We all have wild chickens in our lives – the unexpected, unwanted, and annoying; things don’t go according to plan. We all have petty tyrants in our lives – people who challenge, provoke, and vex us; push our buttons and drive us crazy. The skill of mindfulness shows us how to tame our wild chickens and disarm our petty tyrants. In Wild Chickens and Petty Tyrants: 108 Metaphors for Mindfulness, you will learn the language of mindfulness and the wisdom of Buddhism through 108 creative metaphorical images. Each brief chapter is a direct, bold, and accessible way to bring the value of present-moment living into your life.

Wild Chickens Workshops provide an opportunity to learn the valuable skill of mindfulness through guided meditation practice and metaphors for mindfulness from the book. We will practice different mindfulness techniques and problem solve applying mindfulness through discussion and dialogue.

There are four Wild Chickens Workshops. Each workshop is held on a Saturday from 9:30 to 4:00. The fee for each workshop is $75 each (or $250 for the complete series). Each workshop includes a complimentary Exquisite Mind Guided Meditation CD. Your first workshop includes a complimentary copy of Wild Chickens and Petty Tyrants: 108 Metaphors for Mindfulness.

Goals & Objectives

1. •Present Buddhist concepts of mind, self, acceptance, and suffering in an accessible, practical, and memorable way.
   
   

2. •Use metaphors to reprogram long-standing habits
   
   

3. •Obtain a lexicon of practical metaphors for integrating mindfulness into daily life
   
   

4. •Discover/author new metaphors for making changes in your life
   
   

5. •Provide tools to relive suffering, reduce stress, and increase happiness and satisfaction
   
   

6. •Establish daily mindfulness meditation habits and practices and learn to overcome common obstacles to practice
   
   

7. •Learn Tools for Living Now!
   

Praise for the teaching of Arnie Kozak

"Presenter has wonderful heart" -- participant in Vermont Psychological Association Workshop

"The Exquisite Mind and Self course is one I would take again and again. Dr. Arnold Kozak's teachings and shared experiences are rich and invaluable, and his sensitive and personal approach is extremely special and fulfilling." -- Leslie Gauff, Stowe, Vermont, participant in 8-week community program.

"We all pack so much into our daily lives that we often fail to take a moment and enjoy the present. Many times we miss the beauty surrounding us because our minds are planning the future or revisiting the past. Mindfulness training taught me new skills to bring my mind back to the present. Living in the present allows for more awareness and enjoyment of life. A side benefit, and a huge benefit at that, is being able to use these techniques to reduce daily anxiety and stress. The Exquisite Mind at Work proved to be a very useful workshop for me and the other participants at PKC Corporation. I'm pleased that PKC will be adding this workshop to our Wellness Benefits Package." Donna Hamilton, SPHR, Director of Human Resources, PKC Corporation.

How can we think of the mind except through metaphor? By learning and practicing metaphors for mind, we can gain greater freedom and make our thoughts and emotions work for us instead of against us. We learn, among others, the following metaphors:

Storytelling Mind

The Four-Floor Building

You’ve Got Mail!

Different Kinds of Snow

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Metaphors for the Mind

While we can only understand the mind through metaphors, it might be the case that we can not only understand the self through metaphors, but our very notion of self may itself be a metaphor. We will learn how to identify helpful and harmful metaphors for self by learning, among others, the following metaphors:

The Me Movie

A Flashlight in a Dark Room

Leader of the Pack

Quorum

Put On Your Own Oxygen Mask First

Metaphors for Self

Our attitudes and beliefs can get us into all sorts of trouble. We stay in troubling relationships, we strive for perfection, and we the opinions of others much too seriously. We’ll seek to gain a measure of freedom from this ordinary form of craziness by learning the following metaphors and more:

The Man Trap

“Perfectomy”

“I’ve Got Good News and I’ve Got Bad News”

Man Loses Arm in Tragic Industrial Accident

Quack, Quack, Quack

Metaphors for Ordinary Craziness

Whenever we are in the present moment we are in a posture of acceptance towards what is happening. Much of our dissatisfaction and unhappiness in life stems from resisting what is so. We’ll use the following metaphors and others to move closer towards acceptance of our life in the moment:

Wild Chickens
Petty Tyrants
Falling Down
Why Didn’t I Kneel More Deeply to Accept You?
Office Hours

Metaphors for Acceptance