Chronic hyper-arousal and somatic tension degrade your cognitive baselines. This week serves as your physiological reset, shifting your autonomic nervous system from "fight-or-flight" toward parasympathetic dominance.

​

You will learn to activate the Relaxation Response, a universal physiological state and the direct antithesis of the stress response. This module focuses on interoception, the perception of bodily sensations, to achieve deep rest while the mind remains alert.

​

Class schedule:
 

• The Science of Stress:
  Understanding how hyper-arousal degrades cognition.

  ​

• The Relaxation Response:
  Neutralising the "fight-or-flight" system.

  ​

• Guided Practice 1:
  Simple Breath Meditation for physiological calming.
   

• The Sensory Hub:
  Why cortical thickness in the right anterior insula matters.

  ​

• Guided Practice 2:
  Body Scan Meditation for enhanced interoception.

  ​

• Optimising the Circuit:
  Strategy for consistent physiological re-alignment.

  ​

• Q&A
   

Supporting daily meditations (audio):
 

• Day 1: 5-min Simple Breath Meditation.

• Day 2: 7-min Simple Breath Meditation.

• Day 3: 8-min Mindful Breathing (focus on sensations).

• Day 4: 10-min Body Scan.

• Day 5: 10-min Relaxation Meditation.

• Day 6: 10-min Simple Breath Meditation.

• Day 7: 5-min Unguided Breath Meditation.

Ambition often leads to "mental loops" and rumination that consume valuable cognitive bandwidth. This week, you will train in decentering, the capacity to observe thoughts as transient mental events rather than immutable realities.

​

By exercising in mindfulness, you will change your relationship with your thoughts, significantly reducing psychological distress and distractive patterns. This training improves executive control by enhancing emotional acceptance, allowing your brain to process stress signals more efficiently.

​

Class schedule:

​

• The Cost of Rumination:
  How mental loops hijack bandwidth.

  ​

• Decentering Mechanics:
  Tools for cognitive de-coupling.

  ​

• Guided Practice 1:
  Mindfulness of Breath.
   

• The Mechanism of Control:
  The synergy between emotional acceptance and performance monitoring.

  ​

• Guided Practice 2:
  Mindfulness of Thoughts.
   

• Building Resilience:
  Practical application in high-stakes environments.
   

• Q&A
   

Supporting daily meditations:
 

• Day 1: 5-min Mindfulness of Breath.

• Day 2: 7-min Mindfulness of Breath.

• Day 3: 10-min Mindfulness of Thoughts.

• Day 4: 10-min Mindfulness of Breath and Body Sensations.

• Day 5: 10-min Breath Meditation with Labelling 

• Day 6: 10-min Mindfulness of Thoughts.

• Day 7: 5-min Focused Mindfulness.

Human minds wander approximately 46.9% of the time, a primary cause of unhappiness and strategic inefficiency. This week focuses on Focused Attention (FA) meditation to strengthen the prefrontal cortex, the seat of higher-order executive function.

​

You will learn to deactivate the Default Mode Network (DMN), the source of unproductive "mind chatter". This calibration improves metacognitive accuracy, or the ability to accurately assess your own cognitive performance.

​

Class schedule:
 

• Taming the Wandering Mind:
  The data on strategic inefficiency.

  ​

• The Mind-Wandering Engine:
  Deactivating the Default Mode Network.

  ​

• Guided Practice 1:
  Labelling the Breath with Numbers.
   

• Metacognitive Accuracy:
  Improving judgment through introspective accuracy.

  ​

• Guided Practice 2:
  Mantra Meditation ('Calm').
   

• Executive Focus:
  Strategies for sustained attention under pressure.

  ​

• Q&A
   

Supporting daily meditations:
 

• Day 1: 5-min Labelling the Breath with Numbers.

• Day 2: 7-min Labelling the Breath with Numbers.

• Day 3: 10-min Mantra Meditation ('Calm').

• Day 4: 10-min Focused Attention on Breath.

• Day 5: 12-min Mantra Meditation with Body Focus.

• Day 6: 10-min Labelling the Breath with Numbers.

• Day 7: 8-min Zen-style Breath Counting.

Habitual thought blocks and cognitive rigidity prevent novel problem-solving. This module utilises Open Monitoring (OM) practice to cultivate a distributed cognitive control state that allows for non-linear, conceptual "jumps".

​

Research demonstrates that this modality specifically facilitates the search through semantic networks to generate original and flexible ideas. You will learn to "step out of history" to enable breakthrough insight problem-solving.

​

Class schedule:
 

• The Innovation Impasse:
  Overcoming cognitive rigidity.

  ​

• Open Monitoring Mechanics:
  Lowering barriers to divergent thinking.

  ​

• Guided Practice 1:
  Mindfulness of Sounds.
   

• "Stepping Out of History":
  Reducing the influence of habitual patterns.

  ​

• Guided Practice 2:
  Contemplation Meditation (Pebble).

  ​

• Strategic Flexibility:
  Using the "Aha!" moment as a tool.

  ​

• Q&A
   

Supporting daily meditations:
 

• Day 1: 5-min Mindfulness of Sounds.

• Day 2: 7-min Mindfulness of Sounds.

• Day 3: 10-min Contemplation (Object from Nature).

• Day 4: 10-min Walking Meditation.

• Day 5: 12-min Open Awareness Meditation.

• Day 6: 10-min Contemplation on a Single Word.

• Day 7: 8-min Mindfulness of Sounds.

Standard empathy can lead to distress and burnout in leaders supporting ambitious teams. This week, you will train in Compassion, an action-oriented mental state that engages the brain's reward networks rather than distress signals.

​

This results in enhanced empathic accuracy, the ability to correctly infer others' mental and emotional states, and stronger team trust. You will cultivate the social foundations required to foster high-achieving "organisational citizenship".

​

Class schedule:
 

• The Empathy-Compassion Gap:
  Why compassion is the antidote to burnout.

  ​

• Empathic Accuracy:
  Mastering non-verbal cues and social cognition.

  ​

• Guided Practice 1:
  Loving-Kindness Meditation (Friends & Family).

  ​

• Organisational Citizenship:
  Cultivating a culture of prosocial behavior.

  ​

• Guided Practice 2:
  Compassion Training (Self & Neutral Person).

  ​

• The Relational Leader:
  Strategies for sustainable team influence.

  ​

• Q&A
   

Supporting daily meditations:
 

• Day 1: 5-min Loving-Kindness (Friends/Family).

• Day 2: 7-min Loving-Kindness (Friends/Family).

• Day 3: 10-min Loving-Kindness (Neutral Person).

• Day 4: 10-min Gratitude Meditation.

• Day 5: 12-min Loving-Kindness (Self).

• Day 6: 10-min Loving-Kindness (All Beings).

• Day 7: 10-min Compassion Cultivation.