For thousands of years, and in many spiritual traditions, the human mind has been described as a monkey swinging from one thought to another. Sometimes playful and distracted and at other times fear-based and anxious, our “monkey mind” has a major impact on how we experience our external circumstances and also determines our behavior. 

Our “monkey minds” are trying to keep us safe, this is the monkey’s main objective, but sometimes what our monkey mind tells us to do goes against our values and can sabotage our efforts to move forward in our work and personal lives. In this class we will use this “monkey mind” metaphor in order to: 

• Understand how the fear-based monkey mind gets triggered.
  
• Increase our ability to notice when the monkey gets activated.
  
• Become more skilled interrupting the monkey’s upset and disarming the monkey’s unhelpful call to action.
  
• Identify your “monkey mind’s” unhelpful safety strategies and replace them with expansion strategies that will help you move through difficult moments with more wisdom, grace, clarity, and value-guided action.
  

Guided by Health4U Emotional Wellness Consultant Lisa Laughman, participants will review key concepts from the book and link this material to other components of Acceptance Commitment Theory (ACT).