The Practice of Presence: A 4-Part Meditation Workshop Series

Join us for a transformative 4-part meditation workshop series. In a world that pulls our attention in countless directions, true clarity and presence becomes rare, and inner spaciousness, even rarer. This workshop series invites you to slow down, re-center, and expand your capacity for presence. Through breath-based practices, a variety of meditations, imaginal practice and subtle body work, we will learn to steady the mind, calm the nervous system, and gently widen our perception of experience.

Rather than striving to “clear the mind,” we’ll explore how to drop into clarity, presence, and expansiveness not as a mental effort, but as a natural quality that arises from embodied stillness and openness.

Each workshop explores a unique dimension of our mind that can be cultivated through a meditation practice, gently guiding participants from focused attention toward opening up to the presence and sacred in everyday life. Each session consists of a series of breathwork, internal energy cultivation practices, work with imaginal and meditation practices designed to cultivate clarity, vitality, and expansiveness of the mind. Instructions for each meditation practice will be provided, following by the sit. The workshops will conclude with a Q&A covering any topics related to practice, instructions, wisdom traditions, and more.

October 4th ~ Workshop 1: Anchoring the Mind: Focused Attention Meditation

Theme: Cultivating concentration and stability of the mind

Practices: Breath awareness, breath-based counting, walking mediation, and candle/inner image gazing

Focus: Single-pointedness, strengthening mental clarity, building foundational presence

Description: In this foundational session, we explore practices that stabilize the mind and center attention. Through breath awareness, breath-based counting, and focused gazing meditation practices, we train our mind to direct and sustain attention on a specific object and cultivate steady presence. This workshop is ideal for those seeking clarity, grounding, and an anchor in a fast-moving world. When the mind learns to rest, the presence begins to open

Theme: Recognizing and dropping into spacious awareness and presence

Practices: Open awareness meditation with and without object (Vipassana), Zen style open awareness meditation

Focus: Letting go of effort, cultivating fluid awareness, building spaciousness and clarity of mind

Description: This session invites participants to soften effort and open into the natural flow of awareness. Through open awareness and choiceless awareness, we cultivate the capacity to rest in what is without grasping or resisting opening to the natural qualities of our minds. This style of meditation expands perception, cultivates spaciousness of the mind, and reveals the freedom that comes with presence

Theme: Cultivating compassion, loving kindness, and inner love

Practices: Loving-kindness (metta), heart-centered sensations, feeling of Self in all beings

Focus: Connecting to the heart’s intelligence, softening self-judgment, opening to intimacy with life

Description: In this workshop, we focus on reconnecting with the heart’s innate qualities of love, tenderness, warmth, and compassion. Through metta (loving-kindness),  heart-centered sensations practice, and gentle inquiry, we awaken the emotional and energetic intelligence of the heart. This workshop helps soften the inner critic, nurture tenderness and relatedness in relationship to others, and restore intimacy with life itself

Theme: Meditation in daily life activities, the Imaginal Realm, and internal energy cultivation.

Practices: Energy cultivation (breath & subtle body), micro-meditations, embedded meditation in daily activities, imaginal practice.

Focus: Making daily life the practice; feeling and cultivating subtle energy body;  attuning to the sacred in ordinary moments.

Description: In this session, we explore how to carry meditative presence into daily life - not as a technique, but as a way of being. We engage with breath-based energy cultivation, subtle body awareness, and moment-to-moment presence practices that root us in presence.

In addition, practitioners will be introduced to imaginal practice as a doorway to presence and mystery of life - using our felt inner images to deepen connection with inner wisdom, innate qualities of presence and the unseen. Together, we learn to experience the sacred not as something separate, but as something quietly pulsing through us in life's ordinary moments

Join us for one or all!

Also check out other Health & Wellness events in Capitola, Workshops in Capitola.