The Palouse Mindfulness course has definitely surpassed all my expectations. Each week offered life-changing insights that gently demolished my deeply rooted fears and illusions about me and others. The benefits from the course were multiple and interconnected and each one of them would have been worth going through the eight weeks of training. During this time, blockages were removed and floodgates of major changes in my private and business life were opened. Most surprisingly, I feel safe as I move through the challenges and joys at great speed.

       I started meditating 40 years ago but stopped doing it formally several years later. I also practiced Yoga sporadically. Lately, I have pursued mostly imaging and visualizations.

       Doing the Guided Practices and focusing on the breath, moment to moment and systematically, after all those years felt like coming back home. I was reminded how peaceful it is in the eye of the cyclone and that the only constant in this ever changing world is our inner essence.

       Self-compassion and self-love reduced my need to please others in order to obtain their approval and recognition and changed the chemistry of my body. I had already worked on this aspect for years, but during this course something clicked and I felt profound self-love and total self-acceptance. Consequently, loving kindness towards others acquired a new quality.

       I am unable to maintain the liberating feeling of not judging myself and others all the time in the course of the day, but now I know how to restore it swiftly and mindfully.

       I no longer have backaches thanks to the newly acquired ability to relax my contracted muscles and to the quite regular practice of Mindful Yoga 1 and 2. Yoga not only strengthens my physical and emotional balance, flexibility and agility, but I have also learned to listen to my body more carefully and the body is the gateway to the soul. Of course, the Body Scan meditation deepens this communication.

       Marshall Rosenberg’s Non-Violent Communication was perhaps the greatest revelation and I am trying to put it into practice in my daily life. Becoming aware of our own needs and those of others, articulating and interpreting them clearly and finding ways to satisfy those needs is not an easy task, but the effects are invaluable for everyone.

       I look forward to applying these skills and techniques in my work with students and clients and plan to obtain the necessary certificate in order to teach Mindfulness. In Italy, students and teachers in multi-ethnic, mixed ability classrooms face a lot of stress on a daily basis and I can see no better tools for dealing with those challenges.

       I take this opportunity to thank the authors of this program and all those who have contributed with their superb material. Offering this entire bounty for free is an inestimable gift.

       May the many benefits so many of us reaped from this course return to all of you in the form of multiple blessings.

       Yours, Danijela