Improving Metacognitive Ability with Meditation
Wisdom and Heart-Focused Meditation Practices for Better Interpersonal Relationships, Emotional Regulation, & Goal Directed Behavior
5 Week Online Meditation Course- Date: 29th Nov - 27th Dec 2021
- Instructor: Cedric Reeves
- Cost: Sliding scale
In this course we'll learn about metacognition as a means for improving 1) interpersonal relationships, 2) emotional self-regulation capacities, and 3) goal directed behaviour.
We'll develop an at-home daily practice of 30 minutes per day to practice these metacognitive skills.
I view this course as equipping you with the ability and concepts to use your mindfulness skills for mundane psychological transformation.
Who is this for?
- For anyone who wants to go from insecure to secure attachment.
- Suitable for anyone new to attachment-work, or is already experienced.
- People with Insecure Attachment.
- For anyone who is willing to do the work to get results
Format
- Program: One live 90 minute class per week
- Live Online Sessions: The live sessions will be hosted on Zoom. An email with the zoom links will be sent to you after you have registered.
- Q&A: There will be opportunity to ask questions during the Q&A section.
Attendance & Recordings
- Partial attendance is fine - however you get best results if you attend all sessions.
- Late Starts: You can join even after it has started.
- View at your own pace: The event will be recorded and sent out to registered participants for viewing on your own schedule.
Event Date & Time
This course will run twice in order to be accessible to people in different time zones. The content is exactly the same. You will get the access details for both after signing up.
There will be one live 90 minute class per week.
Option 1 Monday |
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+12h
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Option 2 Monday |
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+12h
|
1
course Overview
This program is suitable for beginners to meditation and healing work.
The first hour of the workshop will be review that covers the basics of Attachment Theory and Attachment Repair. If you have taken other courses with attachmentrepair.com you can skip the first hour.
This program will be focused on wisdom meditation practice. The second half will be focused on compassion. To that point, we’ll learn about of Mindfulness of Inner States (Vipassana) (weeks one and two), Essence Noting (Vipassana with elements of Mahamudra) (week three), and Compassion meditation (Tong Len) (week four and five).
Moreover, the emphasis will be applying the lessons and meditative practices in our real everyday walking around lives to improve our daily functioning.
The model of metacognition that we’ll use is ‘the six metacognitive capacities’ developed by the Third Center For Cognitive Psychotherapy (The Rome Group) (Semerari, DiMaggio, Liotti, et al.).
- Identification
- Relating Variables
- Differentiation
- Integration
- Decentration
- Mastery
Classes will be divided between theory and practice. The main focus will be on meditation. As such, all participants are asked to make a commitment to meditate 30 minutes per day, as part of the course (social support will be available!).
The lecture content will be on metacognitive skills, emotional regulation skills, and Buddhist meditative practices which help us cultivate these mental qualities.
Much of the psychological material will be drawn from Jeffrey Young (Schema Therapy), Bruce Ecker, Peter Fonagy and Anthony Bateman’s Mentalization Based Treatment, and the work on metacognition by Semerari, Liotti, DiMaggio, et al.
Course Curriculum
The course is broken up into 5 classes
- Basics of Attachment Theory how Secure Attachment Conditioning and good Metacognitive Function go together
- Basics of mentalization and context
- What is metacognition
- Definition of metacognition (Third School of Cognitive Therapy’s model)
- Specific functions of metacognition
- Why would you want to improve it
- How to improve it (course overview)
- Psychotherapy
- Meditation & Practices we’ll do in this course
- Vipassana (focused on wisdom and equanimity)
- Basic Mahasi-style and Shinzen’s See Hear Feel
- Vipassana on Thoughts, Emotions, and Body Tensions (See-in, Hear-in, Feel-in, Feel-out)
- Essence noting
- Applying trigger practice
- Compassion practice (Tong Len) (hear opening)
- What to watch out for
- Practice technique
- Vipassana noting (Mix of See Hear Feel and Mahasi-style noting with emphasis on mental states)
- What
- Why
- How
- When
- Who
- What to watch out for
- What is metacognition
- Meditation
- Write down some triggers to work on in the meditation
- Setting the foundations
- Trigger practice
- Visualization for using metacognitive skills in daily life (this is the whole point!). Emphasis on “me too” practice
- Review of last class. Practice reports and questions
- New material
- Reiterating mentalization, its functions and how the wisdom practices built up these capacities
- Trigger Practice
- Visualization for using metacognitive skills in daily life. Emphasis on “me too” practice
- Review of last class. Practice reports and questions
- New material
- Essence Noting Meditation Technique
- What
- Why
- How
- When
- Who
- What to watch out for
- Equanimity: Equanimity as Emotional Self-Mastery
- Mastery as both the cause and the outcome of emotional regulation
- Mastery is what allows for keeping the mind organized enough to then have emotionally corrective experiences.
- Metacognitive capacity as container of the beliefs (what keeps you out of the ditch when you have poor conditioning)
- Example of the AAI measuring the attachment schemas from filtered through metacognitive function
- A bigger “veto button on the impulses”.
- Essence Noting Meditation Technique
- Trigger Practice
- Collaboration as the Building Blocks of Civilization (division of labor)
- Metacognition as the foundation of collaboration
- Visualization for using metacognitive skills in daily life. Emphasis on “me too” practice
- Review and Troubleshooting
- Compassion: What? Why? How?
- Compassion as Emotional Self-Mastery
- Compassion Meditation (Tong Len):
- What
- Why
- How
- When
- Who
- What to watch out for
- Seeing how compassion allows us to practice the metacognitive skills one by one (list of metacognitive functions from the Rome School)
- Differentiating sincere, secure concern for others (true compassion) and insecure, nervous concern (anxious preoccupation)
- Applying compassion to the Schema Modes
- Visualization for using metacognitive skills in daily life. Emphasis on “me too” practice
- Review of last class
- Practice reports and trouble shooting
- Applying compassion to the Schema Modes
- Visualization for using metacognitive skills in daily life. Emphasis on “me too” practice
- Wrap up
Miscellaneous Notes
There will be time for Q&A and spot coaching during the live event. The Q&A recording will not be made available thereafter. If you do not attend live, you will not have access to the Q&A.
We will be doing deep work. For that reason please feel free to take a break at any point.
Who is this for?
This program is for those of us who...
- Are looking to improve our psychological health, especially those who have tried other healing modalities with disappointing results.
- Are interested in learning a new way to apply heart and wisdom meditation practices.
- Want support in developing a daily meditation habit.
- Want to deepen our existing Buddhist practice of positive emotion.
- Have problems with exploration and self development, relationships and emotional regulation
- Want to develop mastery in our emotional lives.
Benefits
These are some of the benefits you will have by the end of the program
Theoretical Understanding
- An overview of mentalization and emotional regulation.
- The role mentalization/metacognition plays in interpersonal relationships
Psychological
- Get established in traditional Buddhist wisdom and heart practices.
While there is a strong emphasis on psychological health in this course, it is predominantly Buddhist-inspired. As such, this course will offer an introduction to Buddhist systems of generating positive emotion and working with fixed views (schemas according to schema therapy, or sankharas in the Theravada) - Develop greater access to positive mental states and grow in confidence when working through negative mental states
- Understand better how your mind works; seeing volitions arise in the mind and noticing the gap before they are acted out
- Learn to use the identification function of mentalization (mindfulness) to catch afflictive mind states as they arise, and respond more creatively. Learn to work through these so that you actually benefit in your day-to-day life
- Increased sense of agency
For your relationships
- Greater valuing of relationships, interpersonal connection, and more ease in them
- Enhanced capacity to feel warmth from and towards others
- Clearer understanding of how you show up in relationships
- Acceptance of faults in self and other
Support Structure
- A sense of camaraderie as a result of seeing how our psychological difficulties are rooted in common experiences that affect us all
- Opportunities to find accountability partners to meditate with during the week
Frequently Asked Questions
About Participation
Payment Questions
Technical Questions
If you are experiencing any technical issues relating to accessing the material or live sessions, please get in touch with us. We will get back to you as soon as possible.
We can be reached with our online contact form.
Testimonials
This is what participants of prior courses have to say:
N.P.
Loved the course and loved this kind of emotional work. Look forward to doing more that you offer. Content was excellent. Meditation around Schema modes went quite deep and uncovered difficult emotions. Doing micro hits has improved some situations that would have gone worse.
Antoine
I’m very happy about the Embodying Secure Attachment Course. It’s good to have a course for people who are well on the way of healing their wounds. Comes at the perfect time for me.
Chelsea
I gained an ability to self soothe, meet my needs for validation and feeling seen/heard (which were often unmet in childhood), an overall feeling like I am less alone in my work of healing my attachment. I realize I benefit greatly from an 8 week course with a weekly meeting, I am able to do daily meditations on my own and feel supported in this routine with the weekly meetings. I feel I am actively and consistently working on my attachment repair by being part of a longer course (as opposed to a weekend workshop).
Allison
I am enjoying the Healing Anxious-Preoccupied Attachment course so much! It's blowing my mind, and that's after decades of amazing therapy, EMDR, attachment couples therapy, neurofeedback, inner child nurturing, self-compassion, and many other profound growth experiences. I’m so delighted by how much I'm getting out of the course. Feels like it's a missing piece for me that is so healing. Thank you !
Johnny
I love your offerings. Keep them coming. You have a good capacity to make people feel seen – and also show great respect for us as individuals – in itself that is an healing factor in being in courses of yours! Your humbleness and humour – make every call a killer. Rock on. I like learning about these subjects! Feels very helpful in understanding my problems/reason to part of my suffering. I feel I have grown during the course so far – and or moving in a better direction.
Allyson
THANK YOU!! this is powerful for me, so thank you thank you for sharing your insight. I like how you really balance the “just do the work” attitude with sooo much compassion and empathy for how hard it is. Now I know how to use the immense power of my imagination to heal my most fundamental body-mind-soul mechanisms and have a more joyful, loving life.
Anon
I’m sure this will seem out of the blue to you, but I was just thinking of things I am thankful for and thought of you and the two Attachment Repair courses of yours I had the pleasure to participate in. I just wanted to say a very heartfelt thank you. I want you to know I really appreciated the kindness and effort you put into that work, and into responding to all of our questions. My exposure to your teaching has been immensely helpful for me.
Christine
Cedric is an amazing meditation teacher, and this course really changed a lot for me. I really liked his authentic, refreshing approach and the way he combines scientific research with A LOT of practical exercises to reprogram the mind. Over the time of the course, I could literally watch my self esteem and my motivation to get things done grow. The course really motivated me to get going with my business and get things done, because I started to believe that I can actually do it.
Dani
Thank you for continuing to make these classes. When I am able to attend, they make a really positive contribution to my mental health :)
Registration
Registration has closed.
Please note: What is on offer here is meditation coaching, not psychotherapy or counseling.