The Amazing Lyfe Project

Introduction

The AMAZING Lyfe Project delivers tools designed to improve psychological well-being and to be used for life-long growth, in order to develop and fulfil one's true potential.  It is designed to help students discover their unique gifts, as well as how to live a happier, more fulfilled life. Wellbeing is increased by building resilience, creativity, emotional balance and regulation as well as concentration and focus being enhanced by regular mindfulness practice.

Participants learn how to develop healthy attitudes and behaviours in their emotional life as well as how to begin to attain mastery over the wild and untrained realms of the mind. In other words, students learn how to get the most out of their brains.

Meditation and other tools are used in a process of self-exploration and self-development, all of which provide a set of coping skills, strategies and attitudes to improve the ability to deal with stresses that cannot be avoided.  These might include areas such as developmental stages (puberty, adolescence, menopause, aging), and other challenges and changes, like loss, illness, and work/job/exam stresses that are part of normal life.

The AMAZING Lyfe project is a program of education based on ancient and modern psycho-transpersonal practices from around the world; including different types of meditation, visualisation, psychosynthesis techniques, humanistic, positive and transpersonal psychology and emotional intelligence skills.  The program exceeds the target for SEAL outcomes for schools, as resilience, coping with failure, loss, and strategies for stress busting and learning from mistakes are added in addition to those social and emotional skills offered by SEAL. AML is also designed primarily for older students, with more emphasis on facing life challenges and finding meaning and purpose in every aspect of living.

The program has come out of twenty years of research, training and study in Person Centred Counselling; Energy Healing; Transpersonal Psychology; Consciousness Studies; Child development; World Religions; Psychosynthesis, Psychotherapy; Meditation practices; Shamanic Studies; Sacred Ceremonies and Rituals; Visualisation Techniques; Life, Death and Transition experiences.

The project is designed to run over a school year i.e. from September to July, with a weekly class of one hour, a weekly sharing circle of one hour, and five 10 to 15 minute daily meditation/visualisation/mindfulness practice sessions.  Although students enjoy talking and sharing their experiences so much that we generally spend the whole lunch hour together discussing issues related to the topic in hand, or to applying what they have learned to real life in the moment situations.

Assuming that the participants commit to regular practice, (support for this is provided by the structure of the program in the form of the daily sessions) the Amazing Lyfe project is designed to create the following outcomes:

PHYSICAL

• Higher levels of immune efficiency ~
• Less stress in the body ~
• More relaxed comfortable body and better posture *

MENTAL

• Increased levels of concentration *
• Increased ability to make positive choices for themselve s*
• Improved ability to think independently *
• High level of inner resourcefulness *
• Increased ability to cope with challenges in life *
• Calmer, more positive attitude *
• Improved school marks *
• New problem solving skills *

EMOTIONAL

• Enhanced emotional self-awareness *
• Ability to self-soothe *
• Greater levels of self esteem and self confidence *
• Greater capacity for empathy and compassion *
• Ability to respond, rather than react to events in life *
• Overall increased sense of well-being *
• Calmer *
• More emotional balance *
• Acceptance of painful as well as comfortable emotional states *
• Reduced levels of emotional over-sensitivity *

BEHAVIOURAL

• Less acting out and disruption in the class room *
• Reduced experiences and expressions of violent or angry outbursts *
• Higher level of self responsibility for own behaviour *
• Increase in self-motivation and creativity *

• Greater sense of connection to self, friends/family, society, nature and spirit/God/the divine *
• Deeper sense of responsibility to others and the environment *
• A sense of meaning and purpose *

These outcomes are not across the board. This means that depending on the nature of the participant, their goals for the project and their characters, the outcomes for each participant have been found to vary. However, the potential outcomes listed above include those that have been achieved by students so far, as well as those found in other research samples of meditators. Outcomes experienced by AML participants are followed by a *. Those with a ~ next to them have not been tested for.

My wonderful  personal Teachers over the last 20 years include: Gary Zukav and Linda Francis; Elisabeth Kubler Ross; Dic Edwards of University of Wales Lampeter;  Tony and Ann Neate, Diane Furlong and Ann Drury of The College of Healing; Les Lancaster and Mike Daniels of Liverpool John Moores University.

Other influences that I also owe a debt of gratitude to include: Roberto Assagioli; Richard Bach; John Bradshaw; His Holiness the Dalai Lama; Gill Edwards; Albert Einstein; Jorge Ferrer: Pier Ferrucci; David Fontana; Dina Glouberman; Mahatma Ghandi; William James; Carl Jung; Jack Kornfield; Satish Kumar; Kenneth Meadows: Alice Miller; Dan Millman; Sogyal Rinpoche; Ingrid Slack; Hyemeyohsts Storm; Neale Donald Walsh; John Welwood; Diana Whitmore; Marianne Williamson; Irvin D Yalom

Books by these authors have been invaluable to me on my journey so far, and I refer to them or their work directly or indirectly often in the project.

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