October 2019
Gail Brenner ~ Awakening in the Mind, Body and Heart
PLEASE NOTE THAT THIS EVENT HAS BEEN MOVED FROM SAN RAFAEL TO BERKELEY DUE TO LACK OF POWER IN MARIN COUNTY.
The potential for all of us is to be open, present, and available, to live from inner intelligence, to be in harmony with life. In fact, this is our natural state. But how do we find this open awareness in our ordinary day-to-day lives, especially when life gets confusing and difficult?
In our sacred time together, we’ll use guided meditations, restful silences, and focused heartfelt conversation to skillfully unravel the conditioned identities that make you feel separate.
We’ll practice turning inward toward what you’re experiencing so you can know where your attention is going that’s causing personal suffering. We’ll slow things down so you can be fully present with every thought, feeling, and physical sensation that appears. You’ll learn compassionate skills to help you in challenging moments.
We respect the humanity of your stories, and go beyond them to relax into the openness beyond all stories—undisturbed by any problem or emotion. As you meet the knots of your suffering with the deepest acceptance, they begin to soften, and here you find yourself—in the simple freshness of the moment that is open, peaceful, and infinitely loving.
Gail Brenner, Ph.D. is an eternal student of happiness who blends her experience as a psychologist with a loving presence that invites people into harmony with all of life. She is gifted at meeting our humanness with nondual understanding in ways that are practical and loving. Gail has worked with clients and groups for over 20 years, bringing laser-like clarity to the confusion of common problems, such as reactive emotions, compulsive behaviors, feelings of personal inadequacy, and relationship struggles. She is the author of several books, including The End of Self-Help and her latest, Suffering is Optional.
“Here's some very good news: freedom from unhappiness is possible, and nothing needs to change. You don't need to change your thoughts, process your feelings, learn to relax, or become a better person. The invitation is simply to see things clearly. See clearly through to the essence of what makes you unhappy, and you'll realize that, at the core of your being, there's no conflict, resistance, or separation. You now know peace deeper than you could ever imagine. Shine a laser on every experience that makes you suffer, and you'll always find your true nature, pure being that just is."
Suggested Donation: $15-$25 per person
Find out more »November 2019
Gail Brenner ~ Early Trauma and Awakened Consciousness
We’ve all had difficult experiences early in our lives that continue to affect us. When these experiences remain unprocessed, they lie at the root of the conditioned patterns that cause us to suffer: the need to feel in control; people pleasing; persistent relationship struggles; proving yourself through accomplishments; and addictions. These signs of early trauma are profound invitations into liberation from the sense of separation.
In this meeting, we will learn how early trauma develops and lives in us as adults. We’ll discuss the art of navigating our painful experiences with warmth and intelligence, including helpful tools and practices. And we’ll discover that consciousness is already holding our present moment experience in love.
Gail Brenner, Ph.D. is an eternal student of happiness who blends her experience as a psychologist with a loving presence that invites people into harmony with all of life. She is gifted at meeting our humanness with nondual understanding in ways that are practical and loving. Gail has worked with clients and groups for over 20 years, bringing laser-like clarity to the confusion of common problems, such as reactive emotions, compulsive behaviors, feelings of personal inadequacy, and relationship struggles. She is the author of several books, including The End of Self-Help and her latest, Suffering is Optional.
“Here's some very good news: freedom from unhappiness is possible, and nothing needs to change. You don't need to change your thoughts, process your feelings, learn to relax, or become a better person. The invitation is simply to see things clearly. See clearly through to the essence of what makes you unhappy, and you'll realize that, at the core of your being, there's no conflict, resistance, or separation. You now know peace deeper than you could ever imagine. Shine a laser on every experience that makes you suffer, and you'll always find your true nature, pure being that just is."
Suggested Donation: $15-$25 per person
Find out more »Jeannie Zandi ~ The Dance of Yin and Yang
Evening event for All
When the divine energies of yin and yang are balanced, harmony and beauty result. When these energies are imbalanced, disharmony and ugliness ensue. In our current imbalanced climate of devalued yin and “toxic” yang, it is easy to overlook the divine nature of both of these principles. Join Jeannie for an inquiry into the holy energies of yin and yang, how they dance together, and how we can support the call back to balance that is needed for harmony in ourselves and the world.
Jeannie’s gift for inviting people to join her in resting and rooted presence evokes a deep meeting with oneself and reality. Within that, Jeannie’s humor and iconoclasm serve to bring people into an understanding that is beyond the intellectual. Through silent and guided meditation, spontaneous talks and exchange with participants, Jeannie will host a space of clarity and warmth where the richness of relating can be explored safely and your innermost questions met fully. Come join us!
Jeannie is the director of Living as Love, a nonprofit organization dedicated to seeding a culture of the Heart on the planet, inspiring, teaching and supporting people to live from their essence as Love. A year before the birth of her daughter, Jeannie was plunged into a dark night of the soul that culminated in a radical shift of consciousness. She is known for her fearless clarity, tender mercy toward humanness, and a juicy, poetic and often humorous style that draws from Advaita Vedanta, Sufism, Christian mysticism and the ongoing revelation of fully engaged living. Residing in Colorado, she travels widely in the US, bringing a down-to-earth embodied teaching of living as love.
Thur. Evening Suggested donation: $15-$25
There will also be daylong events, 11am to 5pm...
Saturday Nov. 16th for Women
Sunday Nov. 17th for Men
See our schedule for details of daylongs.
Jeannie Zandi ~ Yin, Strength & Power – Daylong for Women
Is it possible to be at once soft and open, and grounded in knowing, strength and power? Yes. In this daylong, Jeannie and friends will explore the power of disowned yin and its embodiment, the integration of yin with yang, and the key role that divine yin plays in women’s confidence, self love, relating, fulfilment and power.
Jeannie’s gift for inviting people to join her in resting and rooted presence evokes a deep meeting with oneself and reality. Within that, Jeannie’s humor and iconoclasm serve to bring people into an understanding that is beyond the intellectual. Through silent and guided meditation, spontaneous talks and exchange with participants, Jeannie will host a space of clarity and warmth where the richness of relating can be explored safely and your innermost questions met fully. Come join us!
Jeannie is the director of Living as Love, a nonprofit organization dedicated to seeding a culture of the Heart on the planet, inspiring, teaching and supporting people to live from their essence as Love. A year before the birth of her daughter, Jeannie was plunged into a dark night of the soul that culminated in a radical shift of consciousness. She is known for her fearless clarity, tender mercy toward humanness, and a juicy, poetic and often humorous style that draws from Advaita Vedanta, Sufism, Christian mysticism and the ongoing revelation of fully engaged living. Residing in Colorado, she travels widely in the US, bringing a down-to-earth embodied teaching of living as love.
Saturday Daylong for Women will apply most to anyone who grew up with women’s conditioning
Sliding Scale: $65-$125
No pre-registration. Pay at door.
Daylong for Men will be on Sunday Nov. 17th, 11am to 5pm
Find out more »Jeannie Zandi ~ Connected – Daylong for Men
Join Jeannie and friends for a gathering of men to explore connectedness with self, with the Divine, with other. Explore the role of softening and of sturdiness, self-caring boundaries and open heartfulness. Be held in a tender, safe, spacious and transformational container by a capable, strong and respectful man-loving woman to speak what’s in your heart and explore new territory and expression.
Jeannie’s gift for inviting people to join her in resting and rooted presence evokes a deep meeting with oneself and reality. Within that, Jeannie’s humor and iconoclasm serve to bring people into an understanding that is beyond the intellectual. Through silent and guided meditation, spontaneous talks and exchange with participants, Jeannie will host a space of clarity and warmth where the richness of relating can be explored safely and your innermost questions met fully.
Jeannie is the director of Living as Love, a nonprofit organization dedicated to seeding a culture of the Heart on the planet, inspiring, teaching and supporting people to live from their essence as Love. A year before the birth of her daughter, Jeannie was plunged into a dark night of the soul that culminated in a radical shift of consciousness. She is known for her fearless clarity, tender mercy toward humanness, and a juicy, poetic and often humorous style that draws from Advaita Vedanta, Sufism, Christian mysticism and the ongoing revelation of fully engaged living. Residing in Colorado, she travels widely in the US, bringing a down-to-earth embodied teaching of living as love.
Sunday Daylong for Men will apply most to anyone who grew up with men’s conditioning
Sliding Scale: $65-$125
No pre-registration. Pay at door.
Caverly Morgan ~ Liberation Now: From the Progressive Path to Direct Experience
In a progressive path approach to practice, we sometimes fall for the idea that liberation is in the future. We are conditioned to believe that we must end thinking, master practices, meditate for years, and purify our minds. Without realizing it, our beliefs can maintain the conditioning that stands in the way of our direct realization.
Turning our attention outward to various objects in practice can be deeply helpful. And, what changes when we cultivate our effortless capacity to rest the attention in awareness itself? What changes as we practice inquiry into the nature of consciousness? And what tends to get in the way?
Caverly Morgan is a meditation teacher, nonprofit leader, and visionary. She is the founder and guiding teacher of Presence Collective, dedicated to igniting personal transformation and collective awakening. She is also the founder and guiding teacher of Peace in Schools — a nonprofit which created the nation’s first for-credit mindfulness class in public high schools. Peace in Schools is pioneering new depths in mindfulness education, through teaching youth as well as training educators.
Caverly blends the original spirit of Zen with a modern nondual approach. Her practice began in 1995 and has included eight years of training in a silent Zen monastery. She has been teaching contemplative practice since 2001.
Prior to her pioneering efforts with Peace in Schools, Caverly formerly worked for nonprofits serving people with special needs. An artist and educator, she brings insight, passion, warmth and humor to her transformative work with students of all ages and experience levels.
www.caverlymorgan.org
facebook.com/caverlymorgan
Suggested Donation: $15 - $25
Find out more »Ajaya Sommers ~ Beyond the trap of Spiritual Bypassing ~ Core Embodiment Practices® For resting as Awareness while Honoring your Fully Human Life
Within a field of unconditionally loving presence, Ajaya facilitates a unique discovery process called Core Embodiment®, an integrated system of embodiment practices, principles and perceptual orientations to awaken and align with the power of your human potential. She is a Biodynamic Craniosacral Integration Teacher, Authorized Continuum Teacher, gifted healer, writer and creative catalyst in the field of embodied awakening and trauma resolution for the last 26 years. All of her programs are grounded in science, expanded through devotional practice, and made real through direct experience.
Due to early developmental trauma, ancestral trauma and our cultural context at large, there is a prevailing unconscious nervous system habit of using spirituality and particularly the non-dual orientations to hide, bypass or otherwise disassociate from the intelligence of your core human needs and feelings. As if your needs and feelings are problems to be ashamed of; to fix or get rid of on your way to spiritual realization.
This is not a sustainable, humane or truly integrative path. We long for the tangible felt sense of our wholeness. We long to passionately embody all that is present within our very human, holy and messy majesty of being alive. It is time that we compassionately discover how to allow everything in our immediate experience to be lived and loved within the intimate embrace of the Heart.
In this introductory evening, we will melt below our habit patterns of the default nervous system and connect directly with this core intelligence. Discovering our own intimate, ever fresh, self- healing, oxytocin replenishing, cell-renewing inspired embodiment practice.
Utilizing conscious breath, sound vibration, subtle intrinsic movement, embryological anatomy and provocative inquiry we enter into the inner alchemy that allows a dissolve of any out dated structures that may be obstructing our path. A psycho-spiritual somatic reorganization and higher order of self-regulation arises as our cells surrender into the all-pervasive holding ground of nature that is always present, when we are seated in the Core.
We will re-emerge renewed, resourced and ready to re-engage our senses such that they become thresholds where the divine, the natural world, our culture and the mystery of being human coalesce as the dynamic dance of Life.
Please arrive at least a few minutes early
Suggested Donation: $15-$25 per person
December 2019
Loch Kelly ~ Effortless Mindfulness: Awakening Embodied
“Loch Kelly is one of the clearest expressions of authentic awakened freedom and love that I know. He offers wise, loving medicine and direct, practical guidance which evolved from Loch’s vast experience and deep commitment to help others awaken to spiritual freedom.” ~ Adyashanti
Join Loch Kelly to learn effortless mindfulness as a way to shift out of your chattering thoughts and live from your awake heart-mind. We will explore ways of supporting living an awakened life. It is not enough to simply wake up out of everyday ego mind to pure awareness. In order to live with your eyes open, in relationships and work, we need to familiarize ourselves with new ways of "doing from Being."
Effortless Mindfulness is done through small glimpses of your True Nature, with eyes open in the midst of everyday life. Effortless mindfulness is ideal for our contemporary times in that it makes embodied awakening possible for all of us, without having to join a monastery or be an Olympic athlete of meditation. Awakening can become the next, natural stage of our human development.
Loch will draw from the ancient wisdom traditions, psychology, and current neuroscientific research to point us beyond our small, separate sense of self to help us live from our already awake heart-mind.
It is recommended to read Loch Kelly’s new book The Way of Effortless Mindfulness: A Revolutionary Guide for Living an Awakened Life before the daylong, available HERE.
Loch Kelly, M.Div., LCSW is an author of the award winning book The Way of Effortless Mindfulness. He is a licensed psychotherapist and recognized leader in the field of non-dual meditation and awakening. Loch is the founder of the non-profit, Open-Hearted Awareness Institute and has worked in community mental health, established homeless shelters and counseled family members of 9/11. Loch graduated from Columbia University where he received a traveling fellowship to study in Sri Lanka, India and Nepal. Loch collaborates with neuroscientists at Yale, UPenn and NYU in the study of how awareness training can enhance compassion and wellbeing.
Sliding Scale: $65 - $125
Pre-registration suggested, but not required.
Note that registration closes at 7:00 pm on Wednesday, December 4th.
However, there will be plenty of spaces available at the door on Friday.
Please bring cash or a check if you plan on paying at the door.
Jeannie Zandi ~ The Dance of Yin and Yang
When the divine energies of yin and yang are balanced, harmony and beauty result. When these energies are imbalanced, disharmony and ugliness ensue. In our current imbalanced climate of devalued yin and “toxic” yang, it is easy to overlook the divine nature of both of these principles. Join Jeannie for an inquiry into the holy energies of yin and yang, how they dance together, and how we can support the call back to balance that is needed for harmony in ourselves and the world.
Jeannie’s gift for inviting people to join her in resting and rooted presence evokes a deep meeting with oneself and reality. Within that, Jeannie’s humor and iconoclasm serve to bring people into an understanding that is beyond the intellectual. Through silent and guided meditation, spontaneous talks and exchange with participants, Jeannie will host a space of clarity and warmth where the richness of relating can be explored safely and your innermost questions met fully. Come join us!
Jeannie is the director of Living as Love, a nonprofit organization dedicated to seeding a culture of the Heart on the planet, inspiring, teaching and supporting people to live from their essence as Love. A year before the birth of her daughter, Jeannie was plunged into a dark night of the soul that culminated in a radical shift of consciousness. She is known for her fearless clarity, tender mercy toward humanness, and a juicy, poetic and often humorous style that draws from Advaita Vedanta, Sufism, Christian mysticism and the ongoing revelation of fully engaged living. Residing in Colorado, she travels widely in the US, bringing a down-to-earth embodied teaching of living as love.
Suggested donation: $15-$25
Find out more »
John Prendergast ~ The Deep Heart: Our Portal to Presence
The great human quest is to discover who we really are—a discovery that changes our lives and the lives of those around us. With The Deep Heart, John Prendergast invites you on a pilgrimage within, using the heart as a portal to your deepest psychological and spiritual nature. The Deep Heart is John’s term for the subtle center of emotional and energetic sensitivity, relational intimacy, profound inner knowing, and wholeness found within our hearts.
In this experiential guide, John offers precise and potent meditative inquiries to help you open your heart, see through your core limiting beliefs, and discover the true nature of your being. He brings a depth of experience, insight, warmth, and compassion to his teaching work, and is especially skillful in guided meditative inquiries and one-on-one dialogues.
John J. Prendergast is a spiritual teacher, psychotherapist and retired adjunct professor of psychology at CIIS, known for his pioneering work in integrating nondual wisdom and psychotherapy. A long-time student of both Jean Klein and Adyashanti, he was asked to share the dharma by Dorothy Hunt. He is the author of the forthcoming The Deep Heart: Our Portal to Presence, as well as In Touch: How to Tune in to the Inner Guidance of Your Body and Trust Yourself.
Suggested Donation: $15-25
No one turned away for lack of funds.