Guided Meditation on the phone Any for beginners www.BasicMindfulness.org

But there was something you referred to earlier on in terms of.

Teaching meditation to People on the Phone.

And that piqued my interest of it and I wasn't sure I don't think I've ever heard of anyone teaching someone to Meditate on the Phone so could you just tell me a little bit about what you mean there and how that happens well wanted to create a fully modern delivery system. You know after I had sort of reformulated the techniques in terms of the five ways, which was one tier or level of creativity.

Then I turned my attention towards the issue of well.

No, I've got a modernized version of the classical paths to enlightenment. How do I make this easily available to People around the world and?

So if you think about it traditionally.

What People do is they do some daily practice maybe 1020 minutes but half an hour a day? What have you and then they do periodic intensive retreats? Which typically would be a day or a weekend or week or 2 weeks or 3 months or in Tibet, 3 years 3 months and 3 days in a cave, etc, etc. Some combination of day-to-day practice plus.

Some sort of periodic intensive practice typically done with a group. Although not inevitably that rhythm of practice is the standard formula if you maintain something like that, then the passage of? Time will mark the process of Psycho. Spiritual you talked about how long it takes for this.

For us to begin to see the results and you said it might be 6 months, 6 months. That's given it's that's not including this three month retreat thing? Well, now, you don't have to do 3 month certainly not 3 years. But I think that a person does need to do some day-to-day practice on their own. If only ice. I tell People, the minimum is 10410 minutes, most days of working on your own.

Then, at least 4 hours of continuous intensive retreat once a month.

As in what does that mean for hours of well. No, you don't sit without moving but you have unbroken practice for 4 hours, but you may get up and stretch and do things like that so.

It occured to me that most people in the world are not in a position to take even 4 hours out to go to a center they have a family situation. They have work situation. They probably don't live near Mindfulness Center. They can't incur the expenses the lost wages.

The travel expenses the expenses of being in a venue where you have to get lodging and meals if you do residential retreats.

So a way to make the all of the features of group residential retreat available to anyone in the world and circumvent these problems would be to pipe it into the individuals home in 4 hour blocks.

So that would be with a conference call.

So no it's live. It's me or my facilitators live and so the way it works is you go to basicmindfulness.org and you register for retreat, the programs are always on the second weekend of the month. There's 1 two hour program on Friday evening to 4 hour programs on Saturday separated by an hour.

And then 24, our programs on Sunday, so that's the second weekend of every month. You know that you can plan ahead. You have to do the whole no sequential no they're completely independent of each other so I could just do 4 hours and you could do or just 2 hours on a Friday. So it can be a shortest 2 hours on Friday and it can be as long as Friday.

2 four hour periods on Saturday until 4 hour periods on Sunday. So it's you've taken the whole weekend for practice and anything in between the programs are all independent.

You register for them individually and so it's sort of like Dharma on demand. You might say you decide what you're interested in and it but it's all unified around the five ways are you sitting there holding a Phone to your head for 8 hours. No, you don't hold the Phone. You either use a speaker Phone or you get from RadioShack I hands free.

Headset with a microphone cost you $20 and you put that replace your handset with the headset so that you've got a hands free operation. If you're going to do the programs with consistency. It's worth it to buy the headset or decay speakerphone, so it's sitting there your eyes are closed.

And.

You everybody calls into the number there's from 4290 People on the call depending on various factors. Ultra all over the world all at the same time, all at the same time? How neat is that many of them know each other because they've been an onsite programs together, because I also go around the country and run residential retreat so People know each other.

Some of them, yeah, well they everybody introduces themselves so People, you see People thought well Gee. It's telephone. It's going to separate People, but actually we found that it very much. Unites People it creates a virtual community of practice.

So what happens is it starts precisely at the posted time. But People typically call in 15 minutes early. And there's just free schmoozing and socializing so that builds yeah. That's the sound script. Ancient Sanskrit word, and that builds community and builds a camaraderie, so that when the guidance starts.

Well, I I claimed to take the missed out of mysticism. and I don't like things to be mystical. SH Mystical, but there. There are some Mystikal's mystical things I can't really explain how that bonding takes place because after all. It is just People on a Phone. But somehow it's like you're in the same room. It's really weird. Just knowing that they're there and the fact that you've had this socializing before and.

What have you it's like?

Use it really strong and you've sense the presence of these other people's here, usually have your eyes closed most of the time anyway, so even if they were in the room. You have your eyes close. So yeah, you know something happens. That is synergy. That's more than I expected. So what happens is you call in and you choose the program. You want and every month. There is an intro program.

So that you could start up any time and so this. I call it the home practice program. You get it off of basic mindfulness.org to register to find out about it, but the way it's set up is you can begin any month.

You don't you don't have to there's always a program for first timers that's one of intro to one of the five ways and you can begin with any one of the five ways. So if I've never meditated before I can once a month. There, some way I can call in and have someone guide me from scratch. Like I have no idea what any of the programs that say Part 1. So focus in Part 1 focus out Part 1 focus on rest change and positive those are the five ways.

All the Part 1 programs require no previous experience whatsoever great.