Teaching Meditation

Marianne Bentzen is a psychotherapist and trainer in neuroaffective development psychology.  She is the author of a number of books including Neuroaffective Meditation: A Practical Guide to Lifelong Brain Development, Emotional Growth, and Healing Trauma.  Marianne talks about her path to becoming a meditation teacher as a psychotherapist and how to connect with heartfulness and playfulness in teaching.  She also defines trauma, explains its parallels with deep meditative states, and points toward how support might begin for practitioners with trauma.  

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Dr. Daniel Ingram is a retired emergency medicine doctor who is the author of two versions of the book Mastering the Core Teachings of the Buddha.   His current projects are the Emergent Phenomenology Research Consortium and a charity called the Emergence Benefactors.  Daniel discusses the way in which he became a dharma teacher, where he actually began by working with the most advanced practitioners, and he discusses a number of areas in which he has "stepped on minefields" and created controversy.  

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Guest Julianna Raye joins Tucker to describe the Unified Mindfulness teacher training system.  This is the second in our series on some of the larger teacher training programs; Vidyamala Burch's episode was the first.

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Vince Horn, meditation teacher and co-founder of Buddhist Geeks, talks with Upali about his path of transmission and training in Dharma Teaching.  He also explores transparency in Dana, Dharma and Sangha in the world of Web 3.0, and the power of social meditative techniques aka Multiplayer Meditation.  

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Shaila Catherine rejoins us on the program.  We discuss several ancient practices, including the asubha practice (sometimes called "foulness of the body") and what the Buddha calls "crushing mind with mind," and how these practices do and don't work for modern students.  Shaila also describes her own process for finding a teacher once one is already a teacher.  She has just written a new book called Beyond Distraction: Five Practical Ways to Focus the Mind, so our conversation veers as well into helping students who are struggling with distracted minds.

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Lopön Chandra Easton is a Westerner who grew up in the Vajrayana Buddhist tradition.  She did nine years of preparatory (ngondro) practices and spent 5 - 10 years training to be a teacher.  She is a lineage holder under Lama Tsultrim  Allione, author of the book Feeding Your Demons.  She is currently on the Tara Mandala Board of Directors and the Tara Mandala Bay Area coordinating committee, through which she teaches and organizes events in the Bay Area.  To learn about Chandra and connect with her, head to chandraeaston.com.

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Henrik Norberg is a celibate, non-monastic teacher of meditation retreats, often in caves in Southeast Arizona.  Hear him and Upali talk about the difference between Eastern and Western conceptualizations of stream entry, Henrik's view that Western Buddhism hyperfocuses on meditation, and what Henrik's own path looks like, which he said it primarily morality practice.

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Australian teacher Kynan Tan, PhD only recently began teaching meditation and was quickly able to leave his regular job and become a fulltime teacher.  In this interview, you'll hear how he prepared himself to teach, how he gets continuing education and supervision as a new teacher, and what steps he thinks allowed him to attract so many students in a short time.  You can learn more about Kynan and contact him at https://kynanmeditation.net/

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Vidyamala Burch is the founder of Breathworks, has a teacher training program with over 600 alumni, has been teaching mindfulness for pain for many decades, and has been voted one of the most influential disabled people in the United Kingdom.  Hear Vidyamala's story of growing up in New Zealand, moving full-time into a retreat center, and starting and steering Breathworks.  She'll discuss how to keep the "heart" in an organization as it grows and how to receive feedback on teachers and colleagues.

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Mukti is a teacher in a nondual lineage.  She received her authorization to teach from Adyashanti, her husband.  You can learn more about Mukti over here.

Mukti’s teachings invite attunement to the act of being and to the heart of awareness. Such attunement can awaken Spirit to reveal Itself as your essential self and as the essence of all of life. This revelation is known as Self-realization, and is the birth of conscious Spirit made manifest, known as embodiment.Her teaching methods for nurturing realization and embodiment are founded in meditation, self-inquiry, and body awareness, and encourage connecting with one’s self as an expression of all of life.

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