Instinct and Intuition Class
Currently I am teaching on Wednesday evenings at the Continuum Studio in Santa Monica and also doing phone and email classes and sessions. That is, you can follow along with the class by doing your meditations at home, and getting instruction from me on the phone and by email.
The psychedelic quality of normal sensory perception
We each have 21 or so distinct senses – the usual five, plus balance, and joint position, oxygen senses, motion senses, and more. In class, I invite you to activate all these senses, including the ones you do not habitually use. The senses are usually grateful to be employed, and ordinary reality takes on a shimmering, psychedelic richness, because instead of just paying attention to the chatter in your head, you have a rich multimedia journey going on inside you.
When we pay attention to the sensory detail of being incarnate in human bodies, experience becomes rich with a normal psychedelic quality, the kind that kids and animals inhabit, and that we usually lose as adults. The literal meaning of the word is psyche = mind, delos = visible, clear. Delos is an interesting root word, it shows up in Tuesday, divine, jovial, Jupiter, diary, journey and psychedelic. It is related to the Sanskrit deva, "shining one."
Much of what we do in class is pure experience. We spend most of our time immersed in the subtle sensory world of internal seeing, internal feeling, hearing, touching.
The healthiness of the human instincts
The scientific research done at Harvard and other universities points to meditation as a built-in instinct, an innate ability of the human body. I say this because you can have a subject come into a lab, one who has never meditated before, give them five minutes of instruction, and then measure the changes as they go into meditation.
I used to teach meditation as a sacred process. I started working with meditation as an instinctive process – related to our homing and hunting instincts. This instinctive approach is extremely useful in everyday life, because it helps you to get what you need out of meditation – healing, renewal, inspiration, adaptability, fresh perception and fresh thinking.
Since I have been teaching meditation for 38 years now, it is really enjoyable for me to track you individually and help you find the techniques that work with your nature. I don't have to just teach one technique and you can like it or lump it, or blame yourself if it doesn't work for you.
What is a daily practice?
A daily practice is that which makes you thrive. It is a time to set aside to do those movement, meditation and awareness practices that tune you up to function at your best. What works is different for everyone, and it can be quite challenging to discover what it is for you.
Decades of scientific research on daily meditation indicate that it can prevent or reduce the effects of stress-related illness. This makes sense because meditation is such a powerful way for the body to un-stress itself.
As always, the theme is discovering what works for you. The class is a supportive environment for you to bring your desires, your cravings for respite and inner peace and access to your own energy and inspiration. We work together to help you find daily practices of movement, prayer, and meditation so that you can rejuvenate and move forward.
Class Details
I prefer that you pay for the entire month, at the beginning of the month, or pay for the whole series. It just makes my life simpler. If you can come only certain evenings, that can be fine as long as you let me know.
Driving Directions
. . . to the Continuum Studio in Santa Monica. To get there, you have to be driving West on Olympic, toward the ocean. Go past 20th Street, then turn right on 18th, go half a block, and park on the street or in the 18th Street Art Center parking lot. The Art Center is right across the street from the Crossroads School gymnasium building.