Hello and welcome to Mindfulness Plus.

I'm your host, Thomas Mekonki.

Thanks so much for listening today.

So we have a special episode today.

We've been recording since mid-September, four months, four or five months now. And this is our first

episode that we're broadcasting through video. So if you're tuned into audio, that's great.

It works. And if you want to check out our video podcast, you can go to iTunes, Google Play,

or wherever you get your podcasts. So I'm joined by three really close friends, actually, and I wanted to talk about community in this episode, a community of practice, where we come together intentionally to practice mindfulness and to support one another in our practices.

This is a topic I've covered in past shows and I wanted to introduce you to some other voices in the community and see what they had to say.

So before I open up the floor to Madison, Igor, and Gloria,

hello guys.

Hey.

Thanks for being in here today.

I wanted to just give a little bit of background on how we came together,

the four of us specifically.

I moved back from China in 2011, so a little over

five years ago, and friends started spontaneously asking me about the mindfulness practice,

what it is, how to do it, and I just gathered them at my house and said, come over Wednesday

night and let's practice together.

What's interesting, at the time, Igor Lamanski

sitting front and center was my roommate,

and he joined in.

...