September ATS gathering

Welcome ATS Friends, and anyone who might be checking us out.

After a summer break, we will be reconvening in September. However, we will meet on Saturday September 24–the fourth Saturday of September, instead of on our usual third Saturday of the month.

I will lead the group through a 30 minute meditation.  Following that, we will discuss what is in our hearts and souls regarding what we feel spiritually drawn to.  For those who feel some sense of disconnection from Essence/Spirit/Source, I will offer an experiential exercise for reconnecting and others may offer their own ways of doing this.

We will also share ideas for topics and speakers for our upcoming gatherings.

It will be good to be with everyone again!  I hope you can join us.

Deborah

Summer gatherings

Hi Dear Ones.

At our May gathering, Toni Bernhard shard her wonderful wisdom– from a Buddhist perspective — on how to be in a calm, peaceful state when dealing with chronic illness and pain.  And we had a great turnout!  Check out her book, How to Live Well with Chronic Pain and Illness: A Mindful Guide.

On Saturday, June 18, our group will carpool to visit Prasanna at his home in Sonoma.  We are very excited that he has invited us to meet with him! Prasanna is an awake mystic and spiritual teacher who offers up his teachings, and his amazing spiritual paintings, at his home. Prasanna has provided commentary on Ramana Maharshi on documentaries, and has translated a book of Nisgardatta quotes into English.  He has also written his own book, Two:The Love Story of One. I have met with him and he is an incredible teacher who can very directly point us to the truth of who we are. There is limited space for this event so please contact me before June 10 if you are interested in joining us.

On Saturday, July 16, we will meet to discuss the Michael Singer book, The Untethered Soul. As usual, I will first lead the group in a nondual meditation.

Note that there will be no gathering in August.

If you have never attended our gatherings, you are most welcome to check us out.  Please just email me to let me know about your interest.  [email protected]

Many blessings.

 

 

 

April through June gatherings–with author Toni Bernhard presenting in May!

Hi ATS Friends.

For our April 16 gathering, I will be leading the group through another i-Rest session, with the focus on calming anxiety and restless sleep.  It will include bodysensing, breathwork, and working with anxious thoughts or worries.  As always, let me know if you plan to come.

I am excited about our May 21 gathering!  Author and Buddhist meditation teacher Toni Bernhard will discuss her latest book: How to Live Well with Chronic Pain and Illness: A Mindful Guide. Toni lives in Davis and is a nationally acclaimed author. She has had a longterm chronic illness and is a longtime Buddhist practitioner and meditation teacher.  Her blog, “Turning Straw into Gold, is hosted on the Psychology Today website.  Toni wrote two highly acclaimed books previously: How To Be Sick:A Buddhist Inspired Guide for the Chronically Ill and their Caregivers, and How to Wake UpWe are very fortunate to have her living and writing in our local area (Davis).

Toni has spoken to our group in the past, and her personal story as well as how she has used Buddhist teachings to cope with her own long term chronic illness are very inspiring! Please consider inviting family and friends.  I am planning to invite some fellow therapists.

There has been a lot of praise for Toni’s latest book.  For example, Alex Lickerman, who wrote The Undefeated Mind, has written about Toni’s book, “No other author I know has written as accurately and insightfully about living with chronic illness as Toni Bernhard.”  Author Kristen Neff wrote, “This wise and profound book will help transform your experience into one of great compassion, equanimity and joy.”

The vast majority of us will be living with chronic illness and/or pain at some point in our lives. And we all know people who do.  So I hope you’ll come to glean more wisdom about how to be with ourselves and others who struggle with illness and pain.

During our June 18 gathering we will discuss Michael Singer’s book, The Untethered Soul.

At our March meeting, we discussed his book, The Surrender Experiment, which we all enjoyed very much.

Anyone and everyone is welcome to attend our group gatherings, which usually occur the 3rd Saturday of each month.  I hope you can join us!

Namaste,

Deborah

 

 

 

 

February and March Gatherings

Hi Dear ATS Friends and Newcomers.

Come check out our group if you haven’t yet, and bring a friend. The group is very friendly, warm and inviting.

Our gathering for February takes place on Saturday February 13 at our usual time: 10 am to noon.  We will be practicing i-Rest again, this time with the focus on connecting with the Awareness that is behind and within all of our experience. I hope you will join us for this 6th i-Rest session.  No previous i-Rest experience needed.  I-Rest, developed by Dr. Richard Miller, is a very powerful path to help you live a contented life, free of conflict and fear, by opening your mind and body to its inherent ground of health and well-being. I-Rest includes body sensing, breath awareness practices, relaxation yoga (Yoga Nidra) and other practices designed to achieve deep calm and peace quickly and easily, even when faced with difficult or traumatic events. As you learn and practice i-Rest, you will find inner resources for deep peace and rest that can be done almost anywhere and at anytime to gain relief from  anxiety, fear, or other uncomfortable physical and emotional symptoms, and cultivate inner peace and homeostasis.

In March we will meet on Saturday the 19th, for a discussion of Michael Singer’s book, The Surrender Experiment. If you have read even a portion of this wonderful book, I hope you will consider joining us.  We will begin with a surrendering meditation.

 

 

December Gathering and Next Year

Hi Friends.

This month we will be engaging in another i-Rest practice, with the focus on living in abiding joy. We will meet at our usual day and time: Saturday, December 19 from 10 am to noon, at the Davis Holistic Health Center.

Beginning in January, our format will change.  We will continue with the i-Rest sessions but they will take place every other month instead of monthly.  During the alternate months we will go back to our earlier format of group meditation and nondual spiritual exploration and discussion, with periodic guest presenters.

For the January 16 meeting we will enjoy our annual SoulCollage card creations: to usher out what isn’t serving our souls and attract in what does–for the New Year of 2016.  If you have never created SoulCollage Cards, you are in for a treat!  Please check in with me to find out more about them, and visit the website soulcollage.com

Feel free to bring a friend or family member to any of our events.  Just let me know how many will be coming.

Happy Holidays, dear ones!

 

 

Upcoming fall gatherings

Hi ATS Friends.

We are continuing to experience i-Rest practices designed to help you with anxiety, depression, sleep challenges, body pain and discomfort, and most of all–with awakening to your true nature!  The next gathering takes place on Saturday October 17.

I-Rest is amazingly simple but profound. Working with our breath, body sensations, thoughts, beliefs, emotions where we let everything be just as it is and notice what happens is powerful! We get to let ourselves experience moving fully into what is happening and to welcome the opposites of our unpleasant thoughts, emotions and sensations, all the while experiencing the subtle sense of being or presence that is always the background of whatever is arising. We practice and learn to tools to bring balance into our often hectic, unstable lives.  Such a gift!  Come and see what I mean if you have not yet partaken of the i-Rest process. You will likely go home with a smile on your face and feeling relaxed and revived, at the very least.

Deb

 

Our i-Rest Sessions have been popular!

Hi Friends.

Beginning in April I led the ATS group through some I-Rest practices. So far we have completed three months of I-Rest.  A large group of ATS folks came for each monthly i-Rest gathering –April through June. Many people told me they very much enjoyed learning i-Rest practices.  See my earlier blog post in April for details about i-Rest..

We were going to meet in July but my stepmom un-expectantly passed away. August will also be a month off for our group gatherings. Therefore, our next gathering will be on Saturday September 19 at our usual meeting place in Davis. We will continue with the i-Rest practices in September.

You can come join in at any time–each I-Rest session stands on its own. Come experience a practice that can free you up from depression, anxiety, sleep problems, PTSD and can also be a way to connect with your true nature!  Email or call me if you’d like to learn more.

Deb

 

New Exciting Direction for ATS Group beginning on April 18

For my old and new ATS friends:

I want to take you on a journey when we meet together over the course of the next 10-12 months.  I want to present to you experiences of being more in touch with your body, and more in sync with what it wants for you. Your body is very wise.  And, I want to give you exercises that will help you connect with a deep sense of being–of being the truth of what you are.

I will share with you some relaxation yoga and “getting-in-touch” practices that I learned from a training with Dr. Richard Miller, of the Integrative Restoration Institute. Richard developed i-Rest, a very powerful path to help you live a contented life, free of conflict and fear, by opening your mind and body to its inherent ground of health and well-being. I-Rest includes body sensing, breath awareness practices relaxation yoga (Yoga Nidra) and other practices designed to achieve deep calm and peace quickly and easily, even when faced with difficult or traumatic events.

As you learn and practice what I share, you will find inner resources for deep peace and rest that can be done almost anywhere and at anytime to gain relief from  anxiety, fear, or other uncomfortable physical and emotional symptoms, and cultivate inner peace and homeostasis.

As well and most importantly, iRest is a path of awakening.  Richard Miller himself is an awake, nondual teacher.  He has extensively studied all of the great wisdom spiritual teachings from around the world, as well as deeply studying and experiencing many forms of yoga.  He had a number of awakening experiences many years ago and lives as a shining light of awakeness for so many.  He is helping military personnel all over the world to awaken to their true nature through his iRest trainings, which are now taught at dozens of military bases and VA Centers.

I had the pleasure of partaking in a i-Rest teacher training with him recently and I am now an iRest “teacher in training,” and will be teaching his powerful full-body awakening process to you! I am working toward becoming a certified i-Rest teacher.

This all begins on Saturday, April 18. Each month I will build on what I shared previously.

If you miss any sessions, you can still come, partake of the process, and not be lost. Each month the exercises we do will stand on their own, but together, they will provide you with a foundation that –if practiced  ongoingly– will help you eliminate stress, assist you with sleep challenges, provide relief from interpersonal problems, and neutralize anxiety, fear, anger and depression.

At its deepest level, iRest helps you enter a deep meditative state and go beyond self-limiting beliefs to reveal your true nature as awareness.  In fact, this process of connecting with awareness is woven in throughout the i-Rest course that I will offer.

I am very excited to offer this and I hope you will come try it out.

March 28 ATS gathering and more

We had a lively discussion during our Feb. 21 gathering on the question “Do things happened for a reason?” There was no conclusion by all who gathered but we were able to share amazing stories of synchronicities in our lives that seem to have spiritual meaning for us and to provide a sense of forward movement and being “in the flow.”  And yet, most of us have tasted the sense of being “awareness” and therefore the experience that there is only this moment.  We could “grok” that if we are awareness itself, then meaning-making is just of the mind and ultimately is only a way to keep us in our thoughts and thus in our sense of being a separate self. Yet, we can be the wave and the ocean–the wave can have its stories and its dreams but some part of it knows it is a manifestation of the ocean, which exists as it is, without a need for meaning.

Our next gathering, scheduled for Saturday March 28 (not our usual third Saturday), will focus on the writings of Joan Tollifson.  People who plan to attend are encouraged to check out Joan’s Facebook page and to read some or all of her book, Nothing to Grasp. Her writings about nondual awareness/awakeness are clear, sharp, and very accessible. Come join us!

February 21 ATS Gathering

For our next regular monthly gathering in Davis, from 10-12, we will discuss the question, “Is there a reason or a purpose for everything?” We are going to try something new, and see how it goes.  Everyone who plans to attend will give this question some thought and feel into it and write about it. See if you can access your heart wisdom or intuition in answering this question for yourself. Then we will each look at a nondual teaching that relates to this question and bring it in to share. I will lead us in a meditation and I will  offer something experiential  that will relate to this question. (If you do not find a teaching that relates to the question, come anyway.) As always, please email me if you plan to attend.  [email protected]