Engaged Mindfulness

7:00pm 26 January 2018 - 3:30pm 28 January 2018

Cost: £150.00

Venue: Samye Ling

To book this course please click here.   

Once your course place has been confirmed please book your accommodation at Samye Ling by clicking here.

The tutors will be Fay Adams and Kristine Janson.

In our Mindfulness practice, we come back time and again to our motivation for practising: for the deepest well-being of ourselves and others. And our well-being is inextricably linked with the larger world around us. The ‘state of the world’ is something that might be tempting to turn away from as being too overwhelming, too dire to really look at – but what is mindfulness if not turning towards the places that scare us? We do this internally in our practice whenever something comes up that is uncomfortable, and we can do the same with what’s uncomfortable and scary out there in the world - whether it’s social injustice, climate change, animal welfare, depletion of resources or the fast rate with which species are going extinct and ecosystems are lost. And from a place of interconnectedness and care, how might we engage in mindful action?

In this weekend we will follow Buddhist scholar and environmental activist Joanna Macy's spiral of the Work that Reconnects. This begins by resourcing and nourishing ourselves with gratitude, before turning towards what’s difficult in the world, and then looking for a new perspective from which we can mindfully and practically go forth. In this way we will explore engaging in the ‘outer practice’ of Mindfulness.

During the weekend we will ground this with a rich variety of ‘inner’ Mindfulness practices. In particular we will draw inspiration from the somatic meditation of Reggie Ray with its emphasis on connecting with a primordial felt-sense of earth connection. As we weave our way through Joanna Macy's spiral, we'll discover how meditating with the earth can deepen each stage. We'll experience how the earth is an ever-present resource for us that will share the holding of our pain for the world and help us deeply experience our radical interconnectness with all life.

We will also explore resilience practices from Rick Hanson and the ancient Buddhist practice of Tonglen to work directly with challenge and transformation.

The weekend begins at 7pm (evening meal at 6pm) on the Friday evening, between 8am and 8pm on Saturday and between 8am and 3.30pm on a Sunday. It is expected that course participants will stay until the end of the training (3.30pm) on the Sunday.

The cost of the course is £150.00 for the weekend, including manual.