ONLINE: Healing the Child Within – Integrating the Healing Journey and Spiritual Path

I am pleased to be returning to New York Insight Meditation Center via ZOOM to present an online retreat: Healing the Child Within – Integrating the Healing Journey and Spiritual Path on October 14th (10am - 1pm ET).

“In each of us, there is a young, suffering child. We have all had times of difficulty as children……The cry we hear from deep in our hearts comes from the wounded child within. …. just as the suffering is present in every cell of our body, so are the seeds of awakened understanding and happiness.”
-from Reconciliation: Healing The Inner Child, by Thich Nhat Hanh (2010)

Through mindfulness and (self) compassion practice and teachings, we can begin to transform our pain and suffering into an integrated journey of both self healing and awakening. We’ll live and explore with a compassionate inquiry the question: How can we be with our wounds living in our body, mind, heart and spirit with an awareness that is merciful, wise, compassionate and trauma sensitive?

Radical acceptance, courage and unconditional presence can guide us home to our true self, our authentic being, our Buddha nature. We can realize the liberating experience of facing and unburdening painful truth and that in the heart of the pain is the healing, and in the suffering is the end of suffering and awakening.

Jack Kornfield in his article “Even the Best Meditators Have Old Wounds to Heal” cautions that “meditation practice doesn’t ‘do it all’…Meditation and spiritual practice can easily be used to suppress and avoid feeling or to escape from difficult areas of our lives.” Mindfulness works only when we are willing to direct attention to every area of our suffering.

“Perhaps all the dragons in our lives are princesses who are only waiting to see us act, just once, with beauty and courage. Perhaps everything that frightens us is, in its deepest essence, something helpless that wants our love.”― Rainer Maria Rilke

Join Dr. Paul Epstein for this half-day retreat to explore this healing power of mindfulness.

This course will be offered via Zoom. All are welcome.

Click here for more information and to register.