Upcoming Events
Choose Joy Live
Joy is your birthright as a human being.
At difficult moments, however, it can often feel like the last priority. It can be difficult to allow ourselves to be content, to experience pleasure, or to find ease in the middle of challenging times.
And yet, real joy opens the heart. It creates space within us. It gives us a wellspring of resilience with which we can meet the challenges that arise in our life and in the world.
Your Life is A Work of Art: A Daylong Meditation Retreat to Cultivate Mindfulness and Compassion
Your Life is A Work of Art: A Daylong Meditation Retreat
June 9, 2024
10-4 pm
New York, NY
All are welcome! Please let us know if you have any accessibility needs. The building is wheelchair accessible and there will be gender neutral bathrooms available.
"Know that every deed counts, that every word is power...build your life as if it were a work of art."
~ Abraham Joshua Heschel
As we engage in mindfulness practice, or embodied mindful awareness practice, we plant conscious seeds of intention: intentions to pause, intentions to show up with care and integrity, intentions to reflect, intentions to be a more present friend or community member, intentions to stand up for human rights, intentions to [fill-in-the-blank] – and then we strengthen our capacity to attend to those intentions. In other words, we treat our lives as works of art.
And yet it can be hard to carve out space to strengthen this capacity in the midst of a 21st-century world full of distraction and suffering. There may be nothing more important than choosing to slow down, deepen into awareness and compassion, and pay attention to the wisdom of the mind, heart, and body with care. Engaging in this process in a supportive communal context is what retreat is all about.
All of you are warmly welcome whether you've never meditated before or have been meditating for years.
We want to honor the Buddhist roots of this retreat format and the practices we're teaching. Our teaching has also been heavily influenced by other wisdom traditions.
There are 36 spots available for this retreat, so please register as soon as possible if you would like to participate. Important note: If you would like to attend and the pricing is prohibitive for you, please contact us at info@mindfulnessconsulting.net. There is some limited financial assistance available.
Returning to the Source: One day Jewish Meditation Retreat
Returning to the Source: One Day Jewish Meditation Retreat
April 14, 2024
10am-4pm
Private space n Silver Spring, MD
- location given upon registration
Tuition (includes Kosher catered lunch and snacks): $75 (subsidized thanks to a generous donor)
Led by Yael Shy, with guest teacher Rabbi Hillel Broder
How do we stabilize ourselves to respond with care and open-heartedness to life when the ground beneath us may feel unstable? What Jewish wisdom can hold and support us to see clearly, to feel grounded, and to act with love?
This day-long meditation retreat will be a time to slow down, meet our own hearts in the silence, and re-source ourselves to meet our lives - and the world - with compassion.
Whatever your connection/experience with Judaism or meditation, all are warmly welcome and all terms will be explained and translated.
Throughout the retreat, we will alternate between periods of sitting meditation and walking meditation, each offering an opportunity to delve deeper into quiet and stillness. There will also be a time for silent eating meditation during lunch. Amidst these moments of quiet communal practice, your faculty will offer meditation guidance and Jewish wisdom, allowing us to settle, open, and to reconnect with ourselves, each other, and the Divine.
Questions? Please reach out to Sara Solomon, Retreat Manager: ssolomon48[at]gmail.com
Shevet: Jewish Mindfulness Community for Young Adults
You are invited to join a free weekly program launching in February, for folks in their 20s and 30s. Each live Zoom session is guided by a leading guest teacher of Jewish spirituality and mindfulness, and includes an additional 15 minutes of optional Q&A and sharing. Register to receive the Zoom link for our weekly sessions and our Shevet WhatsApp Group! You will also receive a link to our Shevet: Jewish Mindfulness Community YouTube playlist, where recordings of the teachings and practices will be posted every week.
Yael will be leading it on this day, April 8th!
A LIVE Guided Meditation with Yael Shy
Join Yael, and the Institute for Jewish Spirituality, as she leads a live guided meditation, sharing 30 minutes of Jewish mindfulness with people from around the world. Open to all, no experience needed.
FREE Master Class: Easing Anxiety
Anxiety can be all-consuming and crushing – but there is hope. Evidence-based exercises and tools from the world of talk therapy and meditation can provide concrete short and long-term relief from anxiety so that you can live your life with more ease and freedom.
You will leave this workshop with 4 concrete tools to:
Create space between trigger and anxiety
Ease your nervous system before it turns worry into panic
Flip anxiety to explore the yearning underneath
Identify the right therapist to support you in sustainably keeping anxiety at bay
About your Facilitators:
Alyssa Petersel, LMSW is Founder and CEO of MyWellbeing , where she and her team connect people with the *right* therapist or coach for them while supporting mental health providers in building their business and professional community. Named Forbes 30 Under 30 2021, one of Crain's New York Business Notable Women in Healthcare 2019, and one of Built in NYC's 50 Startups to Watch in 2020, Alyssa and her team have supported more than 30 million people through mental health support and content and have been featured in prominent publications like Forbes, Allure, HuffPost, Cosmopolitan, Glamour, and more. Alyssa, also a writer and therapist, released her award-winning book, Somehow I Am Different, in 2016. A native New Yorker, in her off-hours, Alyssa enjoys spending time with her friends and family, social justice, and learning more about others' cultures and world views.
Yael Shy is the CEO of Mindfulness Consulting, LLC, where she teaches and consults on mindfulness for universities, corporations, and private clients around the world. She is the author of the award-winning book, What Now? Meditation for Your Twenties and Beyond (Parallax, 2017), and the founder of Mindful NYU, the largest campus-based mindfulness initiative in the US. Yael has over a decade of teaching and consulting experience and 20 years of meditation practice experience. She has been featured on Good Morning America, CBS, Fox 5 News, and in Time Magazine and the Harvard Business Review. When she is not teaching or practicing, she spends her time in Upstate New York, wrangling her two young kids and frequenting farm stands.
Working with Difficult Emotions to Cope and Thrive
Difficult emotions come up for everyone, and oftentimes we find ourselves trying to avoid, hide or shut them down. Join mindfulness expert Yael Shy and Imam Khalid Latif for a conversation on how we can work with these emotions so that we can cope and thrive.
Online Jewish Meditation Retreat
Spend an afternoon with Yael Shy, an acclaimed meditation teacher and author of an award-winning book about meditation, and Sarah Hurwitz, a former White House speechwriter who had a transformational experience on a meditation retreat and then wrote a book about Judaism.