September Feels
There are so many feelings swirling around in me as Montreal goes into a second wave lockdown! Are you feeling it, too?
As kids and parents geared up for a strange back-to-school season, I was arriving at the end of a four year Dharma Retreat Teacher Training program. The program is sometimes likened to a PhD in the meditation world, and celebrating my graduation via Zoom was strange to say the least.
I also recently moved into a new home with my husband (! I’m still getting used to saying that), and all of this transition - as exciting as it may be - combined with the ongoing uncertainty of the second wave of the pandemic left me feeling a lot.
The few days we spent in our new home before the internet was installed were an amazing reminder that mindful use of technology is especially important during times like these. I’ve written about this before, and devote some time to it in my Mindfulness for the Modern Meditator course. Do you consider your use of technology to be mindful?
Below you can find my upcoming online offerings and below below you’ll find a list of a few things that are very important to me, most of which are centred around celebrating Indigenous culture and learning about the realities of the Indigenous experience in Canada. These topics seem especially relevant in the context of back-to-school and Thanksgiving.
OFFERINGS
Join me for the following multi-day or multi-week explorations of mindfulness or Buddhist teachings.
Spirit Rock BIPOC Voices
Sunday, October 18 9:00-10:30 AM PT
Spirit Rock Monday Night
Monday, October 19 7:15-9:15 PM PT
6-weeks of Dharma: The Three Marks of Existence
Wednesdays November 4-December 9 6:30-8:15 PM ET
Online retreats offer a unique opportunity to immerse yourself in intensive meditation practice from the comfort of your home, helping you seamlessly weave practice and home life together.
Awakening the Heart of Wisdom with Celeste Young
October 2-8 (tomorrow!)
IMCW Fall Weeklong Retreat with Tara Brach, Jonathan Foust, La Sarmiento, and Leslie Booker
October 23-30
My regular public offerings this Fall include my twice weekly Beditations and monthly contribution to the True North Insight weekly BIPOC group.
Beditation on Instagram Live
Tuesdays and Thursdays 7:30 AM ET
A 15-minute guided meditation from my bed to yours!
TNI BIPOC Group
Mondays 7:15-8:15 PM ET
*Although this sangha gathers weekly, I’m leading on Mondays Nov. 9 and Dec. 7
READ. WATCH. LISTEN. DO.
Here are just a few of the many things lighting me up these days. May it be so for you as well.
Read.
After 21 years of government inaction Mi’kmaq assert their right to fish
Are you aware of what’s been happening in Digby Wharf, Nova Scotia? How much do you know about treaty rights in Canada? Robert Devet from the Nova Scotia Advocate unpacks the current situation.
Watch.
The Secret Path
What started as a series of poems written by Gord Downie, then became songs and was subsequently turned into a beautiful animated short that tells the story of Chanie Wenjack, a twelve year-old boy who died fifty years ago on October 22, 1966, in flight from the Cecilia Jeffrey Indian Residential School near Kenora, Ontario.
Listen.
Healing the Land is Healing Ourselves
A conversation with community organizer, citizen scientist, activist, water protector, entrepreneur, writer, gardener and all-around incredible Dine woman, Kim Smith to understand how violence on the land is violence on our bodies, and that the inverse can also be true. From the All my Relations podcast.
Do.
Resmaa Menakem’s My Grandmother’s Hands
In this groundbreaking work, therapist Resmaa Menakem examines the damage caused by racism in America from the perspective of body-centered psychology. My Grandmother's Hands is a workbook and a call to action for all of us to recognize that racism is not about the head, but about the body, and introduces an alternative view of what we can do to grow beyond our entrenched racialized divide.
