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Cultivating Presence; Eastern and Western Pathways to Inner Freedom, 1 of 3-parts

Online, 3 Thursdays – offered individually  JAN 29, FEB 5 & FEB 12.

Book individual session(s) for $25 each.

Book all 3 sessions | $65  regular | Early bird discount $57, use promo code FREEDOM exp. 1/22.

Book now session #1/Online

Book all 3 session/Online

Please register in advance; a Zoom link will be emailed 1 hour before the session, or join Zoom directly via your Momence dashboard.

Across time and cultures, wisdom traditions have pointed to the same realization: much of human suffering arises from identification with thought. The Yoga Sutras state that “Yoga is experienced in that mind which has ceased to identify itself with its vacillating waves of perception” (1:2 – M. Stiles translation), pointing to the way mental activity distorts reality and creates a false sense of disconnection. Modern teachers such as Eckhart Tolle echo this understanding, highlighting how attachment to thought forms gives rise to the illusion of a separate self. Likewise, contemporary psychology and emotional intelligence research show that our interpretations—and our awareness of them—deeply shape how we feel, relate, and respond to life.

In this three-part experiential workshop series, Dylan Burditt, a licensed psychotherapist and yoga teacher, and Diana Meltsner, a certified yoga therapist and meditation trainer, invite you to explore the nature of thought through both Eastern and Western lenses, integrating mindfulness and self-awareness, psychotherapeutic theories and modalities, and emotional intelligence. Through teaching, guided meditation, discussion, and reflection, we will explore theories of thinking alongside how to witness and navigate the mind rather than be ruled by it. Participants will discover practical tools to recognize thought-driven emotional patterns, respond with greater clarity and compassion, and experience the freedom that arises when awareness is no longer trapped in the trance of thought.

Individual Session Overviews:

1. Jan 29 The Nature of Thought and the Roots of Suffering — How mental activity shapes perception, emotion, and pain.

2. Feb 5 Witnessing the Mind — Awareness practices from yoga, mindfulness, and modern psychology.

3. Feb 12 Living Beyond the Trance — Integrating presence and emotional intelligence into daily life
You have the option to sign up for them individually or for all 3.

Ideal for: Anyone seeking a deeper understanding of the mind and emotions, mindfulness practitioners, yoga students and teachers, therapists, coaches, and those interested in bridging spirituality, psychology, and emotional well-being.

Sessions will be recorded and available to all enrolled students for two weeks.

Diana Meltsner, C-IAYT, ERYT-500, YACEP, has been teaching a variety of classes and workshops since 2001 and since 2017 offers yoga therapy sessions privately and at Integral Yoga Therapy Clinic in San Francisco. She has over 15 years of experience in leading and co-teaching Yoga and Meditation teacher trainings. She has been working in the clinical setting for Kaiser Permanente since 2005 as a yoga teacher, yoga therapist, and health educator. Diana’s focus is on the healing aspects of Yoga on the mind as well as the body by applying the physical postures, practices of breath-control, mindfulness and meditation. Diana helps her clients to find the ability to move through life with increased ease, stress resilience, and intuition. Diana Meltsner works as a programs manager at Integral Yoga Institute, an urban ashram in San Francisco. dianameltsner.com

Dylan Burditt has his RYT-500 from the Integral Yoga Institute, is a Licensed Clinical Social Worker (LCSW), and currently resides in and serves the community of Mammoth Lakes, CA through yoga teachings and working professionally as a psychotherapist. In his personal life, he enjoys spending time with his partner and dog, being in nature, buzzing through cities, cooking and eating delicious plant-based food, traveling, experiencing music, being quiet, and connecting to body, mind, soul, and higher power. You can learn more about him and his offerings at dylanburditt.com.

2026-01-09T14:12:04-08:00December 8th, 2025|Tags: , , , , , , , , , |

Anger Management Through Yoga Therapy

This event has been cancelled.

Online & In-person
$58 | $49 Early bird, use promo code ANGER, exp. 10/25

Anger is a completely normal—and often necessary—human emotion. It can range from mild irritation to intense rage, and like all emotions, it brings with it distinct physiological changes While anger can be useful in signaling boundary violations or injustice, unmanaged anger can lead to harm—internally and externally.

You can’t eliminate anger—and you shouldn’t try to. But you can transform your relationship to it. This Yoga Therapy-based anger management workshop offers practical, somatic tools to help you recognize how anger manifests in your body and mind, and to regulate both the emotional intensity and physiological arousal it creates.

This work empowers you to work with anger as a source of energy, clarity, and transformation, helping you express it in ways that support healing, communication, and emotional well-being. Through reflective inquiry, breathwork, grounding practices, and mindful movement, you’ll learn to engage with anger consciously rather than reactively.

Antonio Sausys MA, IGT, CMT, C-IAYT is a somatic psychologist and yoga therapist specializing in grief counseling and therapy.He studied with Hugo Bilsky and Yoga masters and teachers such as Indra Devi, Ram Dass, Swami Shankaradevananda, Swami Ekananda, Babashi Singh and Swami Mairtreyananda. He has continued his professional development with training in Integrative Grief Therapy with Lyn Prashant, Foot Reflexology, Swedish Therapeutic Massage and Reiki. Antonio presents his work both nationally and internationally at Schools and Universities and leads retreats at Ashrams, Retreat Centers and Yoga Studios., is a member of the World Yoga Council, the International Association of Yoga Therapists, a TV Host for YogiViews and the founder and Executive Director of ‘Yoga for Health’ the International Yoga Therapy Conference. He is the author of ‘Yoga for Grief Relief: Simple Practices for Transforming Your Grieving Mind and Body’ (New Harbinger) and a contributor for Yoga and Science in Pain Care – Treating the Person in Pain (Edited by Shelly Prosko and Neil Person – Jessica Kingsley Publishers, 2019) and New Techniques of Grief Therapy: Bereavement and Beyond by Robert Niemeyer (Routledge 2019).

2025-10-30T10:40:43-07:00September 2nd, 2025|Tags: , , |

The Last Savasana: Yoga, Breathwork and Inquiry to Help Prepare You for the Final Exit

This event has been cancelled.

$62 Early bird, use promo code LAST, exp. 5/10
$72 Regular

Join Leslie and Richard for a deep dive into Savasana with a twist. Most of us spend our days trying to extend our lives, i.e. looking both ways before crossing a street, putting our seatbelt on and checking expiration dates on our food. Nonetheless, nothing we do, not even yoga, can help us escape life’s inevitable end. Yoga can help prepare us to face our fear of the inevitable, maybe even embrace it so that we come to appreciate the preciousness of each day we are alive.

  • Find a renewed appreciation for the beauty of our time on the planet
  • Increase personal agency around end of life decisions
  • Delve deep on what really matters to you
  • Realize a new perspective on a very old pose and how it can help you
    be more comfortable with the inevitable

Yoga is meant to bring us more awareness and gives us tools to manage the challenges of being human. This workshop is designed to manage the anxiety we all have around dying and to be more comfortable with these types of conversations.

There will be a short lecture on the history, practice, symbolic message of this often misunderstood pose. Then we will do a series of short practices with a savasana. Each practice will begin with a thought provoking question around your own death, like what are some of your regrets in life, or what do you want your legacy to be, who am I. After each practice, you will be given time to journal about each question. We’ll conclude with a group discussion and of course a final (FOR THIS WORKSHOP) savasana.

Leslie and Richard have been talking about the power of savasana for a long time. They got the idea to do a whole book about it and to include some of the teaching of yoga around accepting death. This workshop is a result of many hours of conversation and we hope to pull it all together for a book before we die!

Leslie Howard is an Oakland-based yoga teacher, specializing in all things pelvic. She leads workshops and trainings nationally and has written a book about caring for the female pelvis, Pelvic Liberation. In 2022, after losing a long time student, she took a deep dive into the subject of death. She has 60 hours of Death Doula training, runs a regular Death Café (a place to come and talk about death) and is volunteering in hospice for Kaiser Oakland. Her teaching is informed by over 3500 hours of yoga study with senior Iyengar yoga teachers. She considers Ramanand Patel her most important influence and mentor. She has designed two very successful studies for UCSF on how to use yoga to alleviate incontinence and pelvic pain. To learn more about Leslie or for some online education opportunities visit: www.lesliehowardyoga.com

Richard Rosen, E-RYT500, began his practice of yoga in 1980 at the Yoga Room, in Berkeley, CA. Two years later he began a two-year teacher training course at the B.K.S. Iyengar Yoga Institute in San Francisco, from which he graduated in 1983. In 1987, with his good friend Rodney Yee, he opened the Piedmont Yoga Studio in Oakland, CA, which operated until 2012. Richard has written numerous articles and reviews for national yoga magazines, and is also the author of five books, four of them published by Shambhala: The Yoga of Breath (2002), Pranayama: Beyond the Fundamentals (2006), Original Yoga (2012), a book on traditional yoga practice based on the seventeenth century Gheranda Samhita (Gheranda’s Compilation), and Yoga FAQ: Almost Everything You Need to Know about Yoga–from Asanas to Yamas (2017). His fifth book for Shambhala, Yoga by the Numbers, is due out in the Spring of 2022. Richard lives in a 115-year-old bungalow in beautiful Berkeley, CA.

2025-05-13T16:13:15-07:00March 28th, 2025|Tags: , , , , , , , |

Authenticity, Path to Self-Realization, 3-part course

This event has been cancelled. 

Online | 3-Saturdays, April 19, 26 & May 3 | $75 Early bird, use promo code PATH, exp. 4/12

$85 Regular

20% off for IYISF active teachers

Nowadays authenticity is more often marketed than manifested. As a result many of us experience a vague feeling that something is misaligned or missing in our lives. What does it mean to truly live authentically in a world full of distractions, expectations, and pressures to conform? What makes being authentic so challenging even though everyone seems to yearn for it? And why does authenticity matter so much in our personal lives but also for the world at large?

“Authenticity is not a destination, it is the journey of unraveling the layers of conditioning to reveal the essence of your being.” ~ Margaret Atwood.

Join Claudia Bartsch, a certified yoga therapist, in exploring the answers to these questions and to learn why the path towards authenticity could be the most important, the most challenging and the most fulfilling journey of your life.
The exploration will draw insights from Yoga Philosophy and Practices, from Western Psychology and Behavioral Science. Each workshop will offer a mixture of lecture and discussion but also some somatic exploration of how being authentic feels in the body.

The focus of the individual workshops will be:

  1. April 19 – defining authenticity, what it means to fully embody the person we are meant to be. We will explore its benefits for our own physical, mental, emotional well-being, and for the health of our relationships and communities.
  2. April 26 – why it is so challenging to live authentically, why the fear of other people’s opinion and our own self-doubt hold us back so often and how to overcome these hindrances.
  3. May 3 – how to cultivate increasingly more authenticity, how we can stop betraying ourselves and which tools and techniques can support us on the way.

This workshop(s) will be recorded and shared with participants for later viewing.
All are welcome, no prior experience with Yoga is necessary.

Claudia Bartsch, PRYT
Originally from Germany, Claudia studied and taught yoga for over 25 years. With more than 2000 hours of formal training in yoga she has a strong foundation in the classical approach to yoga and in innovative therapeutic methods. She is deeply dedicated to facilitating holistic healing and certified as a yoga therapist in 2016. In this role, she specializes in supporting individuals navigating mental or physical challenges by tailoring yoga practices to their unique conditions and needs. Additionally she was certified as a Stress Management Educator to empower individuals to cultivate resilience and inner peace through mindful practices. She is a Shiatsu and Reiki Practitioner, modalities that complement the holistic approach to well-being fostered through yoga. In 2022 she was certified as a Brain Longevity Specialist by the Alzheimer’s Research and Prevention Foundation to deepen her understanding of cognitive and mental health Please visit her website for more information: claudiabartsch.com

2025-04-18T18:53:08-07:00February 9th, 2025|Tags: , , , |
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