Shell Fischer, founder and guiding teacher of Mindful Shenandoah (www.mindfulvalley.com) offers more than 25 years of mindfulness practice and study.
As a full teacher with IMCW, her main focus is on metta (loving-kindness) practice. Her hope is to guide her students in nurturing even more kindness and compassion for themselves -- and for all the situations they find themselves in throughout their lives -- through the practice of meditation and mindfulness.
Prior to teaching, Shell wrote about mindfulness and yoga for national magazines. She’s a 1993 graduate of Naropa University (a Shambhala Buddhist-based university in Boulder, CO), and trained in the two-year Meditation Teacher Training Institute of Washington, D.C. with Tara Brach, Jonathan Foust, Hugh Byrne and Pat Coffey. She’s also a graduate of the Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction teacher-training program led by Jon Kabat-Zinn (founder of MBSR and the Stress Clinic at the University of Massachusetts Medical Center), and an educational partner with both Valley Health (a regional 8-hospital system) and the Foundation of the State Arboretum of Virginia.
As the great Zen master Thich Nhat Hahn tells us, “Suffering is not enough.” In order for us to not be pulled under by the great forces of greed, hatred, and delusion in our world, the teachings urge us to continually and consciously nurture the heart and mind states of kindness, compassion, peace, and joy (mudita), which includes a deep wish or aspiration for all beings to be happy and to know the causes of happiness – including ourselves. During this talk, Shell dives into the rich practice of Mudita, and shows us how it can help to more fully open and expand our hearts, and discover more joy in our lives.
"If you don't become the ocean, you will be seasick every day." ~ Leonard Cohen -
During this talk, Shell will be offering a variety of different mindfulness methods we can use to approach and re-discover the calm, peace, and ease of equanimity -- or balanced awareness -- in the face of what are often called the 10,000 joys and 10,000 sorrows that make up all the days and moments of our lives.
Shell will explore how, through our meditation practice, we can learn to accept and welcome each moment -- life as it IS -- with as much peace, compassion, and kindness as we can muster, without falling into despair and resignation, and without making anything wrong -- especially ourselves.
In the Buddhist teachings, these four practices–loving kindness, compassion, sympathetic joy, and equanimity–are considered the highest qualities of heart and emotional wellbeing.
In the Buddhist teachings, these four practices–loving kindness, compassion, sympathetic joy, and equanimity–are considered the highest qualities of heart and emotional wellbeing.
In the Buddhist teachings, these four practices–loving kindness, compassion, sympathetic joy, and equanimity–are considered the highest qualities of heart and emotional wellbeing.
