Happiness, Mindfulness, and Yoga in Costa Rica
(This Syllabus Draft is Subject to Modification)
RSTD 370: Religious Studies Seminar Abroad • May Term 2016
Christopher Newport University
Kenneth Rose, PhD • 757-594-7965 • McMurran 129 • krose@cnu.edu
Beate Boost-Rose, M.Ed., E-RYT 500-Hour Yoga Alliance Certified Yoga Teacher beateboost@hotmail.com
See Scholar (Blackboard) home page or @profkrose at Twitter.com for emergency information
Office Hours: To be Determined
Course Description
Who doesn’t want to be happy? Who doesn’t want increased life quality? The problem is that we don’t always know
what will make us happy—or we do, but we just seem unable to get there.
This is where yoga and mindfulness meditation come in. By now, in 2015, a lot of people have taken a yoga class—
or they plan to. And meditation comes in so many styles that it’s easy to find a practice that suits you—if only you
could find the time!
But research makes it clear that mindfulness meditation—the simple act of just settling the mind down and looking
within—can make your mind—and you—calm and happy. And happiness defeats depression, procrastination,
addictions, decreases sensitivity to pain, reduces stress, and increases your ability to learn.
Mindfulness meditation, or close observation of our always changing inner and outer circumstances, is a magic
bullet that brings waves of happiness flooding into our everyday lives by helping us turn unhelpful thought patterns
and habits into positive responses promoting physical, mental, and spiritual well-being, or happiness.
But our minds are tricky, for just as soon as we get ourselves in a nice seated position and begin to meditate, the
mind drags us in a thousand directions. And then, before we know it, we are caught up again in whatever it was we
sat down to deal with in meditation.
This is where yoga comes in. Yoga is more than just the famous postures and getting your body in shape. The other
parts of yoga are designed to focus the mind, expand our awareness, and to open the inner door to genuine
happiness.
And why Costa Rica? Named the happiest country in the world in many media outlets such as Forbes, CNN, Time,
the Huffington Post and countless other media outlets, Costa Rica offers a safe, relaxed natural environment in
which to experience the power of mindfulness and yoga to generate happiness. Despite a GDP equal to a quarter of
US GDP, Costa Rica ranks number one in the Happy Planet Index due to “high life expectancy, high levels of
experienced well-being, and a moderate ecological footprint”
(http://www.happyplanetindex.org/countries/costa-rica/)/). And a study conducted at the University of California,
Berkeley indicates that Costa Rica is the happiest country in the world
(http://www.forbes.com/sites/datafreaks/2014/11/13/want-to-be-happy-move-to-costa-rica/).
During this course, the instructors will explore the latest research findings in the new science of happiness. They
will also show you how to set up and develop a yoga practice that will help you meditate mindfully and experience
the happiness of a calm and focused mind. Beginners and intermediate students of yoga and mindfulness meditation
will find this to be just the boost they need to get back to work on the yoga and meditation practices that will make
them happier!
Course Objectives/Learning Outcomes
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To gain technical and practical understanding of ancient, modern, Asian, and European philosophical and
empirical views of what constitutes happiness
To learn how to think philosophically about spiritual practices such as meditation and yoga
To become familiar the basic practices of mindfulness and yoga and to integrate them as a resource for the
cultivation of happiness
To become familiar with the foundational concepts and practices of India’s yoga tradition as articulated in
classic texts such as the Yoga Sūtra
To study the sources of mindfulness in Buddhist and other classic meditation traditions.
To engage in the practice of yoga in a traditional retreat setting
To gain a basic awareness of the neurobiological foundations of mindfulness and happiness and how yoga
affects our physiology
The Instructors
Your guides on this journey into happiness, mindfulness, and yoga are Kenneth Rose, Ph.D., who is a professor of
philosophy and religious studies at Christopher Newport University and a scholar of comparative religion with a
special interest in happiness, meditation, and yoga, and Beate Boost-Rose, M.Ed., E-RYT 500-Hour Yoga Alliance
Certified Yoga Teacher, who has studied yoga and mindfulness with leading teachers in the USA, Germany,
Thailand, Sri Lanka, and India and who leads a Yoga Alliance certified yoga-teacher training program at the Zenya
Yoga Academy in the Port Warwick neighborhood of Newport News. Kenneth and Beate have travelled widely for
extensive periods in South and Southeastern Asia and are well-acquainted with Asian yoga and meditation
traditions. Classes will include instruction in traditional yoga and meditation practices, coverage of basic concepts
related to the psychology of happiness, yoga philosophy, and mindfulness.
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Required Books
Nyanaponika Thera, The Heart of Buddhist Meditation (Weiser Books, 9781578635580)
Jonathan Haidt, The Happiness Hypothesis (Basic Books, 046028020)
Teresa Aubele, et al. Train Your Brain to Get Happy (Adams Media, 9781440511813).
T.K.V. Desikachar, The Heart of Yoga: Developing a Personal Practice (Inner Traditions, 089281764X)
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Suggested Books for Personal and Background Reading
Herbert Benson, The Relaxation Response
Bhante Henepola Gunaratana, Mindfulness in Plain English
Rick Hanson, The Buddha's Brain
Martin Seligman, Flourish
Jon Kabat-Zinn, Mindfulness for Beginners
The Dalai Lama, How To Practice
Total Yoga, Tara Fraser
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Summary of Formal Requirements
Six In-Class Essays
30%
Unannounced, in class
Attendance
25%
In-class sign-in sheet
Paper
30%
Due TBD on Scholar
Final Comprehensive Assessment
15%
Time and Place TBD
Description of Formal Requirements
Six In-Class Essays: These essays will be assigned without previous announcement. They will be written in
either of the two morning sessions in response to a topic that the instructors will give in class. I will assign these
essays without announcement at various points during the course and at different times during our weekly
sessions. These essays will take about 10-15 minutes to write and the topics will be based directly upon the
assigned readings and class discussions based on the readings. You can submit your responses to the appropriate
forum in Scholar (to be explained in the orientation sessions).
Attendance Policy and Participation. Attendance will be taken and will form a part of the final grade in this
course. To do well in this course, students will be need to attend the daily AM Yoga Theory and
Lecture/Discussion sessions (the PM yoga/meditation/practice sessions are optional) A number of important
graded essays will be written in class, and these will focus extensively on lectures and class discussions. Students
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who attend the sessions regularly, do the readings, and participate in the morning activities, will find that they
will do better on the written exercises, the final paper, and the comprehensive assessment.
Paper: 2500 words = 10 double-spaced pages. Post at Scholar by the date indicated above and below.
a. For this assignment, you should write on a topic that you discuss with me in advance.
b. To further develop your ideas, do talk with me.
c. To prevent loss of your work, write your essay offline and post completed version.
d. All essays will be checked for plagiarism. Be sure to use only your own work or indicate your sources.
e. No handwritten or printed out papers will be accepted.
f. See the detailed guidelines below for researching and writing this essay.
Comprehensive Assessment: This will be a student presentation of the argument of each student’s paper. Each
student will make a presentation during the time for the final examination set by the registrar. You will have
about ten minutes to make a formal presentation of your research project. This can seem intimidating to the
student who is not accustomed to public speaking. Indeed, all speakers feel nervous before speaking on some
occasions. The best remedy for this anxiety is thorough preparation. After following the process outlined below
for the paper, you will be immersed in your project and will have a good sense of what your main findings are.
As the time for the oral presentation approaches, prepare a script for your presentation (index cards can be quite
helpful for this) in which you state your thesis sentence and summarize your main arguments and findings. (To
save time, we will not project Power Point slides). Ten minutes is not a very long time to speak, so you should
be able to fill this time by giving two or three illustrations for each of your main points.
Course Schedule
(Class time = 42 contact hours, or 2520 minutes, including 1 class meeting at CNU in April 2016)
In the USA:
8/00/15: Study Abroad Summer 2016 Showcase—TBD in first week of classes
9/00/15: Information Session—TBD in first week of classes
10/2/15: Study Abroad Fair
9/00/15: Orientation Meeting
10/00/15: Orientation Meeting
11/06/15: Mandatory Orientation Meeting
4/00/16: First Mandatory Class Meeting (70 minutes—Date TBD
4/00/16: Mandatory Orientation Meeting—Date TBD
8/00/16: Final Paper Due at Scholar
8/00/16: Comprehensive Final Presentation in the Final Exam Time for Extended Summer Term
In Costa Rica:
Class Schedule, Topics, and Readings (Subject to Change)
Note there will be an Optional one hour Yoga/Meditation/Practice Session each evening.
Day 1
(5/10)
Yoga Theory and Practice (90 minutes: 8:45-10:15 AM, same schedule each class day)
● Introduction to the Fundamentals and Principles of Yoga
● Yoga as a Holistic and Universal Healing Method in Theory and Practice
Break (20 minutes)
Lecture/Discussion
● Mindfulness, Meditation, and Happiness: What’s the Connection? (85 minutes) 10:35
AM-12 PM
Readings: Selections from Required Books TBD
Day 2
(5/11)
Yoga Theory and Practice
● The Five Koshas: From the Physical to the Subtle Body
Break
Lecture/Discussion:
● Getting Acquainted with Mindfulness
Readings: Selections from Required Books TBD
Day 3
(5/12)
Yoga Theory and Practice
● Physical Postures to Balance Lifeforce Energy and to Promote Overall Health and WellBeing
Break
Lecture/Discussion
● Mindfulness in Practice
Readings: Selections from Required Books TBD
Day 4
(5/13)
Yoga Theory and Practice
● Mindfulness Yoga: Yoga, Alignment, and Balance in Light of the Four Foundations of
Mindfulness.
Break
Lecture/Discussion
● Mindfulness in the Spectrum of Meditation Practices
Readings: Selections from Required Books TBD
Day 5
(5/14)
Yoga Theory and Practice
● Viniyoga: Form Follows Function—Personal Adaptation of Movement and Breath
Break
Lecture/Discussion
● The Three Bases of a Meditative Practice
Readings: Selections from Required Books TBD
Day 6
(5/16)
Yoga Theory and Practice
● Yoga and the Breath
● Pranayama: Breathing Exercises to Still The Mind and to Access Wholeness and Inner
Peace
Break
Lecture/Discussion
● The Ethics of Meditation, Yoga, and Happiness
Readings: Selections from Required Books TBD
Day 7
(5/17)
Yoga Theory and Practice
● Vinyasa Yoga: Weaving Together Movement, Breath, and Awareness
● Happiness and the Practice of a Focused Mind: Meditation Techniques to Access
Wisdom and Inner Harmony
Break
Lecture/Discussion
● Developing Meditative Concentration
Readings: Selections from Required Books TBD
Day 8
(5/18)
Yoga Theory and Practice
● Happiness and Fulfillment according to Ancient Yogic Traditions
● Finding One’s Purpose in Life: Guided Visualizations and Exercises
Break
Lecture/Discussion
● Developing Meditative Insight
Readings: Selections from Required Books TBD
Day 9
(5/19)
Yoga Theory and Practice
● Yoga and Stress: The Physiology of Stress and How to Cope with It
● Relaxation Techniques to Calm Body and Mind and to Develop Resilience
Break
Lecture/Discussion
● What is Happiness?
Readings: Selections from Required Books TBD
Day 10 (5/20)
Yoga Theory and Practice
● Yoga and Emotions: Yoga Techniques to Cope with Challenging Moods
Break
Lecture/Discussion
● Feeling Happy vs. Being Happy
Readings: Selections from Required Books TBD
Day 11 (5/21)
Yoga Theory and Practice
● Yoga and The Chakras: The Seven Centers Of Consciousness in Theory and Practice
● Guided Imagery and Meditation to Unlock Creativity and to Maximize Inner Potential
Break
Lecture/Discussion
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The Practice of Happiness
Readings: Selections from Required Books TBD
Day 12 (5/23)
Yoga Theory and Practice
● Karma Yoga: Yoga and Social Change
● How to Make a Positive Difference in the World
● Nourishing Inner Happiness and Attaining Fulfillment
Break
Lecture/Discussion
● Changing our Happiness Style
Readings: Selections from Required Books TBD
Day 13 (5/24)
Yoga Theory and Practice
● How to Create an Individualized Yoga Practice
● Applying Yoga and Meditation in Daily Life
Break
Lecture/Discussion
● A Concentrated Mind Is a Happy Mind
Readings: Selections from Required Books TBD
Day 14 (5/25)
Yoga Theory and Practice
● Yoga as a Universal Approach to Purpose and Meaning by Deepening Awareness and
Living From the Inner Heart
● Methods to Embrace and Deepen One’s Own Spiritual Path
Break
Lecture/Discussion
● Happiness and Spirituality
Readings: Selections from Required Books TBD
Letter Grades
Letter Grades for all assignments and the final grade have the following values:
A
AB+
B
BC+
C
CD+
D
93 and higher
90-92.999
87-89.999
83-86.999
80-82.999
77-79.999
73-76.999
70-72.999
67-69.999
63-66.999
DF
60-62.999
0-59.999
Final grades that are ½ (0.50) or less of a percentage point below the cutoff
for the next highest grade will be rounded up to that grade.
Grading Standards
(There is no quota for specific grades, but all submissions are
graded in light of the other submissions to the same assignment.)
A Same as A- but at a superior level of execution that shows mastery of the material and displays no flaws in the
writing of the answer, which may exceed the requested length. The submission displays a high level of
sophistication.
A- The submission fulfills all elements of the assignment. It is well-written, with almost no spelling or grammatical
errors, and has good, clear style. It more than adequately integrates ideas in the material with ideas in the lectures
and discussions.
B+ Same as A, but with less mastery of the material and/or some spelling or grammatical errors and/or a bit short.
B The submission fulfills the elements of the assignment. It is well-written and adequately integrates ideas in the
material being studied with ideas in lectures and discussions.
B- The submission adequately fulfills the elements of the assignment. It is generally well-written, but there may be a
few writing or content errors. The style is generally good. There is some development of ideas beyond repeating
what is in the readings, lectures, or discussions. The submission may also be shorter than required.
C+ Numerous errors and/or few references to the readings, lectures, or discussions, but occasional insights that
show active engagement with the material.
C Fails to fulfill at least one of the elements of the assignment and/or there are multiple errors of fact and/or
numerous writing errors. Shows some insight into the material.
C- Same as C, but the submission may be significantly shorter than required.
D+ The submission contains multiple errors and only addresses some elements of the assignment. The submission
may contain some useful insights.
D Numerous errors, poor writing, lack of notable engagement with the material. Or the submission may be
significantly shorter than required.
D- A barely adequate submission, with numerous errors, or missing elements of the assignment. Or the submission
is far too short.
F No submission or a submission that does not fulfill the assignment.
Preparing for the Paper
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General Guidelines
Length: 2500 words (= 10 double-spaced typed pages). Please give the word count at the beginning of the
essay.
All papers will be checked for plagiarism. Be sure to use only your own work or indicate your sources (see
below). Plagiarism may result in failure in the course or referral to the student honor committee.
All essays must make use of at least four sources, including at least two standard academic sources (see
below).
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No late submissions will be accepted except for a genuine, verifiable emergency.
Post the paper in Paper under Assignments in the left hand menu of the course webpage at Scholar. In the
subject box of your thread, give your essay a title that reflects your theme and thesis sentence.
To prevent loss of your work, write your paper offline, and post completed versions.
Late submissions may be subject to a 1/3 grade reduction in grade per session. Note: No credit for missed
submissions will be given without a doctor’s note or other evidence of an actual, sudden emergency.
No handwritten or printed-out submissions will be accepted.
The Process of Writing an Essay
General Comments about Writing an Essay
A good essay is not only vivid and stimulating, but also well-composed. Creativity alone does not make for a
successful essay and cannot overcome the confusion caused by lapses in grammar, logic, editorial style, and
misspellings. Failure to master the technical aspects of good writing, as outlined below, may result in a failure to
communicate and in a grade that is lower than expected.
A mere recounting of the origin of some phenomenon, as in an encyclopedia article or report, does not constitute a
research paper. Such narrations need to be placed within the larger framework of your thesis statement. Writing a
paper involves more than taking notes and summarizing your sources. The information that you gather must support
your thesis, because your evaluative standpoint is more important than summaries of data.
Since writing a successful essay takes more time than there are hours in one night, it is wise to begin the process of
writing your paper some weeks in advance of the final deadline. To achieve this goal, follow this step-by-step
process, which will help you to develop your ideas and to formulate arguments to refine and support them. (We will
cover some aspects of this process in class.)
Finding a Topic
This is the general idea of your essay. Some examples are: happiness, hedonics, and eudaimonia; mindfulness and
Buddhism; meditation and the brain. You need to settle on a basic idea, or topic, before you begin researching and
writing. Note that the lack of a verb in these topic phrases indicates that no claim is being made about the topic.
Making a claim, as described in the next section, is the function of the thesis and thesis sentence.
Formulating a Thesis
A thesis, in contrast to the topic, expresses the writer’s attitude about some aspect of a topic. Since a thesis makes a
claim, it has a verb or verbs, unlike the topic phrase. The claim that happiness is an ascribed status, not an affective
state is an example of a thesis.
Writing a Thesis Sentence
To serve as the anchor and organizing principle of your essay, your thesis must be stated in the first paragraph of
your essay in one clear sentence. For example: This paper will question whether the focus of contemporary research
on happiness as an affective state is consistent with Aristotle’s view of happiness as a judgment about the whole
tenor of one’s life. This stating of your thesis in the first paragraph of your essay should be accompanied by a short
explanation of why you hold this thesis and how you plan to defend it.
Identifying and Collecting Sources
Sources are properly used to inform yourself about the topic on which you are writing but are not a substitute for
your own thought. Sources should arouse your own thinking and help you to develop a distinctive viewpoint on your
theme. Take notes while reading your sources. Note-taking on index cards (and digital variants of index cards) is
useful for recording quotes, summaries of information, and your own ideas. After you finish researching, you can
arrange your notes to write about the theme under consideration. Arranging your notes is an act of creative
synthesis, which gives you the opportunity to exercise critical and creative thinking.
All essays must make use of at least four sources, including at least two standard academic sources, which include
peer-reviewed journal articles, academic books (sometimes called monographs), and encyclopedia articles.
Acceptable nonacademic sources include novels, poetry, scriptures, biographies, autobiographies, tracts, and
newspaper and magazine articles. You should find articles in journals and monographs by using the digital resources
of the Trible Library and Interlibrary Loan. (We will explore these resources in class.) You can use digital versions
of these articles or the pdf version of the files that you will get through these databases.
The website of the CNU library has links to a number of useful online databases that provide solid academic
information and articles, such as First Search, ProQuest Religion, ATLA Religion Databases, JSTOR, Oxford
Reference Online, and Expanded Academic ASAP Plus. Please make use of these excellent resources, as well as the
books in the library and the books and articles that are available through CNU’s online Interlibrary Loan Service
(http://library.cnu.edu/illiad/logon.html). Many newspapers and magazines and other collections are available
online. If you have any questions about where to find these sources and how to use them, please speak with me.
Simply using a search engine such as Google, Bing, Cuil, or Ask.com to find websites about your topic and
extensively quoting or pasting in selections from them or Wikipedia does not count as research. Results obtained
in this way cannot be used as sources for this project. Because of the ease of abuse that sites obtained through
general online searches invite and sometimes abet, only academic articles found through the Trible Library (or other
library) databases or collections can be used in this essay, as well as books from the library or from interlibrary loan.
Books from Google Books can also be used, but this must be indicated in the bibliography, as can results from
Google Scholar, which locates standard academic, journals, and newspapers among its results, similarly to First
Search. You may also use standard non-academic sources found on the Internet, such as edited newspapers and
magazines, but not commercial and private websites that are not subject to peer review or editing by academic
experts or professionals in specific fields. For example, you may use dailypress.com or nytimes.com but not
personal sites like crystalinks.com, which are not edited or peer-reviewed, but represent a purely personal expression
of an individual’s views. These latter can be cited in your essay, if they support your argument, but they cannot
substitute for edited or peer-reviewed sources, and will not count toward your total number of required sources.
The texts assigned in class can be used in the paper but cannot be counted as included among the four sources for
your essay
You must cite your sources whenever you quote them, paraphrase them, or write a sentence or paragraph that
depends substantially on them. Very limited paraphrasing of sources (no more than two or three lines) is acceptable
as long as you are careful to cite authors and sources. You should not extensively quote or paraphrase large sections
of sources. Do not paraphrase extensively, since the point is to develop your own thoughts. An essay that is no more
than a paraphrase of cited sources will almost certainly prove unacceptable. Paraphrased statements should always
be clearly indicated by phrases like as Smith says . . . . The source of the paraphrased statements should be indicated
in a standard note (consult a standard style manual). Paraphrasing or copying sources without citing them is
plagiarism. This is a serious matter that may result in a failing grade.
The best way to avoid the suspicion of plagiarism is carefully to indicate with quotation marks any direct quotes
from any online or print source. If you paste any sections of your database sources into your notes, be sure to keep
track of where these quotes begin and end. Extensive paraphrasing without naming your sources is plagiarism. Be
sure to give page numbers for printed sources or pdf files and section names or paragraph numbers for webformatted sources.
Writing and Learning from Drafts
A good essay probably will require multiple drafts. (While you may write more than two drafts when working on
this project, you only need to submit a two versions on the due dates. These drafts should be your most polished
efforts to date on this project.) Any good piece of writing should be gone over for errors, lapses in reasoning, and
confusions in structure at least two or three times.
Every sentence and paragraph should logically follow from your thesis. As you reread your essay, note where you
sense vagueness. That is where the logical connection between what you have written and your thesis breaks down.
These are the places that need reworking in rewrites.
Don’t raise ideas and then drop them without relating them to your thesis statement. An idea that doesn’t fit, even
after several drafts, ought to be cut. Don’t be afraid to cut material from your essay. If, however, you want to retain
an idea that doesn’t fit your thesis, you may need to reconsider whether your thesis statement is adequate to what
you want to say. You may need to revise your thesis sentence to make it broad enough to cover the ideas that your
find yourself writing about.
After writing the first draft of your essay, you may find that the last few sentences contain the kernel of your thesis.
If you find this to be so, place the thesis at the beginning of the essay and connect the rest of your essay—quotes,
summaries, and judgments—back to the thesis sentence.
University Services for Students (Fall 2014—to be updated in Spring 2016)
Disabilities:
In order for a student to receive an accommodation for a disability, that disability must be on record in the Dean of
Students’ Office, 3rd Floor, David Student Union (DSU). If you believe that you have a disability, please contact Dr.
Kevin Hughes, Dean of Students (594-7160) to discuss your needs. Dean Hughes will provide you with the
necessary documentation to give to your professors.
Students with documented disabilities are required to notify the instructor no later than the first day on which they
require an accommodation (the first day of the mandatory orientation class is recommended), in private, if
accommodation is needed. The instructor will provide students with disabilities with all reasonable
accommodations, but students are not exempted from fulfilling the normal requirements of the course. Work
completed before the student notifies the instructor of his/her disability may be counted toward the final grade at the
sole discretion of the instructor.
Please discuss at an orientation meeting or sooner with one of the instructors any special accommodations that may
be needed to participate or observe in the yoga sessions and travel to and residence in a spa, oriented to outdoor
activities, that is at a distance of a few hours driving time from the airport.
Success:
I want you to succeed in this course and at CNU. I encourage you to come see me during office hours or to schedule
an appointment to discuss course content or to answer questions you have. If I become concerned about your course
performance, attendance, engagement, or well-being, I will speak with you first. I also may submit a referral through
our Captains Care Program. The referral will be received by the Center for Academic Success as well as other
departments when appropriate (Counseling Services, Office of Student Engagement). If you are an athlete, the
Athletic Academic Support Coordinator will be notified. Someone will contact you to help determine what will help
you succeed. Please remember that this is a means for me to support you and help foster your success at CNU.
Academic Support:
The Center for Academic Success offers free tutoring assistance for CNU students in several academic areas. Staff
in the center offer individual assistance and/or workshops on various study strategies to help you perform your best
in your courses. The center also houses the Alice F. Randall Writing Center. Writing consultants can help you at any
stage of the writing process, from invention, to development of ideas, to polishing a final draft. The Center is not a
proofreading service, but consultants can help you to recognize and find grammar and punctuation errors in your
work as well as provide assistance with global tasks. Go as early in the writing process as you can, and go often!
You may drop by the Center for Academic Success to request a tutor, meet with a writing consultant, pick up a
schedule of workshops, or make an appointment to talk one-on-one with a University