Classes and Workshops

This can be taken as a series or as separate day longs.

Dates: Sunday’s, March  26, April 2, April 16, April 23: 10 am – 3 pm PT, 1-6 pm ET

Each session will be recorded and optional mid week practice/peer groups will be offered for anyone taking all 4 sessions.

A part two to those wishing to teach this material will be offered for those interested, TBA.

March 26 – Going to the Root: The Pelvic Floor Diaphragm

One of several diaphragms in the body is located at the pelvic floor. All the diaphragms move softly and subtly with breath that can be felt with a period of directed concentration.

For most, the result of being deeply emersed in the sensations of rising and falling in this area, combined with concentration developed through mindfulness is a real embodied sense of being grounded and centered, more able to be present with what is and with a kinder, less reactive responsiveness. Being able to relate to life from this place makes a remarkable difference in how we meet our experiences.

April 2 – Heart Space

It’s no secret but another important place to embody and live from is the heart and how we do that can be literally through the somatic sense of the body.

It might sound abstract, but softness creates space, and both can be felt. There are instant and infinite benefits to feel this and utilize in mental, emotional, and physical ways.

When we’re with someone we love – a person, animal or tree being, our bodies soften and relax, our nervous system balances and our sense of safety and belonging increases.

We can draw on the somatic experience until it eventually becomes more of our embodied natural state.

April 16 – Mind Space: The Skull Diaphragm

A useful aspect of the skull diaphragm is that it dances in rhythm with the pelvic floor diaphragm and moves energy, blood and breath. Different Tantric traditions connect the crown of the head and the pelvic floor with a central channel which is more esoteric but can be experienced.  Sensing this for ourselves without the overlay of what it’s “supposed to” feel or be like offers profound freedom to work with our experience in a personal and transformative way.

April 23-Moving the Mind: Personal Choices for Resting Awareness and Presence

One way we can move our mind can be sensed simple via the vehicle of breath. There are additional ways to move kind awareness/conscious awareness and center ourselves which are explored in the previous sessions.

Through direct experience which is stressed in this series, you’ll know more about why it might be helpful to be embodied somewhere period, but also to have choices about specifically where and why.

Go Here for Registration and cost

Our explorations will include somatic psychology and Dharma, a variety of embodied practices most likely new to you and investigations into the wonders and expressions of the mind and body as one. Open to any current Mindfulness Teachers

Expand your practice, curiosity and understanding of being awake and aware in a group of like heart/minds.

Increase what you can offer to your students and professions and into your own life.

Continue to develop your own voice in teaching, your unique style and ways of offering.

Discuss money, marketing, co-teaching events and how to develop interesting content.

Monthly meetings will be supported by optional peer led gatherings which will include practice and discussion of the monthly themes. 

Individual Mentoring, online or in person in Berkeley, Ca.

Group Dates: Friday’s 10 – 11:30 am PT : March 24, April 28, May 19, June 23

“At the very start of our training, Jill told us, ‘I’m not what many people might think of when they imagine a meditation teacher.’ And how lucky we are for that! With a potent combination of creative fire and grounded commonsense, Jill offered an example of how to practice on the edge: the edge of experience, the edge of pain, the edge of Western medicine and even, through her deep exploration into the subtle body, the edge of mainstream Western Buddhism. Her teachings and presence gave me a wonderful permission to grow into my own authentic version of ‘not how you imagine a meditation teacher’ and constantly reminded me that this practice is an inherently creative act — radical, rebellious, and pathbreaking.” Alexander N.

You are so skilled at teaching teachers.

You give feedback that is at this exact zone of proximal development where you saw exactly how I came in as a teacher both in terms of my ‘technique’ and where I was as a person.  You offered feedback that truly not only moved me to the next place but also saw what I could uniquely bring. I think the fact that each of our teaching styles come across so authentically is pretty amazing because one form of teaching is to create lots of similarities and it’s much harder for people to help create someone’s authentic versions of themselves, while also being skilled. It’s just so masterful and you made me an infinitely better teacher than I ever thought possible coming in.

Leah Samaha

Imagination: An Integral Part of Liberating the Heart. Four Friday’s : February 24, March 3,  March 10 and March 17 10 am – 4pm PT

Hosted online by Spirit Rock Meditation Center

Our mind is naturally creative—it foresees and remembers, dreams and perceives. What we imagine can lead us toward or away from liberation. Imagination creates a physiological response which can heal or render defeat, explore ideas and possibilities, as well as sense how someone else might feel, which seeds empathy in the heart. What seem like simple perceptions are often imagined, and our lives are shaped by how we create a response to each moment.

Each day will be recorded and available for a limited amount of time.

A Body of Kindness: April 8 

Hosted online by NY Insight

Loving kindness can be generated from the mind and heart, it can also be invited and sustained in the body. The body is where we sense, feel, and know emotions.

Love, kindness, generosity, and joy is invited and held in space and softness. Spaciousness and softness in the body is cultivated and like all things, what we repeat we become.

A Body of Kindness: Generating Compassion Somatically – In Person at The Tibet House NYC: June 8  

Loving-kindness and compassion can be generated from the mind and heart; they can also be invited and sustained in the body. The body is where we sense, feel, and know emotions.

Love, kindness, generosity, and joy are created and held within space and softness. Spaciousness and expansiveness in the body are cultivated and can become an embodied state easily called into the experience. By attending to the subtle and bodily sense of compassion, it can be conditioned to be abided in more often than not.

 

During this workshop, we’ll practice mindfulness, meditation, visualization, breathing, and lying down in restorative postures to invite, feel and experience practical ways to make somatic room for the heart to expand and be readily receptive to compassion, kindness, and joy.

A sample of what we’ll be exploring in the workshop.

  • Mindfulness of breath concentrated in the skull and pelvic floor diaphragms.
  • The central channel and its benefits for mental, physical, and emotional well-being.
  • The attributes and physiological effects of imagination.
  • Interoception/inner awareness and the psychological and emotional benefits of being embodied.

“As we inhabit our body with increasing sensitivity, we learn its unspoken language and patterns, which gives us tremendous freedom to make choices. The practice of cutting thoughts and dispersing negative repetitive patterns can be simplified by attending to the patterns in the body first, before they begin to be spun around in the mind”.
~ Jill Satterfield, Tricycle Magazine

Some past events events:

Somatically Sensing: Knowing Thoughts and Emotions through Sensations hosted by SD Insight

This investigation of the felt sense of thoughts and emotions has the potential to relieve and release them without wandering into blame, criticism, identification or complication. A different approach emphasized in the Buddha’s Satipatthana Sutta is to mine the sensations of feeling tones, thoughts and emotions in the wordless language of sensations.

Awareness Shift: Knowing the Nature of the Body, Heart/Mind through the 5 Elements, Hosted by Sangha Live

4 Part Series
Sensing the Subtle Body in the Four Foundations of Mindfulness: Practices to Cultivate Embodied Awareness hosted by NY Insight

Sensing the Subtle Body in the Four Foundations of Mindfulness: Practices to Cultivate Embodied Awareness

A Four Part Series, January 14, 21, 28 and February 4, 2022 . Can be taken separately and recordings will be available for 90 days.

Anxiety: It’s Not All in Your Mind, Resourcing the Body Somatically, Hosted online by Spirit Rock Meditation Center

The Embodied Mind: The Somatic Language of Thoughts and Emotions. Hosted by Spirit Rock Meditation Center

February 5, 12, 19, 26, 2021

This class series includes:
Class 1: Somatically Sensing – Knowing Thoughts and Emotions through Sensations
Class 2: Stress and Sense – How Thoughts and Emotions Shape the Physical Body
Class 3: Resting and Relaxing – Opportunities to Restore the Nervous System for Ease in the Mind
Class 4: Inner Awareness – A Key to Self-Regulation and Care

Change Your Breath to Change Your Mind: Practice and Dharma talk hosted by Napa Insight

Stay informed of details and more upcoming workshops, classes and trainings:
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“Believe nothing, no matter where you read it, or who said it, no matter if I have said it, unless it agrees with your own reason and your own common sense.”
~ Gautama Buddha

A Sample of Past Events

February 3, 2018, 10am – 5pm: Loving Kindness and Self Compassion: The Development and Embracing of Both

February 9, 2018, 10am – 4:30pm: Inner Awareness for Emotional Intelligence at Spirit Rock

March 5, 2018,  5:30pm – 6:30pm: Integrating Mindfulness into Your Profession, San Francisco

March 23, 2018,  4pm – 5:30pm: Open House Integrating Mindfulness into your Profession, Oakland 

April 13, 2018,  10am – 4:30pm: Anxiety: It’s Not All in Your Mind, at Spirit Rock

May 5 – 6, 2018,  Chronic Pain: The Choices and the Burdens, UCLA 

May 19 – 20, 2018,  Working with Stored Emotions and Trauma Somatically and Safely, UCLA 

June 15, 2018, The Body as House, De Nieuwe Yoga School, Amsterdam

June 16, 2018,  Self Compassion, De Nieuwe Yoga School, Amsterdam

June 17, 2018,  Integrating Mindfulness: Anxiety, Yoga Moves, Utrecht

June 22, 2018 Inner Awareness, Triyoga, London

June 23, 2018,  Body as House: A Somatic Exploration of the Mind Body Relationship, Triyoga, London

June 24, 2018,  10am – 5pm: Mindfulness in Motion – Integrating Mindfulness into Asana: For Teachers, London

July 13 – 15, 2018, 10:00am – 4:30pm: Recharge & Reconnect: Inner Awareness, Resilience, and Self Care for Care Providers, Spirit Rock

August 22, 2018, Grand Rounds at Highland Hospital, Oakland, CA

August 28, 2018,  7 – 8:30pm: Napa Insight Dharma Talk

September 29, 2018,  10 -4: Napa Insight: Cultivating Our Inner Awareness: The Practices and the Benefits

September 22 – 24, 2018 The Foundations of Truth, A weekend at Triyoga, London with Venerable Ajahn Amaro

October 8 – 13, 2017, A Chronic Pain Management Conference for Healthcare Professionals,with Jill Satterfield, Lorimer Moseley, Fadel Zeidan and more. at the Kripalu Center for Yoga + Health, Lenox, MA

October 22, 2017, 11:30 – 12:30, Mindfulness at the Berkeley Museum of Art BAMPFA, Mindfulness at the Berkeley Museum of Art, BAMPFA