Our programs described below include:
- Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR)
- Mentoring in Mindfulness, Meditation, Inquiry (Individuals)
- Deepening MBSR - for Graduates of an MBSR course
- Retreats and Workshops
- Inviting Chronic Pain and Illness to Tea
- Mindfulness for Teens: Learning Life Skills for Less Stress
- Telesangha
Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR)
8-Week Class
Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) is an eight week program, developed by Jon Kabat-Zinn, that assists people who want to learn to use their own internal resources to respond more skillfully to stress, medical and psychological conditions, and promote healthy living. MBSR has been highly researched since its onset in 1979, and research strongly supports its effectiveness in improving difficulties in multiple areas of health and wellness.
Some reasons people come to the group include: job, school or family stress; chronic pain; hypertension; attention deficits; enhancement of quality of life/happiness; mild or situational depression; gastrointestinal disorders; wellness and self-care; cancer; anxiety and panic; anger-management; life transitions.
Intentional, present –moment awareness, developed through mindfulness meditation practices, helps us experience whatever is happening in our life as it unfolds with curiosity, non-judging attention, and compassion for ourselves and others. Engaging with our life in this manner helps us to become more skillful and creative in our responses, while gaining insight into how to free ourselves from habitual patterns of reacting.
This program can be a complement to current medical care, as well as promotion of health and well-being.
Reviews of Previous Classes
For Reviews of this Class, please follow this Link:
Testimonials
Tuition:
Introduction: $10, refunded if you take the next 8-Week Course
8-Week Course: $550, includes Eight 2-1/2 hour experiential sessions, a 6-1/2 hour daylong retreat and 6 CDs of guided meditations
Some scholarship is available - Contact IMCWColumbia@yahoo.com
This course is offered in various locations in DC and Maryland
8-Week Class
Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) is an eight week program, developed by Jon Kabat-Zinn, that assists people who want to learn to use their own internal resources to respond more skillfully to stress, medical and psychological conditions, and promote healthy living. MBSR has been highly researched since its onset in 1979, and research strongly supports its effectiveness in improving difficulties in multiple areas of health and wellness.
Some reasons people come to the group include: job, school or family stress; chronic pain; hypertension; attention deficits; enhancement of quality of life/happiness; mild or situational depression; gastrointestinal disorders; wellness and self-care; cancer; anxiety and panic; anger-management; life transitions.
Intentional, present –moment awareness, developed through mindfulness meditation practices, helps us experience whatever is happening in our life as it unfolds with curiosity, non-judging attention, and compassion for ourselves and others. Engaging with our life in this manner helps us to become more skillful and creative in our responses, while gaining insight into how to free ourselves from habitual patterns of reacting.
This program can be a complement to current medical care, as well as promotion of health and well-being.
Reviews of Previous Classes
For Reviews of this Class, please follow this Link:
Testimonials
Tuition:
Introduction: $10, refunded if you take the next 8-Week Course
8-Week Course: $550, includes Eight 2-1/2 hour experiential sessions, a 6-1/2 hour daylong retreat and 6 CDs of guided meditations
Some scholarship is available - Contact IMCWColumbia@yahoo.com
This course is offered in various locations in DC and Maryland
Mentoring in Mindfulness, Meditation, Inquiry
Stan mentors people privately, mostly over the phone or video conference. Using mindfulness, meditation, self-kindness, inquiry and related techniques, he has been working with individuals to help them learn how to work through reactions to current or past stressors and difficulties. Many people find significant benefit in a single session.
The hourly rate is $80 per hour, though a sliding scale is available.
A free first-time one hour consultation/mentoring session is available.
If you are interested in scheduling an appointment, please contact Stan at imcwcolumbia@yahoo.com
Here are a few reviews from some of the people I have mentored:
“Stan providing online mentoring was more than a lucky break as there are no local teachers in my area. Despite the online setting, Stan‘s friendly and compassionate attitude crosses the digital divide and lets you feel right at home with the teachings. Cherishing independence and self-reliance, I hesitated to seek help from a teacher. I couldn’t have been more wrong. Stan encouraged me to challenge my stale meditation techniques, try out new ways of meditating and trust my inner wisdom to guide my practice. Stan‘s skillful questions let me drop down from my head into my body and allow sensations to play out rather than suppressing them. Stan's teaching style encourages freedom and self-guidance.” – Stefan
“Stan has been my meditation teacher for approximately seven years and mentor for two. As my teacher, he has provided guidance and resources that have enriched my spiritual exploration(s). As a mentor, he has worked alongside to help me navigate my sometimes challenging inner journey. Stan, with his intuitive, kind, and gentle approach, has been a trusted ally who has helped me find my inner resources in the midst of living this life.” – Linda
“This is how I describe our work together. It is my session. I decide what we look at. I choose how we might get a little closer to whatever disturbs me or more importantly whatever rises up in meditation or reflection during the time between sessions. Stan offers suggestions, reminders and reflections. It’s my journey. Stan acts as my “guardrails”. Stan reminds me that it isn’t a straight path in fact he describes it as a puzzle where we wait for pieces in different parts to reveal themselves and then we glean understanding. He helped me develop the compassionate inner resources which are available to me even in the darkest memories. Stan reminds me that I am strong and dedicated.” - Marianne
Stan mentors people privately, mostly over the phone or video conference. Using mindfulness, meditation, self-kindness, inquiry and related techniques, he has been working with individuals to help them learn how to work through reactions to current or past stressors and difficulties. Many people find significant benefit in a single session.
The hourly rate is $80 per hour, though a sliding scale is available.
A free first-time one hour consultation/mentoring session is available.
If you are interested in scheduling an appointment, please contact Stan at imcwcolumbia@yahoo.com
Here are a few reviews from some of the people I have mentored:
“Stan providing online mentoring was more than a lucky break as there are no local teachers in my area. Despite the online setting, Stan‘s friendly and compassionate attitude crosses the digital divide and lets you feel right at home with the teachings. Cherishing independence and self-reliance, I hesitated to seek help from a teacher. I couldn’t have been more wrong. Stan encouraged me to challenge my stale meditation techniques, try out new ways of meditating and trust my inner wisdom to guide my practice. Stan‘s skillful questions let me drop down from my head into my body and allow sensations to play out rather than suppressing them. Stan's teaching style encourages freedom and self-guidance.” – Stefan
“Stan has been my meditation teacher for approximately seven years and mentor for two. As my teacher, he has provided guidance and resources that have enriched my spiritual exploration(s). As a mentor, he has worked alongside to help me navigate my sometimes challenging inner journey. Stan, with his intuitive, kind, and gentle approach, has been a trusted ally who has helped me find my inner resources in the midst of living this life.” – Linda
“This is how I describe our work together. It is my session. I decide what we look at. I choose how we might get a little closer to whatever disturbs me or more importantly whatever rises up in meditation or reflection during the time between sessions. Stan offers suggestions, reminders and reflections. It’s my journey. Stan acts as my “guardrails”. Stan reminds me that it isn’t a straight path in fact he describes it as a puzzle where we wait for pieces in different parts to reveal themselves and then we glean understanding. He helped me develop the compassionate inner resources which are available to me even in the darkest memories. Stan reminds me that I am strong and dedicated.” - Marianne
Deepening Practice - A Course for MBSR Graduates
This course is offered to anyone who has graduated from an 8-Week MBSR course or equivalent.
In this course, we review skills, meditations, and experiences learned in MBSR. Students are then guided to deepen their understanding through more advanced meditations and trainings.
This course focuses on:
Tuition:
8-Week Course: $550, includes Eight 2-1/2 hour experiential sessions, a 6-1/2 hour daylong retreat and several CDs of guided meditations
Some scholarship is available - Contact IMCWColumbia@yahoo.com
This course is offered to anyone who has graduated from an 8-Week MBSR course or equivalent.
In this course, we review skills, meditations, and experiences learned in MBSR. Students are then guided to deepen their understanding through more advanced meditations and trainings.
This course focuses on:
- Reviewing and reinforcing the living of concepts and skills learned in the original MBSR course
- Deepening a sense of Embodiment (living more and more in the body)
- Practicing techniques to uncover and disentangle from habitual thought patterns, beliefs and behaviors that keep us stuck or suffering (RAIN and other inquiry practices)
- Working with practices designed to help open our hearts
- Honing communication skills to enhance connectedness
Tuition:
8-Week Course: $550, includes Eight 2-1/2 hour experiential sessions, a 6-1/2 hour daylong retreat and several CDs of guided meditations
Some scholarship is available - Contact IMCWColumbia@yahoo.com
Retreats and Workshops
We offer weekend and weeklong silent retreats, mostly in affiliation with Insight Meditation Community of Washington. These retreats give participants the opportunity to meditate for extended periods of time. This helps participants learn to settle more deeply and to untangle from habitual patterning that causes stress and suffering. Retreats offer talks, guided meditation instruction, teacher consultations, and mindful movement in a beautiful, forested setting.
We also offer daylong workshops. These workshops typically offer both half-day and full-day options. Class fees will vary - see our schedule for actual pricing.
Below are a sampling of some of our daylong workshop offerings:
Cultivating Embodiment
Our bodies are our homes, our refuges. Our bodies have an aliveness that we can tap into if we pay attention. Our bodies have a deep wisdom that we can access if we know how to listen. Our bodies are the ground of our awakening.
Yet for so many of us, we spend most of our attention outside our bodies – in the environment or in our minds. For many of us, our bodies are no more than vehicles to carry our heads around. Many of us who have experienced trauma (big or small) or pain have essentially been “kicked out” of our bodies.
In this workshop participants will engage in a number of experiences designed to help them come home into their bodies more and to start to tap into the wisdom of the body. The program will include a mix of embodiment meditations, exercises, gentle mindful movement, and discussion.
The morning session focuses on practices related to learning to fully live within the body in meditation and in daily life; reclaiming our bodies as our homes. The afternoon session focuses on the wisdom of the body – working with emotional awareness and regulation, disentangling from underlying beliefs and hurts, and exploring a deeper fundamental consciousness and intuition within the body.
A Day of Heart Practices
The cultivation of Heart Practices (Kindness, Compassion, Sympathetic Joy, Equanimity) is one of the potent methods the Buddha taught to break down our sense of separateness from ourselves, each other and the world. These techniques were designed also to help us deal with fear and to begin to change our environment and our relationship to it.
This workshop will include a variety of heart practices. The morning session focuses on heart practices directed toward oneself - including self-kindness, self-compassion, and gratitude. The afternoon session focuses on heart practices directed toward others – including working with kindness toward people who are challenging, compassion for those who are suffering, and equanimity in the midst of a constantly changing world.
The workshop includes teacher talks, guided meditations, group discussions and personal meditation time.
Mindful Relationships Workshop
This workshop is designed for those who would like to heal or deepen relationships with partners, family members, friends, and coworkers. In this workshop, we apply a variety of mindfulness techniques and Buddhist teachings to help participants to work through relational difficulties and cultivate interconnectedness.
Participants may come alone or with someone they would like to work with during the workshop.
Quotes from a previous workshop:
“I was reminded of RAIN, a tool that I think is quite useful. I was able to introduce my partner to meditation in the applied context of some challenging relationship issues we're dealing with. In many ways, this day was more helpful than the couples therapy we've been doing. The difficult conversation practice gave us an opportunity to communicate the journey we'd each been on that day in relation to a recent painful event. I clarified my desires in this relationship and was able to communicate those.”
“I know a lot of the things I need to work on, but it is difficult to face those issues. I found the exercises and strategies presented at the workshop to be very powerful because each of them helped me get to the core, or the essence of what I would like to achieve. Each exercise and strategy had a purpose and was interconnected. I definitely walked away feeling more accomplished and positive."
Deepening Presence
This is a silent, one-day workshop. We will be experiencing a variety of meditation practices, guided and unguided, that will foster a sense of awareness of presence.
Extended silence can be experienced as giving the mind and body a deep rest. Many feel a sense of greater peacefulness after participating in such an event.
Extended silence is also a profound way to deepen your meditation practice. The mind has more time to settle. This helps to bring to the surface deeper insights than you might normally achieve in a daily meditation. It is the experience of the teacher that his most profound insights have come during silent retreats.
Inquiry through Imagery
One of the benefits of meditation is the discovery of our deeper selves, of what is truly important to us, and how we can navigate a direction in our lives. We tend to identify ourselves with what we are conscious of; yet the predominant part of our experience is subconscious. The subconscious mind is largely expressed in imagery and in the felt sense of the body.
Through guided meditation, experiential exercises, short talks, journaling, drawing, humor, and optional sharing, we will explore how imagery and body sense lead us to a deeper understanding of ourselves, paving the way for healing and guidance.
Inviting Chronic Pain and Illness to Tea
It is not what happens to us, but how we relate to it, that determines our experience of well-being.
This program is designed to help people who are experiencing chronic pain and/or illness develop skills for relating to pain or illness in a way that is life affirming.
Based on the work of Jon Kabat-Zinn, Judith Blackstone, Tara Brach and others, this course will provide tools that participants can use to reframe their experience and come to a new relationship with pain and illness. Through experiential exercises, meditations, group discussions, teacher-led material and home practice, participants will learn to “invite Mara to tea” – to come to an awareness of themselves as much more than the pain or illness.
Research on mindfulness programs has shown that the cultivation of mindfulness practices can have a dramatic effect on the reduction of the experience of pain and the increase in quality of life.
Emphasis in this course will be placed on embodiment, self-kindness and compassion, gratitude, awareness and allowing, and development of community.
It is our hope that a spiritual friends group will form out of the connections established in this course.
This highly participatory, practical course consists of ten weekly classes and includes:
Tuition:
Introduction: Free
9-Week Course: $400, includes Nine 2 hour experiential sessions, several CDs of guided meditations (also on mp3), and two personal 30-minute mentoring sessions
Some scholarship is available - Contact IMCWColumbia@yahoo.com
[Note: This course is offered as a video conference course for convenience to participants as well as to allow for participation from various locations.]
Inviting Chronic Pain and Illness to Tea
It is not what happens to us, but how we relate to it, that determines our experience of well-being.
This program is designed to help people who are experiencing chronic pain and/or illness develop skills for relating to pain or illness in a way that is life affirming.
Based on the work of Jon Kabat-Zinn, Judith Blackstone, Tara Brach and others, this course will provide tools that participants can use to reframe their experience and come to a new relationship with pain and illness. Through experiential exercises, meditations, group discussions, teacher-led material and home practice, participants will learn to “invite Mara to tea” – to come to an awareness of themselves as much more than the pain or illness.
Research on mindfulness programs has shown that the cultivation of mindfulness practices can have a dramatic effect on the reduction of the experience of pain and the increase in quality of life.
Emphasis in this course will be placed on embodiment, self-kindness and compassion, gratitude, awareness and allowing, and development of community.
It is our hope that a spiritual friends group will form out of the connections established in this course.
This highly participatory, practical course consists of ten weekly classes and includes:
- Guided instruction in mindfulness meditation practices
- Gentle stretching and mindful yoga
- Group dialogue and discussions aimed at enhancing skillful means and connection in everyday life
- Daily home practice, including guided meditations
- Several meditation practice CDs and a home practice manual
Tuition:
Introduction: Free
9-Week Course: $400, includes Nine 2 hour experiential sessions, several CDs of guided meditations (also on mp3), and two personal 30-minute mentoring sessions
Some scholarship is available - Contact IMCWColumbia@yahoo.com
[Note: This course is offered as a video conference course for convenience to participants as well as to allow for participation from various locations.]
Mindfulness for Teens: Life Skills for Less Stress
The Mindfulness for Teens course is adapted from Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction course for adults (see above). Meditations and course content have been adapted for teens.
Mindfulness and meditation, bringing attention to present-moment experiences, can act as a kind of mini-vacation that we can take at any time. We can bring ourselves a sense of calm in the midst of difficulties and stress. Mindfulness helps us to find more enjoyment in daily life and to improve our performance. Mindfulness helps us to create a space between the difficulties in our lives and how we respond to those difficulties, allowing us to discover more options for how to respond.
The course is primarily experiential and discussion-based. Participants will have the opportunity to experience mindfulness practices and then experiment with how they apply in their lives. Suggested home practice (meditations and daily mindfulness activities) will be offered.
Stan Eisenstein was featured teaching an early version of this course in an article in the Baltimore Sun.
The course consists of a free introductory session, followed by two five-week parts, meeting for 90 minutes once each week. Participants may register for Part 1 alone or for both Parts 1 and 2.
Some of the skills learned in Part 1 include:
Some of the skills learned in Part 2 include:
Cost & Payment
Introductory Session: Free
Part 1 (5-weeks): $200
Part 2 (5-weeks): $200
Includes a 90 minute experiential session each week and CDs of meditations.
[Note: This course is offered when there is enough interest. If you would like this course to run, contact Stan at imcwcolumbia@yahoo.com]
The Mindfulness for Teens course is adapted from Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction course for adults (see above). Meditations and course content have been adapted for teens.
Mindfulness and meditation, bringing attention to present-moment experiences, can act as a kind of mini-vacation that we can take at any time. We can bring ourselves a sense of calm in the midst of difficulties and stress. Mindfulness helps us to find more enjoyment in daily life and to improve our performance. Mindfulness helps us to create a space between the difficulties in our lives and how we respond to those difficulties, allowing us to discover more options for how to respond.
The course is primarily experiential and discussion-based. Participants will have the opportunity to experience mindfulness practices and then experiment with how they apply in their lives. Suggested home practice (meditations and daily mindfulness activities) will be offered.
Stan Eisenstein was featured teaching an early version of this course in an article in the Baltimore Sun.
The course consists of a free introductory session, followed by two five-week parts, meeting for 90 minutes once each week. Participants may register for Part 1 alone or for both Parts 1 and 2.
Some of the skills learned in Part 1 include:
- "Mindfulness First Aid" - skills that will help calm strong emotion
- Bringing awareness out of the mind and into the body
- Learning to develop greater kindness for oneself
- Developing the skill of being more mindful throughout the day
- Becoming more aware of what is pleasant and positive in daily life
- Learning to become calmer in the face of what is unpleasant
- Becoming more familiar with the emotional landscape
- Using mindfulness and meditation to enhance performance (music, sports, etc.)
Some of the skills learned in Part 2 include:
- Becoming more aware of stress as it happens
- Understanding the stress process to be able to navigate it better
- Learning to find creative ways of responding to stressful situations
- Learning to relate more effectively to the thoughts and stories we tell ourselves
- Learning skills for more effective communication
- Bringing awareness to the ways our daily activities nourish or deplete us
Cost & Payment
Introductory Session: Free
Part 1 (5-weeks): $200
Part 2 (5-weeks): $200
Includes a 90 minute experiential session each week and CDs of meditations.
[Note: This course is offered when there is enough interest. If you would like this course to run, contact Stan at imcwcolumbia@yahoo.com]