1. Mindful Awareness

2. Review Amygdala determines emotional responses by classifying incoming sights, sounds, smells, and movements as either potentially threatening or pleasurable. pleasurable input goes to the prefrontal cortex where it is analyzed before it is responded to threatening input is blocked by the amygdala and prompts the fight, flight, or freeze

3. Perceived Threat or Actual Threat? The amygdala can trigger a “false alarm” Ie. We sometimes freeze in stressful situations such as when taking a test

4. Unmindful Behaviour A reaction happens before the mind thinks about it

5. Have any of you ever been asked to count to ten when angry? Did it help? Why? What do you think was happening in the amygdala and the prefrontal cortex at 1? At 10?

6. Mindful behaviour Counting to ten when you’re angry This gives the amygdala time to allow the input to move on to the prefrontal cortex to be analyzed more accurately before you react

7. Poem fog Listen to the following poem and try to hold the details in your mind

8. List or draw all the details you can remember from the poem

9. Keeping focused When you try to keep your mind focused, it often tries to wander. How can you keep your mind focused on the details that you choose? How can having this kind of control help you?

10. Mindful Behaviour Focusing our attention on what’s happening here and now is part of being mindful, or paying close attention.

11. More about Mindful Behaviour The second part of being mindful is suspending judgement – keeping an open mind and waiting to form an opinion until you have considered a situation more carefully

12. Making quick judgements about things and people is a very popular thing to do in our society: in or out? Hot or not? Who’s got talent? Part of being mindful is to suspend judgement in order to take in more information. A good judge needs to hear and see all the important evidence. Not everything is the way it seems at first. Can you think of an example?

13. Time for Practice Do mindful / unmindful sheet with a partner. Discuss your choices How can you make the unmindful choice mindful?