10 video lessons, each 20-50 minutes in length

Downloadable Transcripts and MP3s

Selected readings from The Zen of You and Me by Diane Musho Hamilton

Practice Assignments 

Bonus #1

Recordings of Two Q&A Sessions with Pema Chödrön

Recordings of two Question & Answer sessions with Pema Chödrön from the interactive version of this online course.

Bonus #2

Shamatha Meditation Instructional Video with Hope Martin

A video instruction on the basic practice of shamatha, or calm abiding meditation. The instructor, Hope Martin, is an experienced meditation practitioner in the Shambhala tradition as well as a teacher of the Alexander Technique—a methodology for helping find greater ease in our bodies. 

Bonus #4

This Moment Is the Perfect Teacher

Ten Buddhist Teachings on Cultivating Inner Strength and Compassion  (Regular Price: $22.95)

Lojong is a powerful Tibetan Buddhist practice created especially for training the mind to work with the challenges of everyday living. It teaches our hearts to soften, reframes our attitude toward difficulty, and allows us to discover a wellspring of inner strength. In this four-hour recorded retreat, Pema Chödrön introduces the lojong teachings and explains how we can apply them to any situation in our life—because, as Pema says, “every moment is an opportunity for awakening.” In addition, Pema also leads a guided tonglen meditation, a practice aimed at developing courage and cultivating compassion for ourselves and others.

Lesson 1: Unity Consciousness and Awareness of Diversity

Our true home is our spiritual nature, a place of safety and ultimate equality. From this original source, we have so much in common. At the same time, our capacity to acknowledge our differences, to be willing to explore them, and to include diversity of opinions and styles within our relationships and communities is a sign of health and vitality. In this lesson, we’ll explore our own embodied experiences of sameness and difference.

Watch

10 video lessons  by Diane Musho Hamilton, each 20 to 50 minutes in length, including guided meditation and practices with transcripts and audio versions available

Read

Downloadable transcripts of all video sessions

Selected readings from The Zen of You and Me by Diane Musho Hamilton

Practice

Practice assignments related to each lesson’s teachings help you integrate the course material into your own life and experiences

Unlimited Access

Unlimited access on your computer, mobile device, or tablet—learn at your own pace wherever and whenever works best for you

Lesson 2: Sameness and Difference

Studies in human development reveal that our focus on our similarities or differences changes throughout the course of our lives. In other words, we are caught in the tension between the comfort of the status quo and the exciting encounter with difference. In this lesson, we’ll explore this contrast, which is a constant on the path toward greater awareness and growth.

Lesson 3: Mindfulness Practice: Engaging Safety and Excitement

The practice of mindfulness improves our concentration and enables us to be more open and mentally flexible. We learn to stay present to difficult emotions and feeling states, and over time, having cultivated nonjudgmental awareness, we can simply observe our interior landscape without incessant self-criticism. In this lesson, we’ll explore ways in which we can begin to develop this ability to approach situations in our life with openness and clarity.

Lesson 4: How the Ego Divides Us

We are groomed by evolution to focus on protecting ourselves whenever we sense a threat to our well-being. In our modern context, we may not be physically threatened. But in our highly social and emotionally complex world, threats to our ego or self-concept can feel every bit as perilous. Our strategies for self-protection range from avoidance to fighting to sarcastic humor to drug addiction. In this lesson, we’ll explore how we can cultivate greater openness and flexibility in the face of intense feelings of threat.

Lesson 5: Listening as a Unity Skill

Listening is the powerful, soothing agent of all communication. Listening is the best tool there is to lower anxiety, diminish division, and open into sameness, into togetherness. Listening will help almost anyone who is triggered to calm down. In this lesson, we’ll learn how to improve our listening skills.

Lesson 6: Expressing Our Uniqueness

If listening opens up the wide territory of sameness, expressing difference catalyzes conversations. Self-expression stimulates and energizes. Our differences distinguish us from everything else, giving shape to our uniqueness and setting us apart. In this lesson, we’ll learn ways we can become more skilled at honest, open verbal expression and sharing our unique perspective.

Express Yourself

Discover how to appreciate your own uniqueness and bring it forth more actively

Listen Effectively

Learn key skills for helping people feel heard when they talk to you

Recognize Patterns

Explore how your communication patterns are affected by your experience of unity and diversity

Be Self Aware

Cultivate greater self-awareness—a necessity for personal growth

Understand Emotions

Engage the wisdom and communicative power of emotional states

Unlock Your Power

Learn how you are responsible for creating the dynamic in your relationships

Open Presence Instructional Video with Rebecca Eldridge

Bonus #3

A video instruction on open presence meditation, taught by Rebecca Eldridge. This practice helps you connect with reality as it is, without altering it. Rebecca is an experienced meditation practitioner in the Shambhala tradition.

Lesson 7: Feelings as a Form of Diversity

Every emotion is a state of consciousness, an experience composed of thought, mood, and bodily sensations. We refer to them as “states” because they come and go. They are not permanent, but rather pass through the body and awareness like a blustery storm in winter or a light breeze on a spring day. The problem with our emotions is that we often don’t relate to them as states. We hold onto them if they feel good, or we chase them away if they feel painful. In this lesson, we’ll learn some tools for both harnessing the intelligence of our emotions and releasing them when they no longer serve us.

Lesson 8: Becoming Wholehearted

Compassion is a natural outcome of waking up. As our awareness opens to include more, our heart naturally expands. We feel deeply for the challenges and suffering of others—those who are like us and those who are different than we are. In this lesson, we’ll learn how we can be present to the suffering of others without undue stress or anxiety coursing through our system.

Lesson 9: You and Me, Us and Them

Our desire to understand different perspectives, to listen, to question, and to doubt ourselves varies at different levels of adult development. As our ability to take perspectives changes, our view of the world changes, and so does our way of communicating about it. Using an adult developmental framework to look at differences can show us real possibilities, and also limits, in relationships. In this lesson, we’ll learn about this framework and consider how it affects the way we interact with others.

Lesson 10: Endless Practice

Meditation takes practice. Relationships take practice. Whenever we are consciously aware of whatever we are doing right now, we are practicing. When we lose here-and-now awareness, we are practicing getting lost and then regrouping. But as the old adages say, you cannot get off the path. In this final lesson, we’ll contemplate what our path of practice is as we conclude the course.

Sashi

Gabe

Maria

Dean