Calendar
Event
Location
Date
| Lighting up Your Own Circuits of Joy and Inner Peace | Kripalu Center, MA | Mar 14, 7:30pm Mar 17, 12:00am |
|
| Throughout history, great saints and sages have entered extraordinary mind states by cultivating extraordinary brain states. This experiential program uses the new field of contemplative neuroscience to offer many practical ways to light up your own neural circuits. We'll explore: concentration and blissful absorption; taking in good experiences to feel happier and more confident; your natural core of inner peace, contentment, and love; and joyful oneness with all things. Especially valuable to people in the helping professions, this program doesn’t require any background in meditation or science. You’ll learn the science behind “the brain of a Buddha” and how to actually change your own brain for greater happiness, love, and wisdom, and bring those benefits to yoga, meditation, psychological growth, and spiritual practice. (CEUs available) |
|||
| Self and No-Self in Buddhist Thought, Meditation, and Neuroscience | Barre Center for Buddhist Studies, Barre, MA | Mar 19, 7:30pm Mar 21, 12:00am |
|
| Nothing is as confusing in Buddhism as the idea that there is no enduring, unchanging self, nor as liberating as letting go of our clinging to selfhood. We'll explore Buddhist teachings on how our sense of self arises and constructs our everyday reality. The workshop will also teach traditional meditative techniques for watching how “self” arises from moment to moment. Buddhist understandings of “self” will be illustrated, where appropriate, in relation to modern neuroscience and psychology. (With William Waldron, PhD, Professor of Religion, Middlebury College) | |||
| The New Neuroscience of Happiness, Love, and Wisdom | Psychotherapy Networker Symposium, Washington, DC | Mar 25, 9:00am Mar 28, 5:00pm |
|
| The historically unprecedented meeting of modern brain science and ancient contemplative wisdom offers therapists powerful new insights and tools. We’ll begin by reviewing how mindfulness and meditation change the brain and therefore the mind. Next we’ll cover simple brain-savvy things a client can do to feel calmer and stronger. Then we’ll focus on how to use contemplative neuroscience in three down-to-earth ways: to help clients become more mindful, to weave positive experiences into the fabric of the brain and self, and to stimulate and strengthen the three neural circuits of empathy. Throughout, there’ll be practical examples and experiential activities that you can use in your practice, and handouts to adapt as client materials. (CEUs available) | |||
| Equanimity - In the Dharma and in Your Brain | Spirit Rock, Woodacre, CA | May 29, 9:30am 5:00pm |
|
| Equanimity means not reacting to your reactions . . . and that is both a wonderful relief from upsets and traumas, and a profound resource for spiritual growth. In Buddhism, equanimity is one of the four Brahmaviharas (“Divine Abodes”), and it breaks the chain of suffering by helping you not react to the pleasant/unpleasant feeling tone of experience with craving and clinging. Your equanimity, a state of mind, is based on underlying states of your brain. Modern neuroscience is revealing new ways to cultivate those brain states - a potent combination with time-tested Buddhist practices. (With Rick Mendius, MD) (CEUs available) |
|||
| The Neurodharma of Love | Spirit Rock, Woodacre, CA | Jul 17, 9:30am 5:00pm |
|
| Supported by both Buddhism and Western psychology, the keys to healthy relationships include empathy, compassion, kindness, equanimity, and appropriate assertiveness. These states of mind are based on underlying states of your brain. The emerging integration of modern neuroscience and ancient contemplative wisdom offers increasingly skillful means for activating those brain states – and thus for cultivating an open and caring heart, effective communication, balance during upsets, and more fulfilling relationships. (With Rick Mendius, MD) (CEUs available) |
|||
| Forgiveness and Assertiveness | Spirit Rock, Woodacre, CA | Oct 2, 9:30am 5:00pm |
|
| To be able to enter deeply into relationship, it is necessary to be able both to forgive and to assert yourself skillfully. This experiential workshop will get into the nitty-gritty of how to bring the Buddha’s profound teachings on interrelatedness, lovingkindness, and virtue (sila) into the messy real world of relationships with family members, lovers, friends, bosses, and co-workers. We'll cover: the primacy of relationships in evolution, and the deep capacities for both loving altruism and fearful aggression; the neural machinery of emotional reactivity and developing grievances with others; effective and realistic practices of assertiveness and forgiveness. (With Fred Luskin, PhD, Director of the Stanford Forgiveness Project) (CEUs available) |
|||
| The Hard Things That Open the Mind and Heart: Practicing with Difficult Conditions | Spirit Rock, Woodacre, CA | Oct 23, 9:30am 5:00pm |
|
| This is for people grappling with difficult conditions – both internal and external – and for caregivers and friends who support those individuals. These include challenges with the body, mind, and life cir cumstances. We’ll cover Buddhist perspectives and practices for difficult conditions; lovingkindness for oneself and for any being who suffers; brain-savvy ways to strengthen your capacity to be with the hard stuff; and methods from the intersection of the dharma and neuroscience for lifting mood and cultivating joy. (With James Baraz and Rick Mendius, MD) (CEUs available) | |||
| The Neurodharma of Sex, Love, and Meaningful Relationships | Esalen, Big Sur, CA | Dec 3, 8:30pm Dec 5, 11:30am |
|
| Through group discussions, meditations, and innovative exercises, you’ll learn how to stimulate and strengthen the neural circuits of empathy, attachment, and love. In particular, we’ll explore how to integrate assertiveness and lovingkindness, and how to ride the roller-coaster of romance and intimate partnership with grace and contentment. [The link to Esalen's website for this workshop will be forthcoming.] | |||
| Not-Self in the Brain | Spirit Rock, Woodacre, CA | Dec 11, 9:30am 5:00pm |
|
| This workshop will ad dress the thorny and fundamental question of . . . "me, myself, and I." The self – with its tendencies to grasp after possessions and take things person ally – is perhaps the premier engine of suffering. We’ll explore the evolution of the apparent self in the animal kingdom, and the ways in which the self is real and is also not real at all, coming to rest more and more in the underlying spacious aware ness in which self appears and disappears. (With Rick Mendius, MD) (CEUs available) | |||
For additional information on any program above, please email me.
Comments on this entry are closed.