Tree of Life

Weekly Meditation Classes

Experiential group
to establish, re-establish and
deepen your meditation practice

This group will focus on developing and deepening your meditation practice.
There will be teachings concerning meditation and its applications to life challenges, guided meditation in which you practice specific tools and techniques of inner work, and discussion and q&a related to the experiences. We will focus on the practical and experiential and not delve much into theoretical and metaphysical discussions.

The focus will be on learning through the experiences in the group sessions and
studying how the practice works at home. Participants are expected to make a
commitment to themselves to apply the teachings during the course. We will look into the physical and psychological roots of resistance to maintaining your practice and learn approaches to moving through them.

Some key elements of the classes:

• Establishing clear intentions: Understanding and acknowledging what
  moves and motivates you to meditate. Many people have a sense that they
  want or need to meditate, but donʼt have a clear idea of what they are
  seeking. Often, the intentions change in the process of learning and
  practicing. Whether it is to feel less stressed or to experience union with the
  divine, having clear and strong intentions energizes the process.
• Choosing a place and time. This is often a great obstacle and needs to
  be addressed with clarity. Depending on your daily schedule and your work
  and home environment, there are a number of practical guidelines that we will
  explore for supporting your intention to practice meditation.
• Sangha is the term used to describe a community of like-minded
  seekers. Our group will be a seed for developing this kind of support system
  for your spiritual practice.
• Navigating in consciousness. Once you begin the process of closing
  off the external stimuli and focus of attention and turn inward, you will begin a
  journey of encountering an inner landscape that rises in your experience.
  Navigating involves learning to move inside and employ the different aspects
  of awareness available to us in finding our way; sensory, emotional, mental
  and imagistic.
• There are many different forms of meditation and tools and techniques
  available to us. We will explore a number of methods, helping you to find
  what is best for you at this time in your life.
• Meditation is meant to benefit your life, to have a positive effect on your
  daily experience. You will be encouraged to pay attention to how it is helping
  to change your mind, your reactivity, your patterns of perceiving the world,
  your behavior.
• It is not easy to maintain a meditation practice. Everyone experiences
  resistance. After 40 years of practice and teaching, I know it firsthand.
  Meditation teaches us to not avoid resistance, but grow from the experience.