February 2020
Lynn Marie Lumiere, MFT ~ If the Buddha had Trauma: Being Present with Stress Activation
Throughout the history of spirituality, very little has been taught about how to be present with stress activation in our nervous system. In Buddha’s day that was not even considered. In fact, it is only in recent decades that this has been understood at all. At this time, life on planet Earth is stressful for everyone, and most of us have experienced trauma in greater or lesser degrees. This can make both our meditation practice and our awakening/embodiment process more challenging.
Nondual wisdom teaches us that awakening involves being present with “what is.” However, when it comes to stress and trauma that may require additional, skillful support, which will be discussed and demonstrated. This webinar is also an introduction to a 4 week course, “Awakening with Trauma,” that Lynn Marie is teaching beginning February 24th. The course will go into more depth about trauma and how to be with that as we awaken. This webinar will be primarily focused on working with the participants experientially.
Lynn Marie Lumiere, MFT is a nondual psychotherapist, Somatic Experiencing Practitioner, and author. She is the co-author of The Awakening West and is a contributing author to The Sacred Mirror, as well as the author of Awakened Relating: A Guide to Embodying Undivided Love in Intimate Relationships. Lynn Marie has been a student of Adyashanti for over 20 years. For more information, please see www.lynnmarielumiere.com
Suggested donation: $15 to $25
PLEASE REGISTER EARLY if you can.
Review in advance info for joining event.
Lynn Marie Lumiere ~ Awakening with Trauma: A 4 Week Online Course
Although our true nature is untouched by anything we experience, our human body and mind are impacted by experiences that result in 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 present moment, and allow everything to be as it is—all of which are necessary for awakening.
This course will explore how to see healing from trauma and spiritual awakening as one process; each supporting the other. The more we awaken to our true nature, the more capacity we have to be present with traumatic stress; and the more we work with the trauma, the more capacity we have to be awake. Therefore, this course will point to both working with trauma using therapeutic methods and awakening to what is already free.
This four-week course will include the following topics:
- What is trauma? How it affects our neuro-physiology and creates fixed beliefs
- How trauma can be a path to awakening
- How trauma can be an obstacle to awakening
- How healing trauma and awakening are not separate paths
- How it’s not your fault—It’s your nervous system
- Skills for being present with and healing symptoms of trauma
- Guided meditations for awakening
Lynn Marie Lumiere ~ Awakening with Trauma: A 4 Week Online Course
Although our true nature is untouched by anything we experience, our human body and mind are impacted by experiences that result in 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 present moment, and allow everything to be as it is—all of which are necessary for awakening.
This course will explore how to see healing from trauma and spiritual awakening as one process; each supporting the other. The more we awaken to our true nature, the more capacity we have to be present with traumatic stress; and the more we work with the trauma, the more capacity we have to be awake. Therefore, this course will point to both working with trauma using therapeutic methods and awakening to what is already free.
Lynn Marie Lumiere, MFT is a nondual psychotherapist, Somatic Experiencing Practitioner, and author whose work is dedicated to awakening consciousness and meeting life’s challenges as doorways to greater freedom. Lynn Marie is the author of Awakened Relating: A Guide to Embodying Undivided Love in Intimate Relationships.
Pamela Wilson ~ The Intelligence of the Heart
Pamela Wilson is a Bay Area treasure who has been sharing satsang for twenty years around the world, honoring the sage within everyone, and the absolute oneness of All That Is. Her own teachers included Lester Levinson (The Sedona Method), Robert Adams and Neelam. She evokes through dialogue, inquiry and her very presence the qualities of unconditional love and radical acceptance. She endears herself to her audiences with her playful and light-hearted humor, combined with compassion and deep understanding of what it is to be human.
Pamela is celebrated for her ability to open the heart, call forth our own inner sage, and create a space in which long-held struggles and notions about one’s identity relax. And she speaks the truth of non-duality, that the universe is one undivided whole. Featured in the book Ordinary Women, Extraordinary Wisdom, Pamela is at her best in heart-felt dialogue, so please come and bring your questions!
“Here we are, benevolent rooted space wearing a remarkably sensitive instrument called the body. Most sages report the body-mind insists on being included and permeated by presence, so it too, can know and live its naturalness. The body is the five elements, already free with no history, though it has born witness to all. As compassion we will be instantly aware of any suffering and answer its call; as stillness we will be aware of remaining restlessness. To be with what is in the moment, this is our function and is at the heart of all longing.”
Suggested Donation: $15-25
No one turned away for lack of funds.
Pamela Wilson ~ The Intelligence of the Heart
Pamela Wilson is a Bay Area treasure who has been sharing satsang for twenty years around the world, honoring the sage within everyone, and the absolute oneness of All That Is. Her own teachers included Lester Levinson (The Sedona Method), Robert Adams and Neelam. She evokes through dialogue, inquiry and her very presence the qualities of unconditional love and radical acceptance. She endears herself to her audiences with her playful and light-hearted humor, combined with compassion and deep understanding of what it is to be human.
Pamela is celebrated for her ability to open the heart, call forth our own inner sage, and create a space in which long-held struggles and notions about one’s identity relax. And she speaks the truth of non-duality, that the universe is one undivided whole. Featured in the book Ordinary Women, Extraordinary Wisdom, Pamela is at her best in heart-felt dialogue, so please come and bring your questions!
Find out more »Ellen Emmet ~ The Awakening Body
In our daily lives, the body is seldom tasted as it truly is. We rarely listen to its language or allow it to simply blossom with its natural, organic 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, only to perpetuate a network of tension and density that we identify with as 'myself'.
Ellen’s approach to the body is a form of ‘somatic inquiry’ that invites us to open to the totality of our felt, tactile and sensorial experience moment by moment, free of any agenda. With the help of guided meditation, visualizations and dialog, we will discover our place in and as this open, available, listening presence which is our essential identity. Simultaneously the body will uncover its organic and natural resonance and identity with this presence which is its source and substance. Gently and effortlessly, it will flow with more and more ease, intensity and transparency.
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. As a child, Ellen loved to move and dance. She knew, without words, the joy and limitless transparency that the body dissolved into when it was free and alive. Thus, the experience we call the body has always been central to all of Ellen’s experiences, both in ignoring and in recognizing our true nature.
Ellen offers meetings and retreats, sharing a direct exploration of reality sourced in the traditions of Kashmir Shivaism and Advaitic self-inquiry. In addition, she has a private practice as a psychotherapist, and facilitator of Authentic Movement. She has Master Degrees in Dance Movement Therapy from NYU, and Transpersonal Psychology from JFK, and has a certificate in Laban Movement. She lives in Oxford, England with her husband, Rupert Spira.
Suggested Donation: $15- $25, no one turned away.
Find out more »Ellen Emmet ~ The Awakening Body
In our daily lives, the body is seldom tasted as it truly is. We rarely listen to its language or allow it to simply blossom with its natural, organic intelligence. In fact we have deeply disconnected from this level of experience.
Ellen’s approach to the body is a form of ‘somatic inquiry’ that invites us to open to the totality of our felt, tactile and sensorial experience moment by moment, free of any agenda. With the help of guided meditation, visualizations and dialog, we will discover our place in and as this open, available, listening presence which is our essential identity. Simultaneously the body will uncover its organic and natural resonance and identity with this presence which is its source and substance. Gently and effortlessly, it will flow with more and more ease, intensity and transparency.
Ellen offers meetings and retreats, sharing a direct exploration of reality sourced in the traditions of Kashmir Shivaism and Advaitic self-inquiry. She lives in Oxford, England with her husband, Rupert Spira.
Find out more »March 2020
Marlies Myoku Cocheret ~ Shining as Silence
9:30 am to 11:30 am (Pacific Time - San Francisco, CA, USA) Time Zone Converter
We are so lucky to know of this most precious place of Silence inside of us. Do you visit frequently to connect, taste, steep in, and be taken? When we rest as the bliss of Being, we allow ourselves to shine as That. Naturally, any form of mind will disarm and soften into Being.
Please know we cannot bring anything with us into this most precious place that we are. It’s like melting into the arms of the Great Mother. We can only open ourselves to be touched, and taken more deeply into Her. She holds all of us. We are so helped and supported beyond what we can imagine. Be nourished by Her!
Come and join us in abiding and deepening in and as the True Nature that we are, and be completely nourished!
Marlies Myoku has devoted her life to the Beloved. She brings a potent invitation into the deep Silence that we are. The kindness of her gentle and direct teaching guides us home like a lighthouse. She helps people to see that freedom and peace lie not in escaping from difficulties, but rather in completely welcoming and receiving all that the Mystery presents.
She has been offering satsang and retreat since 2000 when Adyashanti asked her to teach. Marlies is trained as a psychologist in The Netherlands, a Hakomi therapist, and a Tantric educator. For over 25 years she has been ushering seekers into living the Divine in the body. She has a passion and a gift for bringing together the Sensual Body and the Silence of our Being.
She lives in Santa Cruz; California, but works internationally. Marlies is interviewed in the book Awakened Relating. A Guide To Embodying Undivided love in Intimate Relationships by Lynn Marie Lumiere, and in the book Ordinary Women, Extraordinary Wisdom by R.M. Robinson
“With Adya, the bottom fell out. I deeply knew I am not this body, mind, thought, psyche, and I am also all these things as well. There was no in and/or out. All is One.”
Suggested donation: $15 to $25
PLEASE REGISTER EARLY if you can.
Review in advance info for joining event.
Rupert Spira ~ The Essence of Non-Duality
“Meditation is what we are, not what we do; the separate self is what we do, not what we are.”
In the last few years Rupert Spira has become one of the most respected and sought-after teachers of non-dual wisdom, known for his crystal clear use of language, laser-like intellect, skillful guided inquiries, and powerfully direct pointing to aware presence—all delivered with warmth, wit and an unmatched and distinctive eloquence.
In his meetings, Rupert explores the perennial, non-dual understanding that lies at the heart of all the great religious and spiritual traditions, such as Advaita Vedanta, Kashmir Shaivism, Hinduism, Buddhism, Mystical Christianity, Sufism, Zen etc., and which is also the direct, ever-present reality of our own experience. This is a contemporary, experiential approach involving silent meditation, guided meditation and conversation, and requires no affiliation to any particular religious or spiritual tradition. All that is required is an interest in the essential nature of experience, and in the longing for love, peace and happiness around which most of our lives revolve.
After thirty years of intense seeking, Rupert met his primary teacher Francis Lucille, who introduced him to the direct way taught by his own teacher, Jean Klein. Rupert lives in Oxford, England, with his wife Ellen Emmet, a therapist and yoga teacher in the tradition of Kashmir Shaivism. . He is the author of several books, including his latest two, The Nature of Consciousness and Being Aware of Being Aware, and two book/CD box-sets, Transparent Body, Luminous World and The Light of Pure Knowing.
www.non-duality.rupertspira.com
No registration required. Just show up & join us. Make your donation at the door.
PARKING: There is some limited street parking in the neighborhood, free and without time limit weekday evenings. There is also parking a few blocks away at the east parking lot of the Ashby Bart station: www.bart.gov/stations/ashb/map
Find out more »Rupert Spira ~ The Essence of Non-Duality
In the last few years Rupert Spira has become one of the most respected and sought-after teachers of non-dual wisdom, known for his crystal clear use of language, laser-like intellect, skillful guided inquiries, and powerfully direct pointing to aware presence—all delivered with warmth, wit and an unmatched and distinctive eloquence.
In his meetings, Rupert explores the perennial, non-dual understanding that lies at the heart of all the great religious and spiritual traditions, such as Advaita Vedanta, Kashmir Shaivism, Hinduism, Buddhism, Mystical Christianity, Sufism, Zen etc., and which is also the direct, ever-present reality of our own experience. This is a contemporary, experiential approach involving silent meditation, guided meditation and conversation, and requires no affiliation to any particular religious or spiritual tradition. All that is required is an interest in the essential nature of experience, and in the longing for love, peace and happiness around which most of our lives revolve.
Find out more »