Welcome to the Effortless Living Network 

The Effortless Living Community

• Have you been meaning to meditate regularly, to exercise, eat better, or just live a saner life – but still haven’t managed to get around to it?
• Are there things you manage to do once in a while that you know are good for you, and that actually make a positive difference in your life, but haven’t yet managed to do on a regular basis?
• What if you could be part of a warm supportive community whose purpose is to help you get past your resistances, do those things you’ve been wanting to do, and at the same time, provides you with a way of connecting with others about things that matter to you?

In our online Effortless Living Community, you’ll get daily support for doing those things you want to do. And beyond that, you’ll have guidance for practicing a kind of effortless mindfulness that leads to a profound sense of peace and calm, helps you feel more connected to yourself, and awakens that child-like sense of wonder that so many of us lose touch with as adults.

Our Effortless Sleep Course:

From Restless Nights to Effortless Sleep 

• Would you like to be able to fall asleep and get back to sleep effortlessly, without having to rely on drugs or supplements?
• Would you like to wake up in the morning feeling energized and refreshed and have plenty of  energy throughout the day?
• Would you like to learn a method which does all this and also develops your ability to shift into  a calm and centered state any time of day?

If you answered yes to the above questions, you’ll definitely want to check out our online effortless sleep course, “From Restless Nights to Effortless Sleep.” In the course, you be guided through the steps of Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy for Insomnia (CBT-I), which is the method most highly recommended by sleep experts for overcoming insomnia. You’ll also learn Effortless Mindfulness and Yoga Nidra, which have been shown to make CBT-I much more effective. And you’ll be learning all of these methods in a way that’s fun, enjoyable and requires very little effort.   

What you learn in the course will help you fall asleep and get back to sleep effortlessly, wake up in the morning feeling energized and refreshed, and have more energy throughout the day. You may even find that what you’ve learned to help you sleep will bring a greater sense of ease during the day as well.

To learn more about the Effortless Sleep Course, click the links below:

Cognitive Behavioral Therapy for Insomnia (CBT-I)

Effortless Mindfulness

Yoga Nidra 

(please note that the Effortless Sleep Course will not be available until October 1, 2025. It is a cohort course, and we want to make sure we will be available to you every day that you're taking the course.  Meanwhile, you can learn many of the basic sleep skills you'll need by joining the Effortless Living Community and by taking our Breathing, Relaxation and Yoga Nidra "Basics" mini-course)

Our Effortless Mindfulness Course:

Train Your Brain, Change Your Life 

In this course, you’ll learn a variety of breathing, relaxation and effortless mindfulness practices that can change the physical structure of your brain in a way that will: 

• improve your physical health
•  generate more happiness and overall well-being
•  improve your concentration and mental clarity
•  help you learn more easily and work more productively
•  develop a greater sense of ease and effortlessness in all you do
• ultimately develop a deeper sense of meaning and purpose in life
  

As you progress through the course, you’ll find ways to make the practices a more and more integral part of your life. You’ll also gain an understanding of how you can apply the skills you learn in the course to improving not only your own life, but to helping you to be a positive influence on the world around you.

Learning About Your Brain as You Learn the Practices

The course provides you with a simple and very practical understanding of how your brain works to create stress, illness, suffering, and all kinds of imbalances in your life. It guides you through a wide variety of breathing, relaxation and effortless mindfulness practices that work to change the physical structure of your brain so that it naturally begins to generate more ease, calm, and effectiveness in virtually every aspect of your life.

You’ll learn how your brain and nervous system evolved to function in a balanced way, and how that functioning has been thrown off-balance by the stresses and strains of the modern world. And you’ll learn both inner and outer approaches to rebalancing your brain programming so that it can return to its job of improving your health, your ability to learn and be productive at work, and to creating the experience of deep inner peace, calm and happiness which we call “open, heartful awareness.”

Balancing your own brain programming will also give you a clearer sense of how you can help create circumstances in the world that support more balanced brain functioning for everyone  – in ways that are organic and non-intrusive and that lead to a greater sense of connection, community, and a deeper sense of meaning and purpose in life.

To learn more about the Effortless Mindfulness Course,
click HERE.

Our Effortless Mini-Courses

Effortless Mindful Movement

Mindfulness is a meditative practice that involves being calmly, gently yet intimately attentive to what you’re experiencing in the moment, without judging it good or bad. It’s usually practiced in a still seated position or with very slow walking.  

The ultimate goal of mindfulness practice is to be able to bring that same quality of calm, intimate attentiveness to all our activities. But being mindful while engaged in activity can be challenging – and the more complex or difficult the activity, the more challenging it’s likely to be.  

Practicing mindfulness with slow, meditative movement is a gentle and enjoyable way of helping to build your ability to remain mindful while engaged in more complex activities such as walking around at normal speed, engaged in work, or having a conversation.  

Effortless Music Improvisation

One of the most magical ways of getting a feeling for effortlessness is through musical improvisation. And it doesn’t matter if you’ve never played a musical instrument before. Sometimes when I was busking (that is, playing my keyboard in downtown Asheville), I taught people this simple technique. Even if they never played an instrument before, they were delighted to discover they could do some basic improvisation in less than 5 minutes. 

If you play an instrument other than a keyboad, you can apply the same basic principles to improvising on any instrument, or even to simply drumming out a rhythmic improvisation on a tabletop, pot, pan, or any surface you like. 

 We guarantee that if you practice regularly for a month, you’ll be able to experience the joy of effortless improvisation.

Effortless Breathing, Relaxation and Yoga Nidra 

In this mini course we’ll be introducing you to some wonderfully simple and effective breathing, relaxation and Yoga Nidra practices that can make a profound difference in your life.  

Whether you’re feeling overwhelmed and stressed out, feeling sluggish at work, having trouble focusing or learning in school, whether you’re experiencing strain or conflict in your relationships, or you’re longing for more of a sense of meaning and purpose in your life, these practices will give you a strong foundation for making a positive difference in your life.  

Integrating the Practices Into Your Daily Life

You’ll also learn how you can use these practices to create a daily seated effortless mindfulness or any kind of meditation practice – and how you can use them throughout the day to shift your experience in the midst of an activity. 

What Makes all this Effortless? 

The experience of effortlessness comes from the way we guide you to do the practices - but also from how we approach the learning process itself. 

So we invite you to approach the learning of these practices in a relaxed and playful way – without judging how you’re doing, jumping to conclusions, or striving for results. Just really allowing yourself to enjoy the adventure of learning – and like a young child, being innocently curious about what you’re actually experiencing in the moment. 

These breathing, relaxation and Yoga Nidra practices are among the most important foundations for learning conventional as well as effortless mindfulness, and will make any meditative or contemplative practice you engage in much easier.

In fact, they will make everything in your life easier. 

You'll get  more out of the mini-courses if you join our Effortless Living Community for a month or two before and/or after you take the courses. In the community you'll have support for learning the basic practices that help to make the mini-courses effortless. 

Testimonials 

Effortless Sleep Course Testimonials

Thank you so much Don! Last night was the first night of restful relaxed sleep in a long time. I even woke up not stiff and achy this morning. I always hit the ground running every morning but this morning I did not have to rush because I woke up refreshed on my own.  

 Sheri K.

Thank you for this inspiring and very helpful journey . Dr. Salmon's competence and longstanding experience shine through the course,    This has all helped me a lot in dealing with my chronic sleeplessness. I wholeheartedly recommend this course!" 

Marco M. 

I haven’t even finished this course and I’m already sleeping better and more consistently than I can remember.  … This is a course about sleep, but more than that, it gently teaches a way of living that involves less effort, more awareness and greater ease. Highly recommended. 

Anne P

All aspects of my sleep have changed for the better since taking the effortless sleep course. I’m falling asleep just about right away using your wonderful Yoga Nidra recordings. I’m amazed to find I’m sleeping through the night regularly, with almost no interruptions, something that hasn’t happened this frequently for a long time.  What a difference this course has made! 

Assetou X.

Effortless Mindfulness Course Testimonials

I loved the course, “Train Your Brain, Change Your Life.” For about a year before taking it, I had been learning mindfulness from a number of different sources. I feel like after taking Don and Jan’s course, I really “got” mindfulness for the first time,  The music and videos are works of art, enjoyment, and instruction.. and, this is the best psychotherapy I have ever had.  And I had lots of different kinds over my long life.   

Paul S,

I found the instructions and practices were easy to understand, fun to do, and very effective for opening my heart and deepening my general appreciation for day-to-day life.  And I loved the soothing voices and music in the instructional audios.

Dr. Shelley Thomas, Director, Center for Accelerated Language Acquisition, Middle Tennessee State University 

Though I’ve been practicing meditation for quite a few years, I have found that with your “Train Your Brain” course I am better able to access that place of calm within, and that I have more fluidity and ability to change. The understanding of neural pathways has helped motivate me to be less obsessive, more able to let go of habitual ways of reacting and doing things.  

Liz I.