Description
How are your relationships? With others? With yourself? Are there existing connections you would like to deepen? Or new relationships you want to establish with friends, family members, that person you met online, your coworkers, the neighbor next door?
Whatever you long for in relationship to yourself or others, mindfulness practice has something to offer. With mindfulness, we learn to bring an openhearted spirit of connection into all our relationships, including the challenging ones. When we are true to ourselves and present with another, we recognize that every word we speak and every action we take is part of our interconnectedness. This understanding brings sacredness to each moment.
We grow our capacity to give and receive with an open heart within relationship. Human contact is an opportunity to deepen our sensitivity and understanding. When we feel reactive, judgmental, or simply confused, mindfulness helps us learn to pause. Then we can begin relating with openness, wisdom, compassion, and flexibility.
This Practice Group will be interactive. It will provide opportunities to apply mindfulness to help us ride the ”ten thousand joys and ten thousand sorrows” that arise in any relationship. We will engage in meditation, small group reflections, and share contemplative questions. Home practices will be suggested to increase awareness and connection.
Attending an in-person practice group
- CIMC is a refuge. Out of compassion for those with chemical sensitivities, please avoid using scented products such as lotions, deodorant, after-shave, hair products, perfume, and clothes laundered with scented detergent or dryer sheets—before you come to the Center.
- Please arrive at least 20 minutes early to check in and to find a comfortable place in the meditation hall.
- Please power off your phone, smartwatch, and other electronic devices for the duration of the program.
- Please leave your shoes on the shoe shelves on the first floor and keep your valuables with you.
- Parking at CIMC is limited; we suggest you use public transportation to the Center whenever possible.
- Food and beverages, including water, are not allowed in the meditation halls.
- We strongly recommend you dress in layers since the temperature in the meditation hall varies throughout the day. The hall thermostat is set to a comfortable temperature. Still, please give yourself a range of clothing options, as individual preferences for warmth or coolness differ widely and cannot be accommodated.
- Masks are optional. Some masks are available at the entrance of the Center.
- CIMC provides zafus (round cushions), zabutons (large mats), meditation benches, blankets, and chairs. At the end of each program, we request that you brush off and plump up zabutons and zafus and neatly return them where they belong.
- Practice groups will often have home practices in between sessions.