Meditation and Mindfulness for Insight

Course Outline:

For years one of the great questions that people have asked of themselves is: Who Am I?  This course will give you the route taken by the Rinzai Zen Masters throughout the centuries to find an answer to that very question.   Rinzai Zen has long made it a priority to make these sorts of practices available to the lay person and so we continue a time honoured tradition at Serenity Retreat.  Zen doesn’t demand your faith or belief and doesn’t want to control you in any way.  We will simply start to look at the nature of reality and to question who we really are.

Please note:  We ask anyone who comes on this course to be in a position to able to commit to doing 30 minutes of meditation every day for 8 weeks when they get back home - after that.... Well, it'll be up to you but we have a sneaking suspicion you'll quickly see its benefits and reap the rewards for years to come.

What we'll cover:

• The adventure of meditation
• Mindfulness of the breath
• How to build up our 'stress-busters'
• The practice of 'fusho' - your unborn mind
• Mental effects of meditation
• Koans (spiritual questioning)
• Keeping your feet on the ground while allowing your head to be a little in the clouds
• Cultivating your natural courage and intuition
• The Ox-Herding metaphor
• Changing your life

Biography

Kim is the founder of Serenity Retreat and  has been meditating, with various degrees of intensity and intention, for over 15 years.  She has been leading guided meditations at Serenity Retreat since it formed in 2010.  She has  focused her efforts into Zen over the last 12 months and has seen some amazing transformations which led to her decision to study formally and pass on what she is learning to those coming to Serenity Retreat.  She has trained in instructing Mindfulness and Meditation for Wellbeing and Insight with Zen Master Daizan at  Zenways and continues to train with him as a Junior Zen Teacher.