The Thai Buddhist meditation master Achan Cha was once asked by a western student if he could sum up his extensive teachings. “Yes,” he replied: “not always so.” The COVID pandemic, climate change, political upheaval, our own aging and personal challenges—do we need more evidence that everything changes?

While we welcome some changes, we often resist others, and suffer as a consequence. Mindfulness, especially when practiced more intensively, can help reveal the fluid nature of both consciousness and the outer world, allowing us to live in greater harmony with reality. Along with compassion practices, it can also help us to settle and soothe ourselves, connect more deeply to nature and one another, and find refuge in the present moment.

This intensive online retreat will offer a deep dive into both exploring uncertainty and impermanence and caring for ourselves, developing the resources we, and our clients need to lovingly embrace this changing world on fire.

While an online retreat may sound like a strange idea, it can be a surprisingly powerful format, allowing not only for deep practice, but also cultivating gratitude and appreciation for the simple gifts of home.

You’ll learn tools to restore balance to your heart and mind using varied meditative postures, breathing practices, exploratory exercises, and both stillness and movement techniques designed to investigate challenging realities and integrate difficult emotions.

We’ll discuss how to use these practices ourselves to be more present and responsive in our personal lives and clinical work, as well as how to share them with our clients to help them work creatively with the difficulties that constant change presents for them.

Let’s gather together and support one another as a community of spiritual friends. In addition to receiving mindfulness teachings, instruction, and guided meditations, this retreat will offer ample opportunities to participate in small group discussions and explore personal practice questions.

Please join us!

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“Dharma and Play"

May 25-29

at the Copper Beech Institute

Hartford, CT



"What we are doing here is so important, we better not take it too seriously."

- Suzuki Roshi

For more information, please contact certificate@meditationandpsychotherapy.org

First Tuesday of each month

8:00am to 9:30am EST

with Douglas Baker, LICSW

The Institute for Meditation and Psychotherapy offers a group for clinicians interested in nourishing their meditation practice and applying mindfulness in therapy. In a supportive and compassionate environment, the group will practice together to begin each meeting, and then explore mindfulness-based approaches to members’ clinical work.

We’ll explore secular Buddhist psychology frameworks and how they can apply to both clinician self-care and self-regulation, as well as mindfulness-based therapy, cognitive therapy, and other frameworks. Obstacles to consistent meditation practice, difficulties leading mindfulness experiences as a therapist, and other clinical challenges will be explored.

Meeting Logistics

The group will meet monthly, the first Tuesday of each month, 8:00am to 9:30am EST.

The group is virtual for the time being and is likely to remain so, as our current group is scattered across the US. The group will be limited to about 15 members initially with the possibility of eventually adding more.

Contact group leader Doug Baker with questions at doug@cambridgemindbody.com

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Episode 73

• Episode 73: Lesley Huff on the Paradox of Mindfulness and Potential Pitfalls of Self-Improvement

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