OverviewClasses and workshops are oriented for beginning and those that wish to deepen the results of their meditation practice. Class programs are ideal for meditation groups and progressive businesses seeking personnel development.
Class content is technique oriented and presented in American English with references to contemporary neurology, physiology, and cognitive psychology. The subject matter is not religious and contains no foreign words or cultural idioms. The underlying approach is based on Proto-buddhist practices found in the earliest discourses of the Buddha found in Pali texts with updated translations. Workshops and classes balance instruction and information with guided and silent practice. This approach accelerates leaning and is immediately effective. The series of classes and workshop sessions are progressive. Each builds on the previous with a short review of the previous one at the begging of each. For people with previous meditation experience, this approach to meditation cultivates unwavering qualities of agile awareness along with uplifted relaxed mood or feeling. Traditionally it is known as the brahmaviharas or heavenly mental states. The emphasis is on developing wholesome feeling-tones in conjunction with relaxed-awarenes directed inwardly. With awareness balanced tranquility, urgency and anxiety fade away completely. The result is contentment and heartfelt happiness not dependent on sense stimulus. Such meditative experiences are pleasurable and are accompanied by an agile mind and uplifted attitude. This approach to mental development is sustainable in daily life and active lifestyles. Find out more about teachers and practice leaders >> BackgroundWe learn how to decondition the causes of worry, anger, and destructive tendencies by practicing observing and directing our attention to uplifted wholesome mental states and feeling. These are positive and benevolent states include friendliness, loving-kindness, empathic-happiness, joyfulness, mental compose. These are rarely experienced by most people but become the new normal for those that take the time to cultivate with tranquil awareness meditation.
It begins by understating how unhappiness comes about and that the escape is through using wise direction of our attention or mindfulness. This works best when combined deconditioning negative and reactive emotions. With practice, genuine feelings of well-being naturally evolve and dominate resulting in joyful engagment, mental agility, and inter serenity. With practice these feelings of well-being grow in depth and duration. A mood of lightness and contentment builds internally and automatically carries into daily life, work, and relationships. The training principles combine a method known as the Six Rs. This is a practical system of maintaining mental and physical harmony for sustainable happiness. The Six Rs teaches us to go of toxic thoughts and feelings, and then change mental channels to an uplifted mood. By keeping wholesome feelings prominent, we are on track to develop right effort or harmonious training. This process effectively deconditions negative or compulsive habitual emotions that are the source of anger, conflict, and other self-defeating insecurities of life. The Six Rs is a simple mnemonic system of actions to help us think and act in harmony. Harmonious effort balances emotional, mental, and physical well-being. Once learned and practiced, we naturally awaken increased joy, compassion, and awareness centered in benevolence that expands in ourselves and those around us. Thousands of people world-wide have found this easy to learn and universally effective. A few consecutive sessions quickly develope skills to quickly experience of joyful exuberance and dissolve the root causes of negative habitual tendencies. Cultivating these skills directly contribute to developing mental agility and attentiveness with positive life affirming thoughts and feelings. Learn
Sessions / ClassesSession 1
Creating a meditative home base. Learn how "feeling good in mind and body" makes meditation fun and interesting. Grow contentment by applying an uplifted attitude while disengaging from compulsive emotions. Session 2 Recurring distractions are our teachers. By recognizing toxic and painful thoughts or feeling, we learn how to decondition disturbing habitual reactive patterns. Disengage and fully relax with a smile is the road to relief. Session 3 Build seven key wholesome to manifest contentment. Learn to develop and balance mental qualities in meditation exercises known as the five spiritual powers or faculties. Session 4 Enjoy progress in the stages of tranquil-awareness. Smiling mind practice progressively eliminates distractions. Initially the mind settles, then it studies, nest composes into a agile clear balanced attentiveness of joyfulness. Session 5 Discover why the Buddha smiled. Learn exercise to = unlock contentment and happiness in active lifestyles. This includes, driving, shopping, working or just hanging out.. Session 6 Big-Wow's and Ah-ha Moments: The stages of the brahmaviharas: sublime states of happiness and awakening. |
ClassesThe Smiling Path to Awakening Meditation is a six week series presented by Tarare Saylor and Scott Jordan. Participants learn how to cultivate greater happiness, tranquility, and mindfulness. Enjoy meditation with the feeling of loving-kindness. It is interesting, fun to do, and immediately effective.
Thursdays: October 19 & 26, November 2, 9 &18 Drop-In for this 5-week series or classes: 7:15–8:30 PM Open Eye Meditation Group, 875 4th Street, Suite #1, San Rafael, 94901
Classes are interesting and up lifting combining meditatiive practice, instruction, and discussion.
This approach to meditation is fun to do and immediately effective. Short practice sessions offer immediate relief from worries and anxieties. Participants quickly acquire practical tools and skills that result in life-affirming up lifted change. Tranquil awareness practice deconditions the causes of unhappiness and lead to greater contentment in active lifestyle. Once learned, these meditative skills combine to decrease habitual reactive behavior and promote greater conscious responsiveness. Presentations combine equal parts information and meditative training exercises that broaden analytical understanding of exactly how we inadvertently and unknowingly create anxiety, aversion, addiction, stress, regret, sadness that result in unhappiness. Each session presents meditative techniques and practice that decondition unonscious reactions and habit patterns. Each session feature meditative exercises that promote calm and contentment to elevate tension— a root cause of stress and unhappiness. The subject matter provides a practical foundation to embrace a constructive perspective to better understand how we repeatedly get caught up in unwholesome habits. This meditation cultivates greater inward harmony that results in external harmony based on mental and emotional balance. Presentations are practical, concise and very enjoyable. Each session examines aspects of our physical and mental landscape that governs our happiness. The material presented draws from contemporary cognitive psychology, neurology, and physiology while based on the earliest known meditation techniques employed by the Buddha. This is a scientific approach founded on phenomenological principles that combine intellectual understanding with direct observation. The goal is developing awareness to reveal how thoughts and feelings originate; how they condition unconscious behavior and: how to deal with them effectively in real life. Meditative practices and skill development is the counter part to the information and learning segments. Sessions provide participants a toolkit of techniques, protocols, and skill enhancement to quickly experience increased conscious attentiveness—the basis for responding to distress skillfully rather then being engulfed by habitual emotional reactions. The core instructions feature a simple learning methodology known as the Six Rs. Participants learn to observe, relax, and release tension that can easily dominate the mind and body. This is the original mindfulness meditative training found in the earliest Buddhist text and made actionable using this easy to learn method. When applied as instructed, it simply deconditions the causes of unhappiness and promotes conscious attentiveness and emotional contentment. Sessions include meditative exercises that are interesting to learn and fun to practice. Every session balances exercises, instruction, with Q&A throughout. As with any new skill, time devoted to practice is proportional to results. Once understood and trained, application of these techniques quickly deconditions mental static and physical stress providing a broad sense of contentment and well-being. Regular practice promotes, mental agility and emotional ease in all ages and those with active lifestyles. |
