January 2022
Silent Group Meditation (Free, No Guidance)
Join us for a silent group meditation. Do your own practice quietly in the company of others. Let’s be present, together. .... more details
Mon.: 8:00am – 8:30am (PT) and Wed.: 9:00am – 9:30am (PT)
Ongoing drop-in group – attend as often as you like.
Weekly, with rare exceptions. Verify dates on Full Calendar.
iRest Group ~ Yogic Relaxation Practice
Open Circle is pleased to be offering biweekly facilitated iRest sessions. Developed by meditation master Richard Miller, iRest is a modernized form of the ancient practice of Yoga Nidra or “yogic sleep”. It is a restorative practice that promotes deep healing, health, and well-being. This 45-60 minute-long group will be gently led by Kate Foley, an iRest trained facilitator. It will consist of a full 30 minute guided meditation, along with the opportunity to share and connect with community. The meditation is done lying down, and is an invitation for your nervous system to truly rest: nothing to do, nowhere to go, nothing to be; simply a time gifted to yourself to relax and to be supported. Join as often as you like, and keep yourself nourished and balanced during these challenging times. No prior yoga experience necessary.
Suggested donation: $10 to $20
No one turned away for lack of funds. Please register early if you can.
To check your local time, use a tool such as: Time Zone Converter
Lynn Marie Lumiere, MFT ~ SOMATIC AWAKENING: Body-Mind-Spirit Embodiment
Online Monthly Group Meetings
Although our true nature is not affected by all that we experience, our human body and mind are impacted by experiences that result in emotional wounding and trauma. Any experience, especially early in life, that is outside our window of tolerance, can overwhelm our nervous system and create chronic stress patterns in the body/mind. These stuck patterns can affect our spiritual awakening process by making it more difficult to relax, trust, be in the moment, and allow everything to be as it is—all of which are necessary for awakening and embodiment.
This ongoing monthly group will offer deep support for body-mind-spirit embodied awakening and healing so you can rest more deeply in the great peace, love and unity that resides in all of us.
We will do somatic practices for balancing the nervous system and building more capacity for regulating stress and emotions. Being more regulated is very important to both healing our human wounding and our spiritual awakening. We will also use the Flash Technique to release the charge on traumatic memories and loosen the grip of the negative beliefs that they create.
It is encouraged to attend the live session so you can receive the support of the group as well as Lynn Marie’s therapeutic support if needed. You are also welcome to register and attend by listening to the recording.
Lynn Marie Lumiere, MFT is a nondual psychotherapist, Somatic Experiencing Practitioner and author. She offers knowledge and wisdom gained from over 30 years of experience both as a therapist and with nondual spiritual teachings. She is the author of Awakened Relating:
A Guide to Embodying Undivided Love in Intimate Relationships and The Awakening West: Evidence of a Spreading Enlightenment.
Suggested donation for each meeting: $15 to $35
No one turned away for lack of funds.
Please register early if you can.
The event will be recorded and emailed to participants within a week.
To check your local time, use a tool such as: Time Zone Converter
Georgia Simone ~ Awakened Healing: Become The Space Where Healing Takes Place
Welcome to The Holding Space.
A space where we can gather together and BE exactly as we are
A space where the full spectrum of your human experience is invited
Calm, anxious, open, closed,
ALL is welcome here.
It's in this gentle embrace that everything can start to unravel. It's in this open space that we can begin to unwind the strategies that no longer serve us. This is the space that early mis-attunement failed to foster, the space where love blooms and new life can emerge. This is the space where all that quivers and shakes can come to rest, and where all that contorts can untwist into greater alignment.
Through gentle exploration and somatic awareness you can cultivate a new way of being with your most challenging patterns. No longer a victim of the push and pull of inner disturbance, you can step forward with greater confidence, knowing that whatever comes your way, you embody the resilience and the capacity to meet and integrate it.
You can expect a deeply held space where you’ll be invited to slow down, tune in, and track your present-moment experience. As you awaken and refine a more subtle way of Being and Being With, you can slowly but surely become the space – the container and the field – where healing takes place.
Bio:
The first leg of Georgia Simone’s path exposed her to the teachings of Advaita Vedanta, which provided her with the foundation she needed to dis-identify from pain and suffering. However, despite a growing freedom, a significant bypass took place, as her orientation towards transcendence reinforced her deep disconnection from Life. Upon seeing this, her focus became addressing the unresolved trauma that had woven its way into every fibre of her being.
After many years of wading through this marshland of conditioning, she now shares her discoveries with others. She believes that the spiritual path is as much about arriving here fully - as an embodied human being - as it is about dissolving into the infinite source that makes this life possible. How can we die to the absolute, while deeply embracing our relative human experience? This Living inquiry is her Life’s prayer.
Suggested donation: $15 to $25
No one turned away for lack of funds.
Please register early if you can.
The event will be recorded and emailed to participants within a week.
To check your local time, use a tool such as: Time Zone Converter
Ellen Emmet ~ The Awakening Body: 2 part Online Retreat
We start at 9:00 am Pacific Time / 5:00 pm UK time / 6:00 pm Central European Time.
In this two day retreat we will explore our direct experience and let it reveal its essential reality of Awareness. Our particular focus is the body, allowing it to be our mirror and our pathway, our prayer and our altar, and ultimately the shining expression of this shared identity.
There will be time for questions and conversation each day as our inquiry deepens.
There will be a 20-30 minute break during the 3-hour sessions.
In our daily lives, the body is seldom tasted as it is. We rarely listen to its tactile and energetic language or allow it to simply unfold and blossom in its natural original intelligence.
In fact we have deeply disconnected from this level of experience and even when we turn back towards the body, we come with agendas and ideas that we project upon it, forcing the body into a new mode, only to perpetuate a felt identification with a body, that may seem improved, but in fact remains a mere projections for the separate self that seems to live in its center.
With silence as our main shrine, we will share gradually deepening guided tactile meditations along with simple postures, free movements, breathing, and visualizations. In this contemplation, resistances and chains of bodily contractions, the habits that create the illusion that our identity is limited, located and separate are revealed and free to unfold as they are: feelings and sensations that come and go in Awareness. We come to feel that our true identity is an open field of vibrating openness,limitless and ever-present.
Gently and effortlessly, in deepening waves, the body is slowly realigned with this felt understanding. It flows as a living substence with more and more ease and transparency and reflects and expresses the ever-present freedom and silence that is its invisible source.
Ellen’s deepest intuition was confirmed when she met her teacher, Francis Lucille. In his presence, she recognized the eternal, limitless and universal nature of our shared reality. Over many years, her understanding deepened to touch all levels of experience. The process of aligning and stabilizing all aspects of her life to this understanding has continued to unfold since then.
Today, Ellen offers meetings and retreats in The Awakening Body, sharing a direct exploration of reality sourced in the tradition of Kashmir Shivaism and self-inquiry as transmitted through Francis Lucille and his teacher, Jean Klein. In addition, she has a private practice as a psychotherapist and facilitator of Authentic Movement. Her background of Dance Movement Therapy and Transpersonal Psychology is shaped by the non-dual understanding. Ellen lives in Oxford, England with her husband, Rupert Spira.
Sliding Scale: $50 to $90
Some Partial Scholarships Available
Please register early if you can.
The event will be recorded and emailed to participants.
To check your local time, use a tool such as: Time Zone Converter
John J. Prendergast, Ph.D ~ Being Grounded and Seated in Our Inner Authority: 4-Part Course
4-Part Online Course
Jan. 16, 23, 30 & Feb. 6, 2022
10:00 am – 12:00 noon Pacific Time, each day
Time Zone Converter
Event will be recorded and emailed
to participants after each meeting.
You're welcome to join even if you can't attend all the live sessions.
What is the experience of being seated in our inner authority? Of more fully landing here in the timeless now? Of being grounded in but not limited to the body?
This series of four meetings will continue the vital exploration of the groundless ground that we began last spring, further unpacking this dense instinctual level of conditioning in order to more deeply embody our spiritual understanding.
Many long-term spiritual practitioners remain unfamiliar with this critically important domain and are subject to doubting their inner authority and being regularly hijacked by the deeply conditioned and unconscious fears embedded in this area.
Sunday, January 16th “Ground Zero: Opening to Not Knowing”
Sunday, January 23rd “Discovering Open-Bodiedness”
Sunday, January 30th “The Willingness and Unwillingness to Be Here”
Sunday, February 6th “Being Seated in Our Inner Authority”
John J. Prendergast, Ph.D., is the author of The Deep Heart and In Touch, a retired Adjunct Assistant Professor of Psychology at CIIS, and a retired psychotherapist. He studied for many years with the European sage, Jean Klein, as well as with Adyashanti, and offers online and in-person retreats.
www.listeningfromsilence.com
YouTube channel
Sliding Scale: $80 to $140
Some Partial Scholarships Available
Please Register Early if you can.
iRest Group ~ Yogic Relaxation Practice
Open Circle is pleased to be offering biweekly facilitated iRest sessions. Developed by meditation master Richard Miller, iRest is a modernized form of the ancient practice of Yoga Nidra or “yogic sleep”. It is a restorative practice that promotes deep healing, health, and well-being. This 45-60 minute-long group will be gently led by Kate Foley, an iRest trained facilitator. It will consist of a full 30 minute guided meditation, along with the opportunity to share and connect with community. The meditation is done lying down, and is an invitation for your nervous system to truly rest: nothing to do, nowhere to go, nothing to be; simply a time gifted to yourself to relax and to be supported. Join as often as you like, and keep yourself nourished and balanced during these challenging times. No prior yoga experience necessary.
Suggested donation: $10 to $20
No one turned away for lack of funds. Please register early if you can.
To check your local time, use a tool such as: Time Zone Converter
Jeannie Zandi ~ Being Love
The heart longs to live as love and for our lives to be true to our essence. Join Jeannie and friends to explore what it means to be love in our everyday lives.
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 Zandi 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.
Suggested donation: $15 to $25
No one turned away for lack of funds.
Please register early if you can.
The event will be recorded and emailed to participants within a week.
To check your local time, use a tool such as: Time Zone Converter
iRest Group ~ Yogic Relaxation Practice
Open Circle is pleased to be offering biweekly facilitated iRest sessions. Developed by meditation master Richard Miller, iRest is a modernized form of the ancient practice of Yoga Nidra or “yogic sleep”. It is a restorative practice that promotes deep healing, health, and well-being. This 45-60 minute-long group will be gently led by Kate Foley, an iRest trained facilitator. It will consist of a full 30 minute guided meditation, along with the opportunity to share and connect with community. The meditation is done lying down, and is an invitation for your nervous system to truly rest: nothing to do, nowhere to go, nothing to be; simply a time gifted to yourself to relax and to be supported. Join as often as you like, and keep yourself nourished and balanced during these challenging times. No prior yoga experience necessary.
Suggested donation: $10 to $20
No one turned away for lack of funds. Please register early if you can.
To check your local time, use a tool such as: Time Zone Converter
February 2022
Lynn Marie Lumiere, MFT ~ SOMATIC AWAKENING: Body-Mind-Spirit Embodiment
Online Monthly Group Meetings
Although our true nature is not affected by all that we experience, our human body and mind are impacted by experiences that result in emotional wounding and trauma. Any experience, especially early in life, that is outside our window of tolerance, can overwhelm our nervous system and create chronic stress patterns in the body/mind. These stuck patterns can affect our spiritual awakening process by making it more difficult to relax, trust, be in the moment, and allow everything to be as it is—all of which are necessary for awakening and embodiment.
This ongoing monthly group will offer deep support for body-mind-spirit embodied awakening and healing so you can rest more deeply in the great peace, love and unity that resides in all of us.
We will do somatic practices for balancing the nervous system and building more capacity for regulating stress and emotions. Being more regulated is very important to both healing our human wounding and our spiritual awakening. We will also use the Flash Technique to release the charge on traumatic memories and loosen the grip of the negative beliefs that they create.
It is encouraged to attend the live session so you can receive the support of the group as well as Lynn Marie’s therapeutic support if needed. You are also welcome to register and attend by listening to the recording.
Lynn Marie Lumiere, MFT is a nondual psychotherapist, Somatic Experiencing Practitioner and author. She offers knowledge and wisdom gained from over 30 years of experience both as a therapist and with nondual spiritual teachings. She is the author of Awakened Relating:
A Guide to Embodying Undivided Love in Intimate Relationships and The Awakening West: Evidence of a Spreading Enlightenment.
Suggested donation for each meeting: $15 to $35
No one turned away for lack of funds.
Please register early if you can.
The event will be recorded and emailed to participants within a week.
To check your local time, use a tool such as: Time Zone Converter