Unified Mindfulness Fundamentals 8-Week Course

Unified Mindfulness Fundamentals 8-Week Course

An 8 week course and fundraiser for the Consciousness Explorers Club (CEC) and Anishnawbe Health Toronto.

SOLD OUT! Please contact consciousnessexplorersclub@gmail.com to be added to the waiting list.

If you’ve been to a few CEC Monday night meditations, you’ve likely heard the name Shinzen Young at some point. Shinzen has been an influential teacher to many in the CEC community. Like the CEC, Shinzen’s approach to practice is explicitly pluralistic. In fact, his framework is designed to organize and elucidate literally all contemplative practices (as he would say, ‘eastern, western, ancient, modern’). The name of this taxonomy of techniques is Unified Mindfulness, and the CEC is excited to announce our first 8-week UM course.

Over the 8 weeks we’ll cover 6 foundational UM techniques while exploring their relationship to the big picture of why we practice, how mindfulness skills can be developed and applied in daily life, and how challenging life situations can become opportunities to deepen our practice.

If you already have an established meditation practice, this course can help you refresh and deepen it by looking at it though a different ‘lens’ and seeing how it relates to the broader spectrum of meditation techniques. If you are new to meditation, this course will give you a foundation of new technique options that you will be able to use, on and off the cushion, for life.

The 8-Week Unified Mindfulness Fundamentals will be led by fellow Consciousness Explorer, Kevin Lacroix. In addition to being long-time CEC facilitator, Kevin is a Unified Mindfulness level 2 coach who has worked extensively with Shinzen Young over the past 10 years (on residential retreat, one-on-one, and will be supporting Shinzen as the assistant teacher for the upcoming week-long retreat in March), and is also is a regular coach in the UM Level 2 teacher training program.

Kevin is volunteering this course as a fund-raiser. 100% of the money collected from the admission fees will be split between the CEC and Anishnawbe Health Toronto.

Fees - As is the CEC’s MO, the fees are flexible, depending on your financial situation.

General Admission: $150

Subsidized Admission: $80 for those who face financial barriers

Pay What You Can: If the financial hurdle is still too high, we get it! We’d still like to make the course available to you, so we’re reserving a few PWYC spots for those who couldn’t take part otherwise.

Pay-it-forward: $240 (or as much as you like) If you can afford to, in addition to helping Anishnawbe Health Toronto, your generous supplemental donation will subsidize the course for someone facing more challenging financial circumstances.

Schedule

Tuesday evenings, 8:00 - 9:30PM EDT, via Zoom, Feb 16th - April 13th (March 23rd excluded). Zoom link will be provided upon registration.

Admission

Admission will be capped at 16 people so that, within the 90 minute sessions, there is enough time for everyone to ask questions, share reports and get support.

We ask that, if you apply to take the course, you can commit to missing no more than 2 of the 8 sessions, to be able to take full advantage of how the individual sessions work together as a whole. If you don’t think you can make at least 6 of the sessions, then we recommend waiting for the course to be offered again (which is likely, either within the CEC or by Kevin, independently).