Jonathan Foust is a guiding teacher for the Insight Meditation Community of Washington, co-founder of the Meditation Teacher Training Institute and a senior teacher and former president of Kripalu Center. He has been leading retreats and training teachers for more than 25 years. Jonathan is the creator of the “Year of Living Mindfully” program and teaches regularly in the DC metro area. You can listen to his talks and guided meditations through his podcast or online.
This talk explores how you can naturally integrate the paradox of the ‘doing’ and ’surrender’ practices in meditation.
You’ll learn how concentration practice dramatically cultivates not only your capacity to observe all that changes without judgement, but also how you can intimately investigate challenges that arise and ultimately, how to surrender into effortless awareness.
This talk explores the importance of finding a form of livelihood that truly resonates for you.
You’ll learn how Johnny Paycheck’s classic country song “Take This Job and Shove It” ties into Buddhist psychology, a model for changing your relationship to work and what can happen when you substitute the word ‘work’ with the word ‘service.’
This talk explores guidelines for wise and skillful speech.
You’ll learn why not to use auto-correct on your phone, the impact and criteria for wise speech, questions you can ask yourself before speaking, a powerful communication model and what’s possible when you pay attention to the relationship between your mind and what you say outloud.
This talk explores the importance of clear and conscious intention.
You’ll learn about the difference between a goal and an intention, how intention is related to karma, three main intentions you might keep in mind and how the spirit of an intention is to bring you back to the here and now.
This talk explores how you can increase your capacity for self-compassion.
You’ll learn what gets in the way of coming home to yourself, a comparison of strategies, techniques for accessing self-compassion as well as what it means to embrace the awakening of heart and mind. (Apologies to Lou Reed.)
From the afternoon Metta meditation at the 2015 IMCW Fall Retreat. Brief instructions and orientation and three guided meditations on shifting your relationship with pain.
You’ll explore the zones of pleasant, unpleasant and neutral sensation, a loving kindness body scan and using mindful breath, offering compassion to your body.
The first evening talk of the 2015 IMCW Fall Retreat, Jonathan talks about the process of settling in and working with the natural challenges that arise in cultivating non-judging awareness.
