CORE: A Guide to Unified Mindfulness

By Julianna Raye

A Guide to Unified Mindfulness: Three Skills to 10X Your Happiness—Any Time, Anywhere offers a research-supported method for:

●Addressing all the challenges you face--including stress, anxiety, sleep problems, rumination, painful emotions, lack of motivation, loneliness, illness, injury, or any other difficulty
●Increasing happiness and fulfillment, including greater access to rest, energy, and positive emotion, understanding yourself better, and experiencing better connection in personal relationships
●Heightening focus, productivity, presence, mastery of your inner experience, and peak performance skills

This book also:
●Comes with free access to an engaging video series that reinforces and deepens your learning
●Speaks to people at all levels of meditation and mindfulness experience--from beginners to advanced practitioners
●Gives clear, easy, step-by-step instructions for a powerful mindfulness meditation approach that will help you to live a happier, healthier, more fulfilled, and more productive life
●Gives you specific meditation skills for any situation, for example while you’re eating, playing a sport, or in a meeting; you’ll enjoy each of these more and become more effective
●Makes meditation portable so you can take it with you to practice any time, meditate more, and get better results
●Helps you figure out which mindfulness technique to use and when
●Empowers you to understand all types of meditation and mindfulness
●Helps you wade through the hype and claims in the fields of mindfulness and meditation to find what works for you
●Comes from Julianna Raye, a mindfulness teacher with decades of experience and the head trainer of mindfulness teachers at Unified Mindfulness

• Language: English
• Publisher: Julianna Raye
• Release date: Apr 6, 2021
• ISBN: 9781005125042

Julianna Raye

Julianna Raye is devoted to deepening people’s ability to practice and understand research-supported mindfulness and to empowering anyone to guide others in its practice. She has been training individuals and groups in the Unified Mindfulness system for over two decades.She received her BA in psychology from Duke University. As CEO, lead content developer, and head trainer at Unified Mindfulness, she is dedicated to disseminating Shinzen Young’s comprehensive mindfulness meditation system through the creation and presentation of educational programs and teacher-training certification programs.Julianna also consults and offers private coaching, as well as onsite and online mindfulness training. Some clients include: Vigor, Case Western Reserve University, Lumosity, Vector Marketing, Fathom Digital Marketing, Hal Elrod’s BYEB, Avanoo, XChange, CSL Behring, UltraHuman, and others. She delivers keynotes; privately coaches executives, celebrities, and entrepreneurs; and leads group training for company leaders aiming to support preventative health care and improve the work environment through mindfulness meditation. In these roles, she delivers specific mindfulness strategies tailored to the individual’s or company’s needs.With over 150 weeks of silent retreat training in both the mindfulness and Zen traditions, Julianna has completed more than 20,000 hours of formal training. Her brain has been studied in neuroscience labs at Vanderbilt, the University of New Mexico, the University of Arizona, and in a published University of California, Los Angles study comparing long-term meditators’ brains with those of non-meditators. She also designed and led the mindfulness program for a workplace research study, which was carried out under top mindfulness researcher David Creswell, PhD, through his Human Performance lab at Carnegie Mellon University. That study showed positive outcomes with regard to improved employee well-being and decreased stress. A novel aspect of it was an emphasis on the application of mindfulness techniques in daily life, which is a strength of the Unified Mindfulness system. Julianna is the coauthor of papers from the study that were published in two prominent peer-reviewed journals: Mindfulness and the Journal of Occupational Health Psychology. Dr. Creswell developed the field of health neuroscience and Julianna is currently collaborating with him to design and build Equa, an app based on his equanimity research.Julianna’s latest project is MindSizesports.com, which was developed with Christian Straka, global head of mindset for Adidas Runners. MindSize utilizes the Unified Mindfulness system of meditation to train athletes for optimal performance.

Book preview

Foreword

I first met Julianna Raye in 1997. She arrived at one of my retreats having meditated on her own for a couple of years. At the time, she was a professional singer-songwriter, and she came to me through a mutual friend, Leonard Cohen. Leonard and I had been fellow monks, training with the same Zen master, Joshu Sasaki Roshi, and when Julianna asked Leonard to recommend a teacher, he suggested me. While I was happy to learn how she had come to me, I had seen many students come and go over the years. For mindfulness to be effective, consistent practice is essential. So, I told her that what mattered most was whether she would still be doing the practice I was introducing her to, or something like it, in twenty years’ time.

Now, more than twenty years later, Julianna heads the Unified Mindfulness organization, which is the official teacher training for my Unified Mindfulness system. My system was developed over fifty years of trial and error. As a mindfulness teacher versed in a wide range of meditation styles, I became interested in conveying the unifying principles at the heart of all meditative paths. As a neuroscience consultant, I have aimed to bring about a full integration of science and meditation, for the mutual benefit of each discipline. Designed with the spirit of science, the interactive, algorithmic style of Unified Mindfulness is a model that represents both of those aims.

When I asked Julianna to start the teacher-training program, she had been a professional mindfulness teacher for more than a decade. Her contribution to my legacy is deeply gratifying, and as a science lover, I like to say, for fun, that she’s the Edison to my Maxwell. Julianna has the unique ability to make my often academic-sounding approach accessible to the general public. With her dedication to her own practice and her desire to pay forward what she has received, she has harnessed the model I developed for contemplative practice to create powerful programs that help anyone effectively learn and share mindfulness practice with others.

Julianna founded the Unified Mindfulness organization, along with Dave Dennis, Harold Abilock, and Donald W. McCormick, in 2016. Because people need to learn the Unified Mindfulness approach before they can teach it, she has developed many educational programs. The point of entry to all the training on UnifiedMindfulness.com is the free introductory video series this book is based on, the CORE Program.

This free training gives you everything you need to start or deepen your mindfulness practice, and as you can see from the reviews in this book, people love and appreciate it. So, welcome. It is well that you have come. Enjoy!

Shinzen Young

November 17, 2020

Sonication Enhanced Mindful Awareness Laboratory

University of Arizona

Tucson, Arizona

Introduction: Welcome to the Unified Mindfulness CORE Training Guide

The CORE training guide gives you everything you need to start or deepen your mindfulness meditation practice. This training guide introduces you to Unified Mindfulness (UM), a highly refined approach to meditation developed over fifty years by the renowned meditation teacher Shinzen Young. Unified Mindfulness brings together all styles of meditation practice by teaching you the skills at their core. The UM system is used by institutions such as Harvard Medical School, Carnegie Mellon University, the University of Arizona, and the University of Vermont as the basis for their research on meditation and its application in neuroscience, psychology, and clinical practice.

If you’re new to meditation, you’ll find that the simple, straightforward lessons make Unified Mindfulness easy to understand and just as easy to put into practice.

If you’re an experienced meditator, you’ll discover that Unified Mindfulness’s flexible, algorithmic framework presents a multitude of options, allowing you to optimize your existing practice based on what works best for you.

I strongly encourage you to use this guide as a companion to our free video series. The guide goes into greater depth on some of the topics, and the video series increases retention and brings the concepts to life in an entertaining way.

How to get the most out of the training:

Go through all the lessons in order at least once, using this training guide alongside the free Unified Mindfulness CORE video series. Later, you can use this book to refer back to specific lessons for reminders. To get started, just read the guide from beginning to end and watch the videos to increase your learning and retention—plus, they’re fun to watch!

There’s a learning curve, so be patient. Every system has its trade-offs. Unified Mindfulness has more complexity up front than other approaches, which leads to greater strength and flexibility for the rest of your life. There are a number of concepts to master at first, and I want to reassure you that this is just a learning curve. It does get easier, and you can always choose to keep things super simple, because the system is designed to suit your specific needs. The good news is that once you’ve gotten past the information and instructions, you’ll have a powerful and easy practice that will adapt to any situation you might need it for and grow with you as you evolve and change.

Download the two guided mindfulness audios to practice with. As a bonus, with this book we offer two audio downloads so that you can try out what you’re learning. I encourage you to use either or both of these as often as you need to, even daily. Establishing a daily meditation practice is essential for seeing the rewards of practice. Do whatever you can to make that happen!

Master this material with our self-administered quizzes. There’s an optional (and fun) interactive quiz in our free video series that you can take after each chapter to ensure that the material has really stuck with you. Quizzes are a powerful, research-supported learning tool with several benefits. First, you’ll increase your understanding of the material. Second, you’ll be better at applying what you have learned. Third, you’ll remember what you learned for longer. To further deepen your knowledge, you’ll also find a rich discussion thread for each of the quiz sections answered by top Unified Mindfulness coaches. And by the way, getting answers wrong can actually improve your retention. So, the pressure’s off. Plus, the quizzes are pretty entertaining (if we do say so ourselves).

Make it interesting for yourself! Begin to notice what you find interesting as you practice and move toward that. This is your practice, so the more you have a sense of ownership and engagement in the process, the more motivated you’ll be to nurture it. As you’ll discover, once you understand how to develop skillful attention, you can apply it in whatever ways you find most compelling.

Make clear choices - You can stick to one technique or vary your practice. The choice is yours. Just make clear, conscious choices about how you’d like to practice at any given time.

Expect the unexpected. Sometimes as you practice, you may have unusual experiences. This is just nature’s way of freeing up your sensory system so that it runs more efficiently and smoothly. Although such experiences may never happen for you, when you’re aware that they can happen, they’re less likely to throw you off. Included in this training guide is a section on the most common of these experiences and what to do when they happen.

If you are under a doctor or psychiatrist’s care, please consult them first. It is important to see whether mindfulness meditation is appropriate for you at this time. Mindfulness is not a substitute for psychological or medical care.

Finally, we at Unified Mindfulness want to thank you for choosing to do this work. It may seem as though this is a practice you need to develop primarily for yourself, and that’s true. But ultimately, it’s a way to be of greater service in the world. You may find yourself becoming more compassionate or understanding. You may find yourself with more energy to contribute in the ways you feel inspired to contribute. As you strengthen your resilience, become more self-accepting, and reach new levels of fulfillment and freedom, you have that much more to offer to others as well.

CHAPTER 1:

A Skeptic’s Unexpected Journey

I was introduced to Shinzen Young’s work on what felt like an auspicious occasion. The year was 1997, and Leonard Cohen had invited me to his house for dinner. At the time, I was a professional singer-songwriter who, of course, had profound respect for Leonard’s work. But I didn’t fully realize just how much I had been influenced by it. Judy Collins’ Wildflowers had been one of my mom’s favorite records when I was a child. Mom was a sculptor and her studio was in our basement. She would often put on Wildflowers and leave all the doors open so that she could hear it as she sculpted. But I was never a liner notes kind of girl. So without realizing it, I had grown up listening to Leonard’s songs.

I made that connection only years later, when my mom was dying. I bought Wildflowers for us to enjoy together and finally got around to reading those liner notes. By that time, I felt indebted to Leonard for radically changing the course of my life through the simple gestures of introducing me to my meditation teachers, Shinzen Young and Joshu Sasaki Roshi. In fact, Leonard’s influence in my life helped me be present for my mom when she was dying in a way I could never have been capable of without it. Sitting in the