This program will be held online via Zoom. All registrants will receive the link to join the program in their Order Confirmation email. Times are ET.
Tune in to your body. Feel the firmness of the earth with your feet, sense the wetness of a drink of water as it glides down your throat, look up and absorb the warmth of the sun, experience the tingle of a cool breeze, and open to spaciousness all around you. Join us on a journey of exploring the five elements of Earth, Water, Fire, Air, and Space through a Buddhist lens.
A growing body of research is now showing that old growth forests, fungi, microbes, and most matter – including all of us – are connected. Yet the Buddha’s teachings have offered this perspective for thousands of years. Practicing with the five elements helps us to reconnect on a deeper level to this truth. Challenging the notion of individualism and a siloed self, we begin to realize, to experience, that we are a part of a complex relational network.
Over the course of four weeks together, we will explore the five elements rooted in the teachings of the first foundation of mindfulness, growing our awareness of the body. We will aspire to increase our connection to nature and the environment, and bring humility, curiosity, and compassion to our place in the web of things, loosening our grip on a separate self.
This program is suitable for everyone, beginners, and experienced practitioners alike. Our time together will include Dharma reflections, meditation instructions, small group inquiry, poetry, journaling at home, and ample opportunity for Q&A. Everyone is welcome.
Full and partial scholarships are available up to 72 hours before the start of the program.
Zeenat Potia teaches meditation in Buddhist and secular spaces. She has over 15 years of training, with extensive silent retreat experience in the early Buddhist tradition and advanced trauma-sensitive mindfulness. Zeenat incorporates her life experience — as a South Asian immigrant, as a mother, and as a strategic communications professional in higher education, non-profit, and publishing for over 20 years — into her teaching.
Her current work integrates mindfulness, 12-step recovery, and Internal Family Systems as a way to heal intergenerational trauma and transform structures of internal and external oppression. She is committed to sharing mindfulness with underserved and underrepresented populations. Zeenat has taught at the Cambridge Insight Meditation Center since 2014, as well as teaching meditation in organizations and universities throughout the Boston area. Learn more at: zeenatpotia.com
(Closed Captions (CC) for CIMC Programs are generated through “livestreaming” via Rev.com. CIMC programs are not livestreamed to any other platform for any other use.)