Workshop Descriptions

Using techniques from modern creative psychology, mindfulness and Gestalt practices, neuroscience, creative thinking and non-dual teachings, participants will be taught skills to calm the mind, develop a mindful brain, regulate mind/body states, develop trust with the unconscious, and explore inner resources for activating creativity, vitality, and well-being.

Methods include:

• Meditating and practicing psychological skills to promote insight as well as create new neural pathways for healthy and creative brain development.
• Exploring natural mind/body healing rhythms (yogic exercises and somatic breathing methods).
• Exploring Mindfulness & yogic practice and somatic expressive methods for amplification, containment, and release of affect (feeling states).
• Discovering practices that promote loving-kindness (metta).

These skills are especially applicable for both self-healing practices and for health care professionals in their work with patients.

Recommended reading: Alexander, Wise Mind Open Mind; Fryba, The Art of Happiness: Teachings of Buddhist Psychology; Suzuki, Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind.

The workshop includes Gestalt open seatwork, sharing feedback on leadership and communication styles, improving coaching skills, developing the unconscious to creatively solve problems, mindfulness meditation practice, role-playing exercises for real-life work situations. We will also explore the functions of building and shaping mindstrength, a power tool for change that enables you to enter and lead from the state of Big Mind, Wise Mind and Open Mind. This workshop may have up to 35 participants.

“Leadership and learning are indispensable to each other.” ~John F. Kennedy

Recommended Reading: Ronald Alexander, Wise Mind, Open Mind: Finding Purpose and Meaning in Times of Crisis, Loss and Change (New Harbinger Publications); Heider, John, The Tao of Leadership; Bennis, W. On Becoming A Leader; Goss, Tracy, The Last Word on Power.

Meditation helps to cultivate self-regulation through relaxation and the development of attention skills. Training in mind/body healing facilitates awareness of the inner resources of the Core Self — trust, comfort, time and curiosity — for the activation of the healthy and creative aspects of the unconscious mind. This promotes insight, wellness and individuation.

Meditative techniques of the various Buddhists schools, particularly Tibetan and Zen as well as Advaita-Vedic (non dual) will be explored. These methods utilize mindfulness, insight, visualization and presence to activate physiological and psychological energies whose merger can produce powerful states of mind to penetrate into the reality of our being and experience a spacious quality of freedom. Teachings on the practices and principles of Buddhist psychology and their applications for resolving afflictive factors of mind, mood and happiness will be taught.

Participants will also be taught various forms of breathing, chanting, trance states, and mind/body healing exercises. This workshop can help participants acquire skills to calm the mind, regulate affect states, develop trust with the unconscious, and explore inner healing resources. The workshop is designed for anyone from beginning to advanced levels in these skills.

Recommended Reading: Ronald Alexander, Wise Mind, Open Mind (New Harbinger Publications); Goldstein and Kornfield, Seeking the Heart of Wisdom; Epstein, Mark, Thoughts without a Thinker; Suzuki, Shunryu, Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind; Rossi, E. The Psychobiology of Mind-Body Healing; Eckhart Tolle, The Power of Now.

Using techniques from today’s self and health psychologies and Tibetan Buddhist schools as well as the non dual teachings (Advaita-Vedic) approach, participants will be shown how to acquire skills to calm the mind, regulate affect states, especially to learn to manage mood fluctuation and anxiety, develop trust with their unconscious and to explore inner resources for activating creativity, vitality and a core sense of well-being in the mind-body process.

People who are described as ‘centered,’ ‘creative’ and ‘pragmatically optimistic’ can generate a vitality and enthusiasm that inspires others to grow and change toward leading creative, productive, healthy and visionary lives.

Methods Include:

• Meditation and psychological skills to deepen concentration, promote insight and presence to activate physiological and psychological well being and promote deep inner strength and balance of mind-body (mediation practices for cultivating the witnessing observer), one pointed focus. The Big View, Wisdom (Rigpa) and Freedom, methods will include teachings and practice from Insight meditation, Tibetan (Dzchogen) and the Non Dual teachings.
• Skills for exploring your natural mind-body healing rhythms (the practices of yogic and somatic breathing methods for pacing and attuning oneself to ones psychophysical flows, (the practice of tracking ones ultradian rhythms) daily working and healing rhythms.
• Buddhist psychological methods for dealing with unpleasant or painful ‘afflictive’ states of mind (the positive meditational antidote remedies for countering afflictive mind and mood states, the framing and re-framing of thought, mood, feeling and sensation.
• Discussion of mind, self, dissatisfaction and happiness from both Western Self-psychology and Buddhist psychology will be explored. Specific practices that promote ‘Metta’ loving kindness(empathic self-compassion for taming the inner critic and the harsh superego) and meditation skills that promote satisfaction and contentment with oneself will be explored.

The archetypal role of a yoga teacher and or health practitioner is a blend of “transformer” and “meaning translator.” The transformer creates a sacred space for exploring rhythms, moods, flows and interactions. The meaning translator brings clarity, order and awareness to the conscious and unconscious processes within the healing dyad. Teachers and practitioners are frequently sought out for their wisdom, counsel and support whether it be after class or during private sessions to respond to complex emotional, physical and life issues. There is a growing need and demand for Yogis to become more knowledgeable and especially more skillful when offering or responding to their students multi levels of needs. Effective counseling, leadership and coaching requires that teachers and healers deepen their own self healing experience as well as become more proficient at offering more broad-based approaches that integrate modern western psychological methods, life coaching skills and the eastern wisdom traditions.

The focus of this training begins with fostering openness to explore safety, comfort, trust, and support and to teach skills that will enable participants to artfully manage difficult emotional and psychophysical issues that arise in any setting. This cutting-edge program provides a rare opportunity for sustained education in learning how to apply clinical and intuitive skills for coaching and counseling. It will be taught by psychotherapist Ronald Alexander, a renowned pioneer in mind-body therapies who leads professional trainings and clinical supervision groups in Gestalt therapy, Ericksonian mind-body hypnosis and other integrated modalities throughout the world and is a long-time student of yoga as well as a teacher of meditation and Buddhist psychology for the past 34 years.

The training will include direct experience, clinical demonstrations, practicum, theory and the teaching of clinical skills to support practitioners to become more creative and resourceful when treating body symptoms, trauma, pain, and mood and somatic disorders. Skills to help practitioners navigate complex issues, such as transference and counter transference will also be taught. The modalities we will use for developing clinical skills and deepening our own healing process will include: body-centered psychotherapy, Gestalt therapy, relational psychoanalytic approaches, Buddhist psychology, mindfulness-based practices, non-dual meditation and other mind-body healing methods for accessing the somatic “core-self.”

This workshop is particularly useful for yoga teachers, holistic and all health practitioners, educators, consultant and others who wish to learn to lead, heal, counsel and coach others whether it be on an individual, group or organizational level.

For 2,500 years, Buddhist meditation practices have developed what is referred to as ‘skillful methods’ for study and transformation of the mind/body process. These meditation and visualization practices help to cultivate self-regulation through awareness training-developing concentration, mindfulness and other attention skills. Mindfulness Meditation training is known for promoting clarity of mind, spaciousness of self and compassion, will be explored. Teachings on the practices and principles of Buddhist psychology and their applications for resolving afflictive factors of mind, mood and happiness will be highlighted.

Using methods from the Buddhist Mindfulness and Non-Dual (Advaita) schools of mindfulness practices as well as drawing from the contemporary theory’s of self and health psychologies participants will have the opportunity to directly experience, practice and learn clinical skills for promoting insight, wisdom and knowledge. These methods utilize mindfulness, insight, visualization and presence to activate physiological and psychological energies whose merger can produce powerful states of mind to penetrate into the reality of our being and experience a spacious quality of freedom.

People who are described as ‘centered,’ ‘creative’ and ‘pragmatically optimistic’ can generate a vitality and enthusiasm that inspires others to grow and change toward leading creative, productive, healthy and visionary lives.

Day 1. Introduction and overview of Buddhist Schools of mindfulness meditation. Breath control, concentration and absorption training. Qualities of Mind and the Hindrances/Mindfulness practices.

Day 2. Models of the Mind and Self. Contemporary Psychoanalytic and Eastern traditions. A micro analytic treatment cartography for exploring the Real Self, Core Self, False Self and the Non Self. Mindfulness Meditations for exploring the non-self.

Day 3. Mindfulness Meditations for transforming emotions/learn clinical skills for regulating affect states/ mind/thought and somatic energy patterns. Stream entry and pointing out instructions.

Day 4. The Roots of Buddhist Psychology/ Attention strategies for calming the mind/deepening insight/cultivating the Witnessing Mind/ Mindfulness and practices from the Non dual- (Advaita)

Day 5. Qualities of mind/mood and happiness/ Antidote remedies to manage anxiety, mood fluctuations and other unpleasant afflictive mind states/ transforming unwholesome mental factors into wholesome/explore inner resources for activating creativity, vitality and a core sense of well being in the mind/body process. Practices for deepening wisdom and Samadhi.

Recommended Reading: Ronald Alexander, Wise Mind, Open Mind: Finding Purpose and Meaning in Times of Crisis, Loss and Change (New Harbinger Publications); Goldstein and Kornfield, Seeking the Heart of Wisdom; Epstein, Mark, Thoughts without a Thinker;. Suzuki, Shunryu, Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind; Eckhart Tolle, The Power Of Now