Effortless Mindfulness Level One

An Introduction to the Five Levels of Mind

Join meditation teacher, psychotherapist, and Mindful Glimpses App creator Loch Kelly for this special live training and begin your path of  Awakening with Effortless Mindfulness.

>A 6-Week Training in Effortless Mindfulness<

Registration is closed. Click below to join the waitlist for the EM Level One self-paced training.

  • Have you had glimpses or peak experiences but then get triggered back to your old sense of self?
  • Do you yearn to live from your awake consciousness, but don’t know how to remain or live from there?
  • Do you find yourself stuck in your practice, and unclear about what’s blocking you from going deeper? You hear powerful reports from other practitioners and you’re just not experiencing it yourself. What gives?
  • We all want to go to the next level with our practice (especially when we’ve experienced early benefits!) But how do we know what that next level actually is? And how do we learn the most effective ways to ground and stabilize here?
  • How do we identify the obstacles to awakening and the parts of us that become afraid or disoriented? And how do we reassure these parts (rather than suppress or exile them) that the goal is positive for every part of us?
  • Are you looking for a map, method, and markers to help you go to the next stage in your journey of healing, growth, and awakening?
  • Do you find the feeling of ‘letting go’ confusing or scary? Learn the subtle shifts that enable you to be aware from a calm, clear, compassionate new view.

Welcome!

Hello, I’m Loch Kelly. I’m excited to bring this new offering into the world and to share it with you. It’s called Effortless Mindfulness Level One: An Introduction to the Five Levels of Mind.

This training course marks a major turning point in my teaching work. I’ve been synthesizing the Effortless Mindfulness teachings for many years and gathering feedback from students to make the experience practical and optimal for different types of learners.

And now I feel that I’ve distilled Effortless Mindfulness (EM) into a simple method and map with clear experiential markers that can help beginners and advanced practitioners alike to stay grounded in our ever-present already awake mind. The EM method synthesizes an advanced yet simple Indo-Tibetan form of mindfulness with modern neuroscience and psychology, particularly Internal Family Systems (IFS).

This means that EM is accessible and easy to put into practice during our busy lives as we learn to welcome all inner parts of us and outer situations that trigger us. 

Indeed, awakening and grounding in your essential nature (and the calm, confidence, and compassion that comes with it) isn’t confined to your meditation cushion.

Instead, EM gives you simple ways to stabilize your access to that equanimity, buoyancy, and tender loving heart through all the ups and downs of daily life.

As you embody EM more fully, you’ll find it easier to live from an awake flow consciousness that helps us create and relate in an optimal way.

Effortless Mindfulness Level One is the beginning of a training cycle that will culminate in a certification program as we develop further levels of training.

You can take this training on it’s own and you’ll also have the opportunity to continue on a path of deepening mastery, healing, and growth with Effortless Mindfulness Level 2.

It’s the beginning of a learning path where you’re going to focus on directly accessing the subtlest dimensions of your consciousness. 

I call these dimensions the five levels of mind.

But what are the five levels mind, exactly?

The Five Levels of Mind

The first level of mind that we’re going to discover and explore together is one we all know already. It’s the basic, Everyday Mind of our psychology, our brain, and those parts of us that we call me. It includes our conditioned mind’s programs and our limited subpersonalities from which we try to manage our lives

The second level of mind is the Subtle Mind, where a lot of us have explored and developed insight into thought, energy, and emotions that come and go. This is the mindful witness and the subtle body. It includes our first attempts to shift out of everyday mind.

The third level of mind is Awake Aware Mind, which is foundational. This is a unique and important marker, and one of the most exciting on the EM path. At this level, you realize the subtlest and most fundamental dimension of your consciousness—a wordless, silent, and alert space that is forever free from anxiety, worry, and terror. My goal is to directly introduce you to this transformative level of your own consciousness.

And this then opens up into the:

Fourth level of mind, called the Unity Mind, where we come home from this pure awareness to a ground of interconnected embodied presence. A presence that allows us to feel safe without scanning for danger in our everyday mind. It also allows us to bring the natural compassion of self-energy into our life and to the inner world of our parts.

In the fifth level of mind we encounter the Heart Mind. This means living from a level of consciousness that I call awake loving flow. Like flow consciousness, you’re able to create and relate inside and outside in a way that feels safe, friction-free, and yet highly functional. You feel creative and bursting with inspired clarity about the purpose of your life.

EM Level One is an experiential journey into the five levels of mind, serving as an introduction to this system.

  • I’ll give you a map to demystify the process (and the landscape) of awakening.
  • Then you’ll learn glimpsing the method, so you can navigate the path.
  • And I’ll provide you with the essential markers (think signposts on the path) so you know exactly where you are and how to proceed.

 

Finally, this will be a group practice. In your EM Level One cohort, you’ll meet and practice with many wonderful practitioners like yourself.

If you’re unable to attend any live sessions, you’ll have lifetime access to your course area so you can always access replays the next day.

I hope you’ll join me on this life-changing journey and sign up below. See you in the course!

With a Grateful Heart,
Loch Kelly

In this training, you’ll:

  • Learn the common roadblocks that many mindfulness practitioners face (and how to move beyond them so that you experience a richer more rewarding practice)
  • Get a comprehensive overview of Effortless Mindfulness (including the map, method, and markers that help you move beyond the limits of conventional mindfulness schools)
  • Discover and immerse yourself in the part of you that is already and always free from stress, worry, and fear
  • Discover an approach to meditation and waking up that doesn’t take time
  • Develop inner tools to easily access an awake loving flow consciousness so you can stay clear and focused during work, in your relationships, and in play

This 6 week training is for you if:

  • You’ve glimpsed awake consciousness but haven’t been able to sustain it
  • You feel the openess of awareness but not the embodiment or the love when meditating or glimpsing
  • You can access awake awareness but loose it when complex tasks or emotional situations arise
  • You’ve been meditating for a while and experienced genuine benefits from meditation, but feel like you’ve hit a wall
  • You have some understanding and interest in nonduality but want to have a direct experience and find someone who can help guide you
  • You have difficulty with concentration or your mind won’t settle
  • You feel calm after your meditation but then get triggered during the day and you don’t know what to do to reclaim your equanimity
  • You’re a helping or healing professional who wants to learn how to directly access your true nature and master self-management, so you can effectively hold space for others on their healing journeys (without burning out)
  • You’re looking for an approach to meditation that allows you to ground yourself in awakened awareness and function from awake loving flow throughout the day
  • You encounter blocks in your practice and want support navigating these obstacles so you can abide in the subtle dimensions of consciousness without getting destabilized or stuck

Here's What You'll Get

Your weekly interactive sessions with Loch Kelly will take place live and online via Zoom. If you can’t attend live, self-paced replays are available the next day. You’ll access all your replays, recordings, and course materials in your online course area.

Expert Instruction

12 Hours of LIVE expert instruction with Loch Kelly

Lifetime Access

Lifetime access to all course replays and media in your virtual classroom

Micro-meditations

Weekly mindful glimpses to support each lesson module

PDF Support Materials

PDFs, charts, poems, quotes and other support materials

Compassionate Community

Build and deepen your mindfulness practice among supportive fellow practitioners

What Thought Leaders say about Loch...

“With wisdom, clarity and care, Loch Kelly offers teachings and practices that directly evolve consciousness and liberate the heart.”

Tara Brach, Ph.D.

World-renowned psychologist and meditation teacher. Founder of Insight Meditation Community. Bestselling author.

“Awakening is moving your inner center of gravity from your protective parts to your magnificent essence. Loch not only makes you realize that such a shift is possible, but provides exercises to help make it happen.”

Richard C. Schwartz. Ph.D.
Faculty in the Dept. of Psychiatry at Harvard. Founder of the Internal Family Systems approach to psychotherapy.

“In many years of knowing and working with Loch Kelly I feel that he is one of the clearest expressions of authentic awakened freedom and love that I know.”

Adyashanti
Internationally-recognized spiritual teacher and author of eleven books, including “The Direct Way”

What makes Effortless Mindfulness different from
other mindfulness approaches +
psychological interventions?

1

Combines ancient wisdom and modern science to give you the most effective set of tools to live a fulfilling life.

2

Unique micro meditations that you can do in the midst of your day with eyes open to immediately shift you into flow.

3

Glimpses that heal anxiety at the root, uncover natural compassion, and shift you into flow at home and work.
✔️ Designed for the modern human

Our unique methodology synthesizes ancient wisdom practices, neuroscience, and contemporary psychology. This distinct combination is designed to help you get the most out of mindfulness in this modern world (even if you’re busy, struggle with focus, or wear many hats in your life).

✔️ An effortless path to greater peace, clarity and calm

With Effortless Mindfulness, the focus is not on developing the skill of mental stability or concentration (which is the defining feature of many mainstream mindfulness systems). Rather, you’re shifting OUT of an unstable stage of adult development into a calm, clear and knowing awareness that can become the foundation from which you live more skillfully

IFS Online Training
IFS Training Online
✔️ A system for greater resilience

This practice style essentially helps you unplug the computer and hit refresh on your inner system. Doing this consistently actually helps your system function more effectively for the long term, leading to strong resilience to face life’s joys and challenges with enduring balance.

✔️ Address the root issues This practice style is about familiarizing yourself with a new stage of human development. You are updating the whole operating system, so the patterns that consistently play out in that operating system start to shift or dissolve. If you have a hard time going deeper with your meditation practice, we think you’ll love this feature of Effortless Mindfulness.

✔️ Stop trying so hard We invite you to stop ‘focusing more,’ and tap into an effortless awareness. Thousands of our students are enjoying a deep meditation practice, as well as higher levels of compassion, calm, and clarity more often (without as much effort).

StudentTestimonials

Course Structure

Every great meditative tradition the world over has major maps of the significant steps or stages in meditation as their tradition has come to understand and practice them. And what significant research has demonstrated is that virtually all of them follow the four or five major natural states of consciousness given cross-culturally and universally to all human beings. ~ Ken Wilber, Integral Philosopher and Author

The Five Levels of Mind are these five major natural states of consciousness. In Effortless Mindfulness Level One, we’ll spend one week on each level of mind. You’ll learn how to access each of them and move from temporary state experiences to abiding trait changes that can fundamentally shift your sense of self.

The goal of EM Level One is to introduce you to each level of mind. While you may have immediate experiences within our 6-week immersion, this is not the goal of EM Level One. Instead, we want to give you the framework, the Mindful Glimpses, and set you up to explore EM well beyond the EM Level One course so you can progress through the five levels of mind at your own pace.

Tuesdays from Noon – 2pm ET. 

(Note: All recordings available the next day for self-paced study and participation)

  • Week 1 (October 1st) – The Five Levels of Mind: Introduction to Effortless Mindfulness
  • Week 2 (October 8th) – Subtle Mind: Developing Insight into the Nature of Thoughts, Energy, Emotions & Parts
  • Week 3 (October 15th) – Awake Aware Mind: Realizing the Ever-present Freedom of Effortless Awareness
  • Week 4 (October 22nd) – Unity Mind: Coming Home to the Ground of Fundamental Safety and Well-Being
  • Week 5 (October 29th) – Heart Mind: Living from Awake Loving Flow
  • Week 6 (November 5th) – Integration: Tools To Live a Life of Meaning, Compassion, and Purpose

Each weekly module will include a mix of live teachings with Loch, a guided Glimpse practice, breakout groups, and Q&A.

 

Between sessions, Loch will provide you with dedicated Mindful Glimpses that you can practice during the week to integrate and internalize the lessons and experiences from each module.

You will also have access to supportive materials like quotes, poems, charts, and supportive research papers to sooth your thinking mind!

And remember, if you can’t make it live you can take it at your own pace. We’ll post the session replays for you within 24 hours.

What Are Mindful Glimpses?

During this training, you’ll gain familiarity with the cornerstone practice of EM, short meditation inquiries called Mindful Glimpses.

These glimpses serve as your doorways to deeper levels of awareness that yield clarity, confidence, and buoyant compassion.

And most importantly, they enable you to discover and gain access to your Awake Aware Mind—the hidden but ever-present dimension within us that can unlock your higher potentials.

A Glimpse is not an altered state or a peak experience, but a “peek” into our true nature. Glimpses help you break the trance of the ego mind so you can seamlessly shift into the natural already awake condition inherent within each of us.

Most deliberate mindfulness practices require you to sit quietly and take time to calm your mind by concentrating or waiting for it to clear. In contrast, Glimpses enable immediate access—like changing the channel of your mind. They collapse the time needed between stabilization, awakening, and expression. You can even practice it in an agitated state and get immediate results.

How is that possible?

IFS Training Online feature image

Because Glimpsing practice immediately and intentionally shifts you from your current state of mind into an already-awake, already-installed consciousness that’s effortlessly aware.

After this transformative awakening experience, Mindful Glimpses provide the process, path, and practice of getting comfortable with this new holistic way of seeing and being.

We begin with our current small and thought-based way of knowing and doing, and then we’re going to shift into an awareness-based, spacious, interconnected, and open-hearted way of being and seeing.

Through Mindful Glimpses, you’ll learn to shift and flow through the five levels of mind, pivoting from the mundane mind of daily life to the subtle dimension of your embodied and wise Heart Mind.

Our invitation is to take your practice from exclusively focusing on stabilization to a whole new level and depth. This system helps our clients experience a range of long-term benefits, including greater and more consistent creative flow, heightened focus, more inner peace, emotional empowerment and the capacity to go much deeper in their practice (not from a place of force, but from the roots of inner safety and compassion).

Effortless Mindfulness + IFS Parts Work

I practice and teach an original synthesis of IFS-style parts work and Effortless Mindfulness. Taken together, these two models of Mind and Self offer a powerful path of healing that leads you to the deepest levels of the integration.

What is parts work? And why is it such a transformative healing modality when integrated with Effortless Mindfulness?

The IFS model of parts work describes the nature of the human psyche as organizing into subpersonalities, or parts, that all have Self as their source.

The approach is not to judge, minimize, or get rid of these parts, but instead to notice and lovingly embrace all of our parts from our interconnected Self, which is also within all parts.

This creates a middle path between most psychotherapies that regard a healthy ego as the goal and some meditative paths that call ego or small self an illusion. 

Effortless mindfulness helps us access Self and the nature of Mind, directly giving us a new view and wise capacity.

As we get to know and distinguish our parts from Self—even the most difficult ones—we can discover that all parts are looking for love, and there are no bad parts.

In our growing up and waking up, we begin by recognizing and thanking our protective parts as a way to overcome reactivity and find the natural calm needed to shift into our ever-present Awake Aware Mind. 

But how do you actually give that love to these difficult and burdened parts? This is where the fusion of parts work and effortless mindfulness is so effective. 

Having collaborated and co-taught with Dick Schwartz, I’ve combined IFS insights with the liberating wisdom practices of EM to facilitate access to Self—the whole of who we are beyond any part.

Mindful glimpses give us the tools for embodying and living an awakened life. And I find that this is the most effective way of healing our shadows—those unconscious, repressed, or denied parts.

It’s also the key to embody awakening. The goal of both IFS and EM is to upgrade our sense of identity and mind to live a life of Self leadership with the ability to heal inner parts and live from an awake loving flow to create and relate to others. 

In EM Level One, you’ll get get a sense of parts work and how EM can help you begin to heal and unburden your parts on the path to fundamental wholeness, awakening, and flourishing.

Registration for EM Level 1 is Closed

Join the waitlist to get notified when we launch the self-paced version of EM Level One

FAQ

That’s great that you have the app! The Mindful Glimpses app and Level One program pair really well together, allowing you to integrate both a foundational step-by-step training, teacher and peer support, as well as self-paced practices that you can sew into all moments of your life. There’s a few key differences between the app and the live program. 

Level One is a live multi-week journey. If your learning style benefits from sequential training, teacher-led and live multi-week format, then you’ll love the Level One program. Level One offers more accountability, real-time support, and community than the app. 

The app is more of a independent-study resource, and also provides you with a library of Mindful Glimpses to leverage in support of your practice. The app serves as a great stepping stone and preparation for the Level One program, allowing you to get versed in the basics, so that you can dive more deeply into the 5 levels of mind (which is the main focus of the Level One program).

No problem! If you can’t make it to any of the sessions, you’ll have access to all the replays the next day in your course platform. You can revisit those anytime, anywhere, with lifetime access. We do encourage you to attend as many sessions as your schedule permits, but we recognize that life happens. We designed this program to benefit all who can attend live and those who cannot. 

You’ll have access to all the video recordings, downloadable supplemental materials, guided and Mindful Glimpses – all housed in your course platform upon signing up.

Yes! This program will offer your an in-depth overview of the path and practice of Effortless Mindfulness. No previous experience is necessary.

Loch has designed this training course to benefit new and seasoned practitioners alike.

For more seasoned practitioners, this training gives you a way to shift from sitting meditation to meditation in action.

EM Level One will provide you with a deeper foundation in integrating awake awareness with thoughts, feelings, and emotions.

EM Level One will help advanced practitioners to integrate meditation and your emotional life so you feel more grounded with a deeper capacity to flow in your life.

Advanced practitioners will learn unique tools to apply at deeper levels to seamlessly return to embodied awake awareness anytime.

Finally, you’ll gain insight into the obstacles to your awakening, allowing you to feel more connected, compassionate, and clear.

Yes, anyone who wishes to get the facilitator certification will need to take EM Level One & Two before taking the EM Facilitator Training. However, if you can’t make it live, you can take the course at your own pace.

We feel that price should not be a primary barrier to people discovering and studying the dharma. If you are a student or need a scholarship, click the Enroll Now button above and follow the scholarship link to apply.

If this program doesn’t meet your needs, please email [email protected] to request a cancellation and refund by October 7th at 5pm ET. This will give you an opportunity to attend Session #1 live on October 1st. 

 
After October 7th, refunds are no longer available. Thank you for understanding. 

Great question. Learning how to manage your own sensory system can directly help you manage your energy as you support individuals and groups on their own healing journeys. Being able to track your parts during a client session, or notice your own patterns emerge as you serve others – this is key in order to make a sustainable impact and prevent burnout over the long term.

If you’re a helping or healing professional, you’ll walk away from EM Level One understanding how to directly access your true nature. 

Not only that, you’ll also learn the meditative tools for mastering self-management, so that you can effectively hold space for others on their healing journeys (without burning out). The more you know yourself (and all your parts), as well as how to manage your system skillfully anytime, anywhere, the more you’ll widen and strengthen the space for others to heal, learn and fully be themselves in your container.

As Featured In

Member of ASI

Effortless Mindfulness is brought to you by Natural Wakefulness Center, a 501(c)3 public charity. NWC is dedicated to teaching direct methods to access awake awareness, living from a flow state, nondual mindfulness, and heart mindfulness. It is the Center’s goal to make awakening learnable, teachable, and more accessible to everyone. 

NWC wants to make these teachings accessible to everyone regardless of their ability to pay. To request a scholarship please click on the Enroll Now button above and click the scholarship link on the checkout page.

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