Effortless Mindfulness
Learn to recognize the awareness that's always already here.
Imagine if you could shift into a calm, relaxed awareness whenever you needed to. This is effortless mindfulness—a state that is always available to us, but is so close and so good that we often can’t see or accept it. In this deeply practical course led by Loch Kelly, we’ll learn how to find and sustain this awareness in order to unlock a natural happiness that has always been with us.
Meet Loch, Your Teacher
Loch Kelly, M.Div., LCSW is the author of Shift Into Freedom: The Science and Practice of Open-Hearted Awareness, which won two “Best Books of the Year Awards” including one from Spirituality & Health Magazine.
Loch is a licensed psychotherapist and recognized leader in the field of meditation who studied with Tulku Urgyen Rinpoche and Mingyur Rinpoche and is affiliated with Adyashanti. Loch studied at Columbia University and Union Theological and is the founder of the non-profit Open-Hearted Awareness Institute. He has worked in community mental health, established homeless shelters and counseled family members affected by 9/11.
Loch has collaborated with neuroscientists at Yale, UPenn and NYU to study how awareness training enhances compassion and wellbeing. He is known for his warm sense of humor, and his practical, non-dual pointers, which help people awaken to and live from their compassionate true nature.
For more information, please visit: www.lochkelly.org
The results are in: mindfulness meditation is one of the best things you can do for yourself. Over the past 20 years, scientific research has shown that mindfulness alleviates stress-related symptoms, anxiety, depression, and chronic pain, and has also been proven to improve cognitive function, boost immunity, and lower blood pressure.
What many mindfulness practitioners don’t know is that there are further stages of practice that relieve more deep-seated layers of suffering, leading to a more sustained, equanimous sense of well-being. In this 6-unit course, you’ll learn to go beyond basic mindfulness and discover an effortless awareness that is experiential, embodied, and boundless. Along the way, we’ll be asking ourselves, what happens if we thought and acted more from our hearts and less from our minds?
Over six units you’ll discover new and effective methods to:
- Drop into an awake awareness that can be accessed anywhere, anytime
- Shift out of our thought-based identity, which binds and constricts us
- Live from a place that is clear, calm, and interconnected versus one that is attached, contracted, and fearful
- Move from our ordinary, grasping, and agitated mind to our awakened heart-mind
- Gain distance from our small, separate sense of self that is perpetually dissatisfied
- Untie the knots of old, destructive habits
- Support compassionate awakening, creativity, and connection with research-based insights from contemporary psychology and neuroscience.
Mindfulness has its roots in wisdom traditions across the world and is particularly central to Buddhist practice. Basic mindfulness focuses on initial practices in Buddhist traditions. Effortless mindfulness is the next natural stage of practice and part of all Buddhist traditions having been called “unprompted mindfulness" in the Theravada tradition. Effortless mindfulness was further refined in the Mahayana traditions of North India as Sutra Mahamudra and in the Chan and Zen tradition of “taking the half step back.” Later it was adapted in certain Tibetan Buddhist schools.
Rather than being a practice confined to monastic or retreat environments, effortless mindfulness, as it was first introduced historically, was intended to be integrated into the workdays of ordinary people and practiced with eyes open. You'll also hear unique contemporary perspectives that draw from contemporary psychology and neuroscience research.
With Loch as your expert guide, you’ll learn how to shift into this natural state of ease, interconnection, and wellbeing at any moment, no matter what you’re doing. This course is based on the newly released book The Way of Effortless Mindfulness.
Study at Your Own Pace
Each unit will offer roughly one hour of material to work with. There will be take-home practices, including guided audio meditations, for you to explore throughout the week.
Unit 1 | Introduction to Effortless Mindfulness
Learn about effortless mindfulness and how it differs from basic mindfulness.
Unit 2 | Awareness of Awareness
Practice identifying awareness and other faculties of mind.
Unit 3 | Awareness is Intelligent
Train in being aware from a sense of spaciousness and wellbeing.
Unit 4 | Effortless Mindfulness Embodied
Feel fully embodied and present in a state of effortless mindfulness.
Unit 5 | The Science of Effortless Mindfulness
Learn about concepts such as the default mode network and flow states that can inform our practice.
Unit 6 | Effortless Heart Mindfulness
Cultivate compassion that arises naturally from a ground of open-hearted awareness.
What You'll Learn
- The differences between basic and effortless mindfulness.
- Effective techniques to calm the chattering, ego-centered, and grasping mind.
- How to discover an intelligent awareness that is both beyond thought and already calm.
- How to drop from self-centered identity and patterns of thinking into the heart-mind.
- A contemporary approach enriched by contemporary psychology and neuroscience, which supports compassionate awakening, creativity, and connection.
- Ways of liberating difficult or repressed emotions as well as shadow parts of the psyche.
Guided inquiry
10 guided inquiry videos in which Loch leads us in an exploration of effortless mindfulness.
Guidance for personal practice
6 videos offering exercises to deepen your personal practice.
Effortless mindfulness on-the-go
3 videos filmed in NYC and its subway and parks demonstrate how to take effortless mindfulness into the world for vivid, calm awareness.
Who Is This Course For?
This course is geared toward mindfulness meditation practitioners who are looking for tools and techniques to advance their practice, but will also be useful for those who have struggled with mindfulness concentration techniques or have experienced difficulty sitting still and focusing. For those of you with backgrounds in spiritual traditions outside of Buddhism, this course offers experiential methods to complement your existing practice.
Testimonials
"Pretty much the most amazing thing that should learn about meditation from the beginning. No concentration, no attention, no force, no clearing of thoughts needed, nothing special, nothing that isn't there before. In this course, you shift into all that you need, and you train to remain. Loch takes you through various techniques to recognize that you were always looking for, which was always right under your nose, and over your head, and all over."
"Pragmatic, effective, life altering. A practice to use during your daily activities, exactly what I needed in my busy life. I recommend it, strongly."
"It was really great to take Loch‘s course. He teaches in a very subtle, calm and loving way, such that it‘s hard not to continue."
"I enjoyed this course and already benefited from both the background and practical instructions provided in this course. I think the techniques and theories presented have a "slow-burn" that gradually warms up heart and mind over time."
Testimonials
"Pretty much the most amazing thing that should learn about meditation from the beginning. No concentration, no attention, no force, no clearing of thoughts needed, nothing special, nothing that isn't there before. In this course, you shift into all that you need, and you train to remain. Loch takes you through various techniques to recognize that you were always looking for, which was always right under your nose, and over your head, and all over."
"Pragmatic, effective, life altering. A practice to use during your daily activities, exactly what I needed in my busy life. I recommend it, strongly."
"It was really great to take Loch‘s course. He teaches in a very subtle, calm and loving way, such that it‘s hard not to continue."
"I enjoyed this course and already benefited from both the background and practical instructions provided in this course. I think the techniques and theories presented have a "slow-burn" that gradually warms up heart and mind over time."
Course Curriculum
- Welcome to Effortless Mindfulness
- Course Introduction (9:11)
- Why Practice Mindfulness? (3:45)
- Definitions
- Introduction to Effortless Mindfulness (9:58)
- Downloads
- Glimpse Practice
- Effortless Mindfulness Is Always Available (4:04)
- Comparing Basic Mindfulness and Effortless Mindfulness (6:33)
- Check Your Understanding
- Glimpses of Effortless Mindfulness (6:07)
- Practice Instructions (8:03)
- Reflect
- Discussion
- Bonus Meditation: Peace of Mind Between Your Thoughts (4:11)
- Summary
- Introduction: Small Glimpses (8:40)
- Naturally Awake Awareness (5:50)
- Glimpse Practice
- Unhooking Awareness from Thought and Attention (7:38)
- Five Foundations of Effortless Mindfulness (5:43)
- Check Your Understanding
- Practice: Awareness of Awareness (6:24)
- Reflect
- Discussion
- A Word of Encouragement (3:29)
- Summary
- Introduction (8:00)
- Glimpse Practice
- Awareness of Space (7:47)
- Awareness from Spacious Awareness (9:09)
- Check Your Understanding
- Spacious Awareness (3:57)
- Open-Eyed Mindfulness in Daily Life
- Practice Instructions (10:56)
- How We Move Between Levels of Mind
- Reflect
- Discussion
- A Second Word of Encouragement (1:11)
- Summary
- Introduction (13:24)
- Case Study: Discovering Effortless Heart Mindfulness
- Glimpse Practice
- Heart Knowing (9:27)
- Realizing that Thoughts, Feelings, and Beliefs Form Subpersonalities (9:36)
- Check Your Understanding
- Welcoming Shadow Parts (8:13)
- Reflect
- Discussion
- Thank You and End-of-Course Summary (7:49)
- Summary
- Refer a Friend
- Your Next Course (1:27)
- Discover Tricycle: The Buddhist Review