Monday Night Sits

Many people, especially busy urban dwellers, feel overwhelmed and undernourished. They struggle alone with their challenges, and are only rarely able to discuss – let alone practice – deep matters of belonging and connection and embodiment. The vision of The Consciousness Explorers Club (CEC) is to provide a fun and accessible venue where people can discuss these things as they emerge from perspective-altering spiritual and psychological and social practices. Our members go on mind-body adventures – together and independently – and then share their insights and discoveries and inspiration with the community.

So: we meet Monday nights at Mosaic Yoga Studio at 7:30pm – sharp. Drop in, no advanced booking or RSVP required. Cost is $10-20 sliding scale to cover space, teaching and programming.

For this month’s offerings, see our Events page or our most recent newsletter.

To see past meditations, click here.

The evening rolls out in two parts:

• Part one is 35-minutes of guided sitting meditation practice with time for sharing (from 7:30 – 8:30pm)
• Part two is 35-minutes of interactive practice, play and discussion (8:30 – 9:30pm)

In the first part we experiment with different solo meditations, from restful absorption to creative visualizations, mindfulness-style noting (of various mind-body components), loving-kindness, sound meditations, choiceless awareness and many others. You don’t need to follow any of these techniques if you don’t want to – some people prefer to stay with their tried-and-true regular practice.

In the second part we engage in different interactive practices, from partner noting to mixed-tape music sessions to theatrical craft projects to self-inquiry to Gestalt boundary exercises to any number of other combinations we make up in the CEC laboratory, as per our mandate to use arts and culture to explore issues related to personal growth. These are like playful investigations into different corners of human social reality, which we then discuss with great gusto. The idea is to create a bridge between the cushion and the street, to take our practice insights and actually try to apply them to real life situations.

“A wise teacher, and a wise center, needs to offer a whole range of skillful practices, because people come along at different stages of their inner development, with different temperaments, and with different sets of problems.” -Jack Kornfield

The CEC is passionately nonsectarian – both humanistic and contemplative traditions are represented. That said, we do have an uber-meditation consultant: the Buddhist teacher Shinzen Young.

If you are interested in our schedule of explorations, sign up for our mailing list to receive our monthly newsletter.

Jeff
President, The Consciousness Explorers Club

Contact us: info@consciousnessexplorersclub.com

NOTE: Meditation is a complement but not a substitute for professional psychological and medical health care. There are risks in any psychological or spiritual method. Those risks increase for people who are experiencing significant distress or dysfunction. Please inquire if you are unsure whether or not meditation is appropriate for your situation.