An eight-week exploration of what captures our attention, what it costs us, and what becomes possible when we begin to let go.
Reserve your placeBegins October 28, 2026 · Wednesdays, 5:30–7:00 p.m. Pacific Time · $339 CAD, Includes a one-to-one session with Madhu
Consider how much of your day is spent thinking about what needs to be done.
Things to anticipate. Problems to solve. Decisions to make. Things that might go wrong. Things that have already happened that you wish had turned out differently.
And then there are all the expectations we have of ourselves, the responsibilities we've assumed, and the things we believe we need to get right.
But have you considered what all this activity is costing you?
Our attention is limited. When it's occupied with thinking about our lives, there's less of it available for actually experiencing them.
We may be surrounded by beauty and scarcely notice it. We may be with someone we love and not really hear what they're saying. We may be so preoccupied that we lose touch with how we're feeling in our own bodies.
Life is happening, but where are we?
Take a moment.
Where is your attention?
Notice what you're thinking about.
Notice what you're feeling in your body.
And notice what's happening around you.
The sounds. The light.
Whatever is within your field of vision.
You don't need to change anything.
Just notice. All of this is happening right now.
Some of it may have been happening without your noticing it a moment ago.
What changed?
And did any of this require you to make it happen?
Much of our attention becomes captured without our even noticing.
See if you recognize any of these familiar concerns.
Worrying over imagined futures.
Rehearsing conversations that haven't happened.
Feeling responsible for how things turn out.
The sense that there's always something else to do.
How am I doing? Who am I here?
Concern about our image and what others think of us.
Trying to live up to expectations.
What does this mean?
Making assumptions about what's happening.
Taking things personally.
Much of this activity goes on automatically.
And while our attention is caught up in it, we're less available to everything else that's happening.
What happens when we begin to notice?
At the heart of Lighten the Load is a simple practice.
Notice what's happening. Your thoughts, your bodily sensations, and where your attention has gone.
Experience what's happening without immediately trying to change it, resolve it, or make it go away.
Allow things to be as they are.
Experience what's happening without immediately trying to change it, resolve it, or make it go away.
Discover what you no longer need to carry.
Sometimes a concern, an expectation, or the feeling that we must do something begins to dissolve.
Not because we've forced it to disappear, but because we're no longer sustaining it in the same way.
This is something we can explore in the middle of ordinary life.
For eight weeks, we'll explore the experience of being alive.
We'll begin with something very simple: noticing what's happening now.
From there, we'll investigate how attention moves, how thoughts and bodily sensations influence one another, and how we become captured by familiar patterns of concern, responsibility, and resistance.
We'll explore what happens when we recognize these patterns, allow things to be as they are, and begin to let go.
Each session includes guided inquiry, experiential practices, and conversation.
Between sessions, ordinary life becomes the opportunity to continue the exploration.
We're learning to recognize what's happening while it's happening.
And to make that inquiry part of how we live.
Discovering what's happening in our immediate experience and how attention influences what becomes available to us.
Recognizing how our attention becomes captured, often without our noticing, and what that costs us.
Exploring anticipation, responsibility, identity, and meaning, and how they can become sources of unnecessary burden.
Developing a practical way of investigating our experience and discovering what we no longer need to carry.
Bringing the inquiry into our relationships, responsibilities, difficulties, and ordinary circumstances.
90-minute Zoom sessions with guided inquiry, experiential practices, and conversation.
45 minutes with Madhu to explore your own experience and whatever is arising through the program.
Recorded awareness practices, session recordings, and written resources available through your personal course dashboard.
Simple invitations to investigate your experience in everyday life. No elaborate homework or hours of additional practice.
Revisit the practices and resources as your inquiry develops.
Eight weeks • Begins October 28 • $339 CAD
Curiosity.
A willingness to examine your own experience and discover things that may not be immediately obvious.
And perhaps a willingness to question some of what you've come to take for granted about yourself and your life.
You don't need previous experience of meditation, philosophy, or personal development.
But there is an invitation that extends beyond these eight weeks:
Are you willing to make the experience of life an ongoing inquiry?
What happens when we're no longer so occupied with managing our existence?
We begin to notice things.
How we're feeling in our bodies. The people around us. The beauty of the world we inhabit.
We may discover that there's far more to the experience of being alive than we ordinarily recognize.
And none of this requires us to become someone different or achieve some extraordinary state of consciousness.
It's a matter of becoming available to the experience we're already having.
Hello, I’m Madhu Bolton.
In 2019, during an ayahuasca retreat in the Peruvian Amazon, I received a simple invitation from Pachamama.
Enjoy Your Life
A few months later, I was diagnosed with stage-four lung cancer, and my oncologist gave me the same advice.
That became a question I had to live. What does it mean to enjoy my life, regardless of the circumstances?
The inquiry stayed with me through treatment, the prospect of dying, an unexpected recovery, and the years that followed.
My fundamental experience of being alive has changed. Love and joy have become the foundation of my life, and my appreciation of being here is greater than it's ever been.
I know now that this is possible, and I want it for others.
Eight weeks of guided inquiry into the experience of being alive.
Begins: Wednesday, October 28, 2026
When: Wednesdays, 5:30–7:00 p.m. Pacific
Where: Live on Zoom
Duration: Eight weeks
Investment: $339 CAD
