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Practicing with the Heart -
Opening freedom within Emotions and Mindstates

Course dates: Five sessions on Mondays from the 28th of April till the 26th of May, 2025

Course meeting time: 6.00 - 8.00PM UK (UTC+0)    //    20:00 - 22.00 Helsinki (UTC+2)

Cost: Offered on a dana basis

Registration: Click here to register.

Emotions and mindstates fabricate and colour all experiences and perceptions of ourselves, others and the world, as well as potentially influencing many of our actions and decisions in life. They are natural aspects of our being, and as such form an important part of our meditative exploration. As meditators, we are given a particular opportunity to draw close to our inner life while being supported by skillful and kind ways of looking.

 

Over this five week course we will cultivate the skill of recognising emotions, meeting and holding them skilfully, as well as learning to see their fabricated and empty nature. These practices will support our hearts’ capacities to hold the difficult, as well as developing a delicacy of attention in meeting the lovely. Through our practice we can begin to explore what freedom can mean in relation to emotions and mindstates.

 

Each week’s teaching session will consist of meditation practice, some teaching on the themes of the course, a second longer practice, as well as some time for questions, comments and sharing. We will also offer an optional mid-week guided meditation on Thursday evenings (6.45-7.30 pm UK time), which will also be recorded and made available to course participants.

 

Some of the topics/practices this course will explore are:

- Becoming sensitive to the ways different emotions and mind states manifest as felt experience (working with the emotional/energy body)

- Exploring the connection between thoughts and emotional experience.

- Developing modes of attention that simplify and clarify emotional experience.

- Developing resources that allow for skill with challenging emotions.

- Seeing how emotions and mindstates colour and fabricate our experiences

- Understanding the fabricated and empty nature of emotions and mindstates

 

Who is this course for?

Practicing with one’s inner life is an important area of development for all kinds of meditators, regardless of your current practice focus.  We ask that those who take the course will have a working familiarity with mindfulness or insight meditation, and a regular meditation practice.

 

This course will approach working with emotions and mindstates from a dharma / meditator’s perspective, and so it’s important that you feel comfortable and secure in exploring your emotional experience through meditative practice at this point in time. 
 

Teachers:

Juha Penttilä has been practicing meditation since 2002. He has spent extended periods of time on retreats and in monasteries in Asia and Europe and is one of the founding members of Nirodha, the Finnish Insight Meditation practice community. Juha completed his Insight Meditation teacher training in 2020. In addition to exploring meditation, Juha’s teaching is influenced by the current climate crisis and engaged perspectives into the Dharma.


Susy Keely has practiced Buddhist meditation since 2001, and began practicing insight meditation five years later.  In 2015 she began studying and training with Rob Burbea, and completed her teacher-training with him in 2020.  She teaches meditation in Los Angeles, California, and is an artist and a parent.  She is passionate about exploring the intersection between creative energies and contemplative practice, and supporting meditators wishing to pursue deep practice in the midst of daily life.

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