Untangling Anxiety

This 5-week class focuses on mindfulness practices which support skillful responding to stressful challenges of everyday life. You will learn how to begin unwinding unhelpful automatic habits such as: anxiety, smart phone overuse, stress eating and procrastinating through awareness and compassion practices that help foster resilience, wellbeing and social connection. Topics will include:

Overview of Mindfulness and Meditation Practices
Overview of the Habit Loop and Reward Based Learning
Enhancing Mind / Body Connections
Perception and Creative Responding, How You Perceive is How You React
Understanding Stress and Anxiety; Reducing and Recovering More Quickly
The Nature of Negativity Bias and Cultivating Positivity
Mindful Communication

This course is appropriate for beginners and anyone who would like to develop the habit of a daily mindfulness practice. Each class will include a variety of formal and informal meditations, practical yoga, discussions, and experiential learning.

Teacher: Robert Lurye is an artist, educator, and meditation practitioner who loves teaching the ancient wisdom and modern science of mindfulness. He is a certified MBSR teacher through Brown University’s Mindfulness Center. He is also a Mindfulness-Based Habit Change facilitator through Dr. Judson Brewer’s MindSciences Digital Therapeutic(DTx) programs which combine app-based training with in-person facilitated sessions to address habits from cigarettes to smart phones, emotional eating, and anxiety.  Robert teaches mindfulness classes and sitting-groups for InsightLA, Long Beach Mediation, Meditation Coalition, and the LA LGBT Center. He has been a computer animation artist since 1985 working in television, research and development and feature film production at DreamWorks Animation, Disney Feature Animation and other visual effects studios. He received his Master of Education degree from The Ohio State University and has taught art at Ohio State, Texas A&M, and University of Texas, Austin.