Mindfulness & T1D:
Bringing Wisdom to the Highs and Lows of Life
If there's one thing we've learned as people living with diabetes, it's this: mental health and bodily health are not separate. That's why we've partnered with Beyond Type 1, on a new, free meditation and mindfulness course designed specifically for people living with diabetes. We'll share a new lesson each week in honor of Mental Health Month, with tips and exercises designed to support your health as a person with T1D.
It's available exclusively to members of our Beyond Type 1 Community App, so join now to get started
This five-week series, led by DiabetesSangha cofounder Sam Tullman, will highlight the unexplored connections between mindfulness practices and life with Diabetes, bring new perspective of your mind and life from both the cutting-edge scientific and ancient meditative lenses, and provide some early pathways and practices to begin to explore this new way of living for yourself. Each week will build on the last one to introduce you to new ways of relating to your everyday experience — especially the experience of Diabetes — and then include a separate 10-15 minute guided meditation practice exploring these new perspectives. Do yourself and your loved ones a favor and take some steps to settle your mind into being more resilient, patient, and kind.
Course Overview
You’ve been mindful since before you were diagnosed with Diabetes — you just haven’t realized it yet. This first session of our five week series will focus on what mindfulness is, why one would try to practice it, and how it relates to life with Diabetes. You’ll learn some basic strategies to quickly returning to this capacity that’s an inherent part of being human, which is invaluable to living well with Diabetes and living a good life in general.
As intimidating & frustrating as our bodies can be as People with Diabetes, our experience of bodily feelings is also rich, informative, and restorative. It's as much the source of your pleasure as it is pain. It's a lot like a big sheet of sturdy cloth; when it can’t move and be used wisely, it’s at best a flag being blown back and forth in the wind; but when it’s correctly placed on a sailboat and used by a skillful sailor, it can take you far. We’ll about what kinds of signals the body is sending and how to let them steer you towards a more fulfilling, happy life.
Change is at the heart of both mindfulness practice and T1D; why is one so painful and the other so therapeutic? And how is it that one can feel stillness amidst so much change? In this session, we practice a new orientation to change - one that lets us flow with rather than swim against it, bringing us to deeper stillness and peace. We also learn how to bring some of that stillness to the way we move around in the world, deepening our own stillness in turn through moving meditations and mindfulness of our actions.
Which mind is yours — the one that thoughtfully and calmly considers how much to eat and dose in a particular situation, or the one that decides to rage bolus when the plan doesn’t go well? Week four is centered around non-identification with our stream of thoughts and feelings, instead relating to it as yet another sense available to us, just like touch, sound, and sight.
Your kindest acts and your most selfish ones are not as different as you think. In our final week, we'll use the new space and agency we've developed over the course of the last few weeks to think -- and feel -- good thoughts. As we deepen our investigation of our mind and body, we start to find what we care most about, why we do what we do, and how we can use these deeply personal truths to open up a wellspring of energy that's available for the benefit of ourselves and then others.