Mindfulness Mode

Giovanni Dienstmann is an author, certified meditation teacher, coach and speaker. He has a diverse training with over 9,000 hours of meditation, and a teaching style that is pragmatic, simple, methodical, and non-sectarian. Giovanni's personal anthem is Empowered Peace and Empowered Peace is the reality he lives in now. At only 15-years old,  meditation taught Gio that the real bully was inside his head, and that he could learn to be his own best friend. It taught him how to let go, be greater than his problems, and accept himself. Giovanni has written a book called Practical Meditation: A Simple Step-By-Step Guide.

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Contact Info

• Website: www.liveanddare.com
• Book: Practical Meditation: A Simple Step-By-Step Guide by Giovanni Dienstmann

Most Influential Person

• The Buddha

Effect on Emotions

• Mindfulness for me means that I don't need to run away from any emotion and that I don't need to react to any emotion. I can just accept whatever emotion is happening to me right now, with all the sensations in my body, pleasant or unpleasant and that there's still space for me to chose what I want to do with it. Do I just want to watch and let it pass? Do I want to fuel it to attention and then increase it if it's a positive emotion? Do I want to process it so that it kind of disappears. Mindfulness gives me these options.

Thoughts on Breathing

• My style of meditation is not about breathing. I've tried breathing styles in the past and they were not the best ones for me.
• Having said that, breathing is an important element of my mindfulness practice throughout the day.
• I notice that when I am eating, I try to pay attention to my breathing. When I breathe more deeply and slowly while I eat, I chew better and I feel that digestion happens easier after that for some reason.
• When I'm working, I may be answering emails or something and from time to time I remember to breathe deeply and slowly and the more I do that throughout the day, the less tired I feel at the end of the day. 

Suggested Resources

• Book: Practical Meditation: A Simple Step-By-Step Guide by Giovanni Dienstmann
• Book: Mindfulness In Plain English by Bhante Henepola Gunaratana
• Book: Meditation For Beginners by Jack Kornfield
• App: Insight Timer

Bullying Story

• In high school I had bullying experiences with kids who were much older than me. That didn't turn into a trauma because I fought back.
• Even though they were 2 or 3 years older than me, and they physically abused me, punched me and everything, I punched back and I got beat up severely, but it didn't turn into a trauma because I fought back. …
• Then I started to take Kung Foo classes which because a big part of my life for over a decade. A few months after I started taking martial arts classes, no one else bothered me. Something had changed. No one else bothered me.

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