā bhāvanā) is a popular form of meditation in Buddhism. In the Theravadin Buddhist tradition, this practice begins with the meditator cultivating loving-kindness towards themself,^[7] then their loved ones, friends, teachers, strangers, enemies, and finally towards all sentient beings. (Wikipedia)

  Loving aids in gaining clarity and focus which is the opposite of allowing our amygdala to hijack our frontal lobes. Describe exactly what you see in the picture of the leaf?

  Under unpleasant or difficult circumstances the person we admire is the person who is calm and coordinated. While all around us people are losing their heads, this calm person is containing the chaos and utilising skills that enable them to "be in control" and help "steer us" from a disaster.

  All a bit "The Tempest" I know but the bottom line is, when things are going wrong it is very helpful to hav, someone to take over and lead us to shore, safely. That is a mindful person. That can be you: leading self and others.

• Raising Self-esteem

  People who have a strong sense-of-self do not need to show it off. Effortlessly they stand, balanced and strong and free. Sometimes these people seem not of this world. There are so many of us who are troubled with what it means to be free, what it means to feel relaxed.

  Ask that highly self-esteemed person what it is that makes them different and they will probably say that they believe they are worth it. They deserve happiness and success. It is something integeral to their being. Can it be learned?

• Personality Development Stages

  
  You will be taken through the various stages of life you will experience, through childhood, teenage years, young adult, middle and old age.  Having a world-wide view of your life and other lives allows you to more easily be able to assert yourself appropriately and fit in (adapt) to changing circumstances. One thing is certain in your life... change.

  

• Being in Love

  Raising awareness of the stages of connecting in our human experience. The idea of romantic love evolved from the French "Courtly Love" around the Twelfth Century. A combination of factors probably instigated the change from a more practical matter of property and lineage and power (still seen today in Royal Family Dynastic Systems).

  Today we are pretty much only moved to mate by the romantic ideas. Although raw sexual attraction is definitely apparent in today's processes, underneath that is often the idea that our partner will resolve many issues of companionship, security, love and continuation of the family lineage. And of course - Continual sexual satisfaction until the day I die. And we do this with a subtle mix of expectation, projection and blindness. Please don't speak, let me dream on a little longer.

  

• Togetherness & Separateness - Differentiation of Self

  The pull of togetherness and separateness is something all people are managing. On a basic level you need to survive at any cost while needing to be connected. They are sometimes fighting against each other because what I need and what you need at this particular moment might not be the same thing. We want to learn to live together? Do you throw away the thing you love in this quest to survive?