Being with Diabetes:
Meditation as Medicine
A 6-week foundational course in bringing meditation to diabetes & diabetes to meditation.
Stay tuned for the course on demand
With special thanks to our friends and these amazing organizations, for your support of the DiabetesSangha and the Type One Diabetes community .
*these organizations have not contributed financially directly to this course
Course Details
This course spans 6 weeks, with live 90 minute sessions running every Sunday from January 15th through February 19th. Each week takes us through different science, evidence-based practices and strategies, exercises, and discussions (as well as, of course, practices!) geared to shed light on how to bring different kinds of awareness to our lives.
Additionally, the course facilitators – none other than the DiabetesSangha facilitators you know and love, Brooke, Bri, & Sam – will guide practices throughout the week during their normal practice times aimed at further exploring and integrating each week’s learnings.
While the course is an introductory course, meaning absolutely no experience is required in order to get the most of the course, we also welcome those with more experience looking to explore the links between their practice and their life with Diabetes. The course was created by, and will be run by and for people with Type One Diabetes. However, those who are T1D adjacent (meaning they have a similar condition, care for someone with T1D, or are a family member or friend of a person with T1D) are not only welcome, but encouraged to come.
Course Preview
Week 1: Introduction to Present Moment Awareness
During Week 1, we will orient ourselves to the practice of mindfulness - a quality necessary for all forms of meditation. Through guided activities and in conversation, we will explore the utility of bringing mindful awareness to our senses (smell, sight, touch, taste, and hearing) for the purpose of cultivating connection and drawing valuable insight from our moment-to-moment experiences.
Week 2: Experiencing Coming & Going
During this week, we will primarily work with sound and breath as mediums for us to explore the part of life that we become so familiar with in living with Diabetes – that which is changing. Through practice, we get to learn how to not only be comfortable with change, but be comforted by change – the change that’s happening all the time. We’ll explore some of the science of and methods for working with the body through changes.
Week 3: A Body, with Diabetes
Week 3 will focus on awareness of the body – the core of a transformative meditation practice. We learn how to pay careful attention in a few different ways to what’s happening in the body and how it impacts everything else in our life – both while sitting and in motion!
Week 4: Mindfulness of the Mind
In Week 4, we will turn our attention to the contents and activities of our minds - thoughts and thinking. We will explore how different mindfulness techniques and practices can be used to build awareness of the constant, ever-changing flow of our mind-stuff; while becoming familiar with our cognitive habits and default-settings.
Week 5: Recognizing & Responding to Difficulties
In Week 5, we will explore mindfulness and self-compassion. Life, particularly life with diabetes, is not easy. Challenging situations of all kinds show up on our doorstep each day and often bring with them difficult emotions. During this session, we will explore and experience how compassion-based practices can support us in recognizing and working with challenges and stressors skillfully when they (inevitably!) arise.
Week 6: Cultivating Protective Factors
Our final week of “Being with Diabetes” will delve into the ways that consciously practicing and cultivating ‘beneficial mind-states,’ such as gratitude, savoring, appreciation, and loving-kindness, can can help buffer us against our day-to-day stressors as individuals navigating life with diabetes, expand our resilience in the face of challenges, and connect with the fundamental well-being that is available to us in each and every moment.
Frequently Asked Questions
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Along with the launch of this course, DiabetesSangha has officially launched as a nonprofit! We are currently a fiscally sponsored project, under the wing of Ignition Community Glass (LINKED) (thanks to Trish Atha!). For this course, 50% of the donation total will be split amongst facilitators, while the other 50% will go to DiabetesSangha as an organization, in order to further our mission of bringing the meditation practices to the Diabetes world as a true medicine for the stress and overwhelm that’s just part of living with Diabetes. We’ve got an ambitious 2023 ahead, with many in-person presentations and meetups already planned – we could use the support. With that said, no one is required to pay any specific amount – there is an option to choose your own donation amount for the course, or if you must, there is an option to participate for free as well.
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The course is truly designed to be appropriate for those with any amount of meditation experience, including beginners. Furthermore, if you find yourself struggling with keeping up or not getting certain concepts, you’ll have opportunities both during live sessions and throughout each week to check in with the course facilitators. Beginning a meditation practice with the support of a course format is really one of the best possible ways to start, because you learn both the “how” and “why” of meditation at the same time, have a community to learn and share with, and have “teachers” to whom you can ask questions. You’re also welcome to just drop in for regular weekly practices with DiabetesSangha, if that feels like a more feasible entrance to meditation for you at this time.
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As mentioned above, this course has been crafted by and will be guided by three people with T1D, for the DiabetesSangha. But we welcome anyone with a related condition, (like other forms of Diabetes, or other autoimmune disorders) or anyone who is in any way personally touched by T1D, to join in as well. All are welcome. Know you will be meditating with the T1D community – and know there’s a space for you here, whatever your relationship to T1D may be.
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Not so fast! Being in community with other, less experienced meditators and relearning some of the foundations is actually an essential part of maturing in practice. Your presence is not only incredibly beneficial to everyone else, but helps small things continue to click from new perspectives, allowing you to develop even more of what is often, ironically seen as one of the ends of practice: A Beginner’s Mind.
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Our hope and intention with this course is that participants join most sessions live, as engagement with the course community is an incredibly important element of this course and you will be able to get the most out of the course if you can engage in each live session fully. However, live sessions will be recorded and available to those who register for the course, and you’ll have opportunities to check in live with facilitators throughout the week, so how many you show up for is ultimately at your discretion. Please don’t sign up if you plan to do most or all of the course by catching up with the recordings – we’ll have a more appropriate offering to learn in this way, asynchronously, by mid to late 2023.
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A very pragmatic question indeed! During each week of the course, we will gather for a 90-minute live session which will be chalk-full of practices and group discussions. Beyond that, we ask that you make it your intention to do some form of “formal” meditation practice each day (even for 5-10 minutes), in a style that’s relevant to the topic of the week. Of course, it’s no big deal if you miss a few days, and we’ll never know. Beyond that, you’ll have options to connect to facilitators during their regular weekly DiabetesSangha guided meditations, but that is completely optional. Additional resources will be shared with you on the course page as well, which will enable you to dive further into each week’s concepts and practices, if you are interested (though, much better to use your extra time practicing than reading!).