Strengthen Your Container with Heartful Meditation

Please register in advance. When you register via the link above, you help Yogaville support Integral Yoga San Francisco as an affiliate. Thank you!

DATE & TIME DETAILS:
Live sessions with Karla
Saturday, Jun. 26
10 am–12 pm and 3–5 pm ET

Sunday, Jun. 27
10 am–12 pm and 3–5 pm ET

The ultimate goal of Yoga is the realization of our True Selves—that part of us that is always whole, peaceful, and ever-connected with the All. The many struggles and sufferings of life, including grief and loss, contribute greatly to our forgetting the Truth of who we are. Meditation is one of the tools of Yoga that can help us find a place of peace and equanimity—especially in times of pain, grief, heartbreak, and loss.
Many of us struggle with meditation and feel that we can’t quiet our minds or find a peaceful place. This is particularly true when we are in pain. This program will help you understand the nature of the mind and why you don’t have to struggle.
In this retreat you will:

  • Learn the theory and practice of meditation and how it applies to the state of loss and grief
  • Understand current science about why meditation is so helpful
  • Learn and practice multiple types of supported and guided meditation including mantra, witnessing, visualization, mindfulness, focused attention, metta (loving kindness), restful awareness, and tratak (gazing)
  • Practice gentle movement and pranayama (breath practices) to support your meditation practice
  • Experience and practice guided Yoga Nidra for deep relaxation and healing on all levels of being
  • Learn ways to establish and begin to feel confident in your own personal practice
  • Have the opportunity to practice daily with Karla and the retreat sangha for a week after the program

Meditation can help us learn to manage and move through the most difficult times of life and can become an anchor in the midst of a chaotic world. Join Karla for two days of connection and compassion to learn about and practice this ancient tool that has proven again and again to support humankind through pain and suffering.
This program is for both beginners and experienced meditators and will focus on how meditation is specifically helpful in grief and loss.
Live sessions with Karla on Saturday and Sunday at 10 am–12 pm and 3–5 pm EDT.

You will also have the additional opportunity to continue to practice with Karla daily for the week following the workshop to create a foundation and become more secure in your own steady practice. Bonus Sessions in Eastern Time on June 28–July 1 at 5–5:30 pm (15 min of guidance + 15 min of meditation) and July 2 at 5–6 pm (includes extra time for Q&A).

You will have access to the video recordings for 8 weeks, until August 22.
In addition, you will have access to the Ashram’s Live Hatha Yoga classes at 5 pm ET, recorded Ashram meditations, and inspiring talks with Sri Swami Satchidananda. You will also have access to an online social community to connect and communicate with other participants about this course.

Continuing Education (CE) Opportunities
Yoga Alliance (YA): Approximately 8 contact hours. You can input your contact hours using your YA login information.

Integral Yoga Teachers Association (IYTA) can provide you a CE certificate with your program’s total contact hours for a $10 fee (free for IYTA members.) For more information, email ce@iyta.org.

Testimonials
Karla Helbert is a compassionate and highly knowledgeable expert on grief and loss.  Her expertise in the practice of Yoga is meaningful to me because I feel that as a Yoga instructor and someone who has practiced yoga for many years, this is a platform that makes the most sense for me to try and process my grief. The tools, rituals and practices she presents are exceptionally meaningful and I’m hopeful that over time they will assist me in being able to feel whole again. My time spent with Karla Helbert in her Yoga retreat was a weekend spent in deep reflection and focus on my son, and any time I have doing that is a gift.” — Beth Ann Nohmy-Johnson

Karla is very knowledgeable on the topic of Yoga… in relation to grief and trauma. She led the participants in activities and shared information that helped me at the time and will continue to be valuable to me and my family as we live with a traumatic loss of an immediate family member.” — Amy Griffin

“With deeply grounded wisdom, Karla Helbert simultaneously affirms the unmitigated pain of losing someone we love and offers trustworthy tools to help us navigate the wilderness of loss. By engaging the ancient systems of Yoga, we are guided to embrace our grief as the sacred state it is and allow ourselves to connect with the Love that “yokes” us together for all of time.” — Mirabai Starr, author of Caravan of No Despair: A Memoir of Loss and Transformation (SoundsTrue)
Presenter

Karla Helbert, LPC, E-RYT 500, YACEP, C-IAYT is a licensed professional counselor (LPC), Compassionate Bereavement Care® provider, Yoga therapist, and certified Integral Yoga teacher. Her life was irrevocably changed when her son died of a brain tumor in 2006. Karla’s award-winning book, Yoga for Grief and Loss, is endorsed by Integral Yoga® leaders and teachers as well as other experts in the fields of both Yoga and loss. The book examines how the paths of Yoga can support us in trauma and grief. Relying on ritual, meditation, creative expression, and the teachings of Yoga, Karla honors the pain and the joy which coexist in all of life.…
Learn more about Karla Helbert, LPC, E-RYT 500, YACEP, C-IAYT

Opening the Garden Gate – CANCELLED

We are sorry to inform you that this event has been cancelled due to extended construction work on the building. Thank you for understanding, and we look forward to hosting a garden gathering when circumstances permit. Thank you.

Join us for the first public gathering this year in our beautiful backyard. You will get a view of the newly finished and long-awaited roof, solar panels and freshly painted trim on our historic building.

We will have time to visit with each other and practice meditation together in-person! A 30-minute meditation period starting at 5:30 pm will be led by Swami Ramananda. Masks are required and we will sit socially distanced as needed.

 

Swami Ramananda is the Executive Director of the Integral Yoga Institute in San Francisco and a greatly respected senior teacher in the Integral Yoga tradition, who has been practicing Yoga for over 45 years. Ramananda offers practical methods of integrating the timeless teachings and practices of Yoga into daily life, and transforming the painful aspects of human experience into steps toward realizing one’s full potential.
He leads beginner, intermediate and advanced level Yoga teacher training programs in San Francisco, and offers a variety of programs in many locations in the U.S., Europe and South America. Ramananda co-developed the Stress Management Teacher Training program with Swami Vidyananda, has trained many teachers to bring Yoga into corporate, hospital and medical settings, and has taught mind/body wellness programs in many locations. He is a certified Yoga therapist and founding board member of the Yoga Alliance, a national registry that supports and promotes yoga teachers as professionals. He is a co-founder of The Spiritual Action Initiative (SAI) which brings together individuals committed to working for social justice for all beings and for the care and healing of our natural world. His warmth, wisdom and sense of humor have endeared him to many.

2021-06-15T16:43:29-07:00April 30th, 2021|Tags: , |

Deepening into Meditation

By donation $0, $5, $10, $15 Sliding scale, pay what you can.

Please register in advance, a Zoom link and passcode will be provided via confirmation email.

Meets monthly on the third Wednesdays

“You begin with ambition of some kind. Then, at a certain stage, meditation becomes instinctive. Then you cannot not meditate – it happens to you.”

– Chogyam Trumpa Rinpoche

This ongoing group meets on the 3rd Wednesday of each month to explore and refine aspects of our meditation practices – how we sit, why we sit, and how that relates to our lives. The format consists of a group meditation with some direction, a talk on a related subject and a question/answer session with sharing.

Prajna Lorin Piper took her first yoga class in 1970 in southern California. Later that year she came through the doors of the Berkeley Integral Yoga Institute (IYI), and since that time she has loved Integral Yoga.
Over the years she has maintained an active involvement in movement, healing, and meditation. She has practiced yoga, tai chi, and various dance forms; co-authored two best selling books on Holistic Health; lived and danced flamenco in southern Spain; and since 2000, has taught Rosen Movement. In 2010, she completed her IYI Teacher Training at Yogaville, VA and began teaching yoga. She brings to her teaching four decades of meditation practice, the last twenty eight in the Buddhist tradition.

Attuning to the wisdom of the body/mind and opening to the present are the foundations of both Prajna’s teaching and personal practice.

She cooked professionally for many years at retreats centers, cafes and restaurants.

 

Why is Beginner’s Mind Important in Meditation?

by Katharine Bierce

Do you feel stuck in your meditation practice? Do you find yourself striving to be a “better” meditator and feeling frustrated when you think you’re “doing it wrong?” If so, keep reading. Beginner’s Mind is a concept from Zen, but you can also apply it to whatever meditation practice you have. 

Suzuki Roshi discusses beginner’s mind at length in the book Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind. In the beginner’s mind, there are many possibilities; in the expert’s mind, there are few. When you pay attention to something with the eagerness and curiosity of a beginner, what becomes possible compared to when you bring a bunch of ideas about how things are “supposed” to be? If you ask a class full of kindergarten kids who is a dancer, a painter, a singer, most of them will raise their hand. As we grow up, only adults who work in those professions or have those hobbies may say, “Yes, I’m a dancer” because adults typically assume you have to be an expert at something to do it. 

In that way, beginner’s mind is like embracing childlike enthusiasm and wonder to explore the world with a fresh perspective, every moment.

Beginner’s Mind is Non-Striving

A lot of times, in meditation as in everyday life, we’re trying to get somewhere else: to be calmer, to be more focused, to be a “better person.” The problem is, trying to get somewhere else, especially in meditation, creates physical tension and mental stress. In his book Be Here Now, Ram Dass writes about the importance of being present, saying, “Before enlightenment, chop wood and carry water. After enlightenment, chop wood and carry water.” The beginner’s mind view of this is that as we wake up, we learn to do even our usual activities paying attention to the actual activity itself, being present, rather than caught up in our ideas, expectations, or beliefs. 

I recently experienced beginner’s mind while I was recovering from a concussion. Near the end of December 2020, a car door hit me in the head and I spent January until the end of March recovering. For a few weeks, it was really hard to focus my attention in the way that I was used to in meditation. Trying to focus on the breath with close attention felt anywhere from extremely difficult to impossible. Was I a bad meditator because I couldn’t practice anapanasati, or mindfulness of breathing? Was all the expertise I had cultivated in more than a decade of formal meditation practice suddenly gone? No. Even though my attention came and went, I still had awareness (which is distinct from attention, as noted in The Mind Illuminated). I still remembered the attitude I had cultivated prior to my accident that being kind to myself was important. So I was able to embrace a perspective that concussion-mind offered: being present in each moment as a meditation.

Beginner’s Mind and Openness

In another Zen story, a student goes to the teacher to ask for teachings. The teacher pours tea into the student’s cup, but doesn’t stop pouring it – the cup soon overflows. A cup is useful when it’s empty. If it is already full of tea, no more can be added, just like how the student is coming with preconceived notions about meditation, so the teacher can’t add anything useful for the student. Being open is also discussed in Lao Tzu’s Tao Te Ching (I like Ursula Le Guin’s translation) where Lao Tzu discusses how a room or a cooking pot are useful when they’re empty. Flipping one’s perspective from focusing on a thing to focusing on the space within the thing is one example of the perspective shift that beginner’s mind can help with.

 Beginner’s Mind and Letting Go

Unless we practice beginner’s mind, as we get older, our ideas about ourselves and the  world tend to solidify. As a bumper sticker might say, “Enlightenment is not what you think.” Meditation isn’t even about attaining the perfectly peaceful state of mind: the Buddha said that what he taught was just about suffering and the end of suffering. States of mind come and go, so in cultivating beginner’s mind, we can be present with whatever is happening without getting stressed out about what “should” be happening. 

Beginner’s Mind is Not What You Think

Another Zen saying says, “The finger pointing to the moon is not the moon.” Ultimately, the irony is that whatever I say about Beginner’s Mind, it’s still not it exactly (“the moon”), because you have to experience it for yourself. It’s a paradox similar to Suzuki Roshi’s saying, “You’re already perfect, and you could use a little improvement,” which points to the fact that we already have a mind, a body, and everything we need to wake up, but we still benefit from formal meditation practice anyway. 

Ideas for a beginner’s mind meditation practice

  • Do The Work by Byron Katie: it’s a way to use your thinking to potentially go beyond thinking. When you find yourself stuck in an unhelpful thought, such as one that provokes anxiety, contemplate these four questions: 
    • Is it true? 
    • How do I really know it’s true? 
    • Who am I when I believe that thought? 
    • Who would I be without that thought? 
  • As you eat your lunch, just eat your lunch. Don’t multitask. Eat one bite at a time and put down your fork between bites. What does each bite taste like? Can you notice your lunch with each of your senses: sight, sound, smell, taste, touch? 
  • When you sit, sit; when you walk, walk; when you eat, eat; when you sleep, sleep. When you notice yourself trying to be somewhere else, or someone else, congratulate yourself for noticing, and try dropping or setting aside the “need to fix.” What remains?
  • As you listen to someone speak, just listen to them. What are their body language and words communicating? Notice when you try to plan your response to them, and see if you can let that go and just be present with them. 
  • Create space by shifting time: Add 5-15 minutes to your usual activities for one day, to allow extra time, and at the end of the day, see how you feel. For example, if you normally take 30 minutes to drive somewhere, try allowing 35 or 45 minutes and notice if you feel more relaxed when you arrive.
  • As you watch your breath in meditation, see if you’re judging yourself for “doing it right” or “wrong.” See what happens when you allow thinking, judgments, etc. to just be there without trying to believe them or push them away, and come back to the physical sensations of breathing, as if you are noticing the breath for the first time.

I hope these practice suggestions are helpful. If you need more inspiration for beginner’s mind, go to a dog park and watch the dogs run around. No matter how many times they go to the same place, dogs eagerly sniff the ground as if it were the first visit. It’s good meditation inspiration!

Katharine first learned about meditation at an event with free food during college in Chicago in 2009. After attending classes with Shambhala, she started an almost-daily practice in 2012 while working in consulting in New York City. Her influences include Nikki Mirghafori, Pema Chödrön, Vipassana in the style of S.N. Goenka, Tucker Peck, Culadasa, Jeremy Graves, The Mind Illuminated, Rev. angel Kyodo williams, somatic meditation with Neil McKinlay and Norman Elizondo, and the insight meditation teachers at Spirit Rock. In March 2020, she completed a month-long meditation retreat, which is her seventh retreat of a week or more. Katharine works full time in technology marketing at a Fortune 100 company in San Francisco and also teaches yoga on evenings and weekends with Business Casual Yoga.

2021-04-09T07:00:54-07:00April 9th, 2021|Tags: |
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