Mindfulness, Compassion and Biofeedback Approaches to Optimal Health

Mindfulness-Based Biofeedback®: A Compassionate Approach to Optimal Health
Join us in a restorative setting, where we will harness the healing power of modern health technology of biofeedback, mindfulness, and compassion-based strategies in an innovative approach to hack resilience in our own lives. We will practice skills to calm negative emotional and physical symptoms, develop a mindful brain, and regulate the effects of stress. Together, we will explore and discover our inner resources to create our B.E.S.T self.  The workshop will help us learn how to incorporate these tools into everyday life so that we are able to continue our self-healing long after the training. The cohesive group experience paves the way for participants to establish a new path to fulfillment in their life from the collective inspiration, connection, and wisdom of the group. Growing into a more mindful way of life is achievable to anyone who recognizes a need for shift in their life and sets an intention to move forward.

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Inclusivity
We strive to create a welcoming and comfortable environment that fosters acceptance of diversity and encourages full participation from a broad-based spectrum of participants while strongly affirming the principle of inclusivity. We encourage participation from those with a disability, people of color, LGBTQ, and other marginalized groups. We would like there to be a space for everyone who wishes to join. We aim to make educational retreats affordable for those with a disability through scholarships. To apply for a scholarship, sponsor a participant or otherwise support a workshop retreat visit Aimeecopelandfoundation.org/workshop-retreats/

Stay tuned more information on our Workshop Retreats, registration and scholarship information.

Mindfulness and Compassion for Self Care Workshop

Workshop on Jekyll Island

  • Combines the wisdom of 2500 year-old Eastern teachings with techniques from health psychology.
  • Shows participants how to practice and acquire skills to calm the mind, regulate affective states and manage fluctuations in mood and anxiety states though unique exercises in biofeedback, meditation, and somatic therapies, while enjoying nourishing experiences in serene surroundings.
  • This workshop is appropriate for anyone seeking improvement in health and wellness who wants to learn to better manage stress and more effectively navigate life’s daily ups and downs.
  • 6 CEs available for professional credit, counselors, and psychologists.

This event has passed. Stay tuned for workshop announcements. For more information on this workshop for American College of Psychotherapy and to register click here

Jekyll Island Mindfulness and Biofeedback in Writing Workshop

Workshop at Jekyll Island 

Combining writing with mindfulness-based meditation and biofeedback skill training can enhance creative and emotional processing and help you deepen relationships to yourself, your clients, and others. This workshop, which will be geared toward individuals with any level of meditation and writing experience, from none to advanced, will provide a framework for adding these tools to your repertoire. It will offer strategies for dealing with stumbling blocks that you and your clients commonly face during the course of writing, and ways to turn these obstacles into teachable moments when they do arise. Connections will be made with various types of writing such as professional blogging or journaling, along with other forms of creative and personal writing. Through experiential learning, group dialogue, and other modalities, participants will learn techniques from positive psychology, mindfulness practices, neuroscience, and creative thinking that they can apply themselves and share with clients. These techniques can help develop skills to calm the mind, develop a mindful brain, regulate mind/body states, develop trust with the subconscious, and explore inner resources for writing.

This event has passed. Stay tuned for workshop announcements.

Menla Mount Retreat Center Announcement

Mind≈Body≈Spirit

 Autumn Retreat For Renewal

Mind, Mood & Happiness: Transforming the Self through Compassion

  • Combines the wisdom of 2500 year-old Eastern teachings with techniques from current health psychology.
  • Shows participants how to practice and acquire skills to calm the mind, regulate affective states and manage fluctuations in mood and anxiety states though unique exercises in biofeedback, meditation, and somatic therapies, while enjoy nourishing experiences in serene surroundings.
  • This workshop is appropriate for anyone seeking improvement in health and wellness who wants to learn to better manage stress and more effectively navigate life’s daily ups and downs.
  • CEs available for professional credit.
  • REGISTER NOW!  THIS EVENT HAS PASSED. Stay tuned for future announcements.

Dr. Urszula Klich specializes in teaching people to apply tools for self-regulation to maximize physical and emotional health through Mindfulness-Based Biofeedback. Living more mindfully is advantageous to anyone who recognizes a need for shift in their life and sets an intention to move forward. With compassion-informed treatment, her philosophy involves fostering one’s healing power to improve physical, emotional, and spiritual well-being.

Dr. Ronald Alexander is Director of the Open Mind Training Institute in Santa Monica, California which offers clinical programs in mindfulness-based psychotherapy, transformational leadership and mindfulness meditation. He has studied and taught meditation and its clinical application for 35 years in the U.S., Canada, Europe, Australia and Asia. He is the author of Wise Mind, Open Mind: Finding Purpose and Meaning in Times of Crisis, Loss and Change>Workshop at Menla Mountain Retreat Center. Reserve early for your preferred accommodations and to schedule optional massage or other treatments at the Mahakuna Spa and Wellness Center.

Secret Admirers

valentines, love, gratitude

Secret Admirers So often the holidays bring up expectations of how things should be. The media does a good job of promoting various images to set the stage, but ultimately we buy in, leading to some sort of collective force our culture gets swept up in. The day seems to bear an invisible stamp of approval if it meets certain criteria and disapproval if it does not. The latter is tied to disappointment. This realization alone can bring up dread in anticipation of what will and won’t happen. Vowing to simplify my already hectic life, I dropped all planning for what was going to be our winter break travels. Instead I focused on the necessary yet mundane tasks of life- like laundry. Thoughts of snow covered ski slopes turned into crisp clean cotton folds. In letting go of pressure to find that creative and festive meal, I was open to take a friend up on her invitation to dinner. In forgoing the last minute second trip to the store in search of valentines cards that had been accidentally tossed out, my daughter learned to make her own. Taking a step back gave me time to appreciate what is truly important to me, people, moments, and adequate space to experience them. In my meditation today, I am cultivating the space that will allow me to take a moment to appreciate all the blessings in my life as well as the numerous and mostly unknown people that played a role in my being able to experience them. On this valentine’s day I like to consider these people my secret admirers and here’s how. If you haven’t done so already I, along with meditation teacher, Sharon Salzberg, challenge you to join us on this 28 day Real Happiness journey. In addition to resources at SharonSalzberg.com check out MyMindfulWayofLife.com and access a free sample meditation to follow along: Click for meditation Come along there is still time to Begin!

Sharon Salzberg: On Bhavana

Dr Urszula Klich with Sharon Salzberg: 28 Day Meditation Challenge

I had attended Krishna Das and Sharon Salzberg’s retreat before and looked forward to their outpouring of insight through storytelling, meditation, and chant. So, the anticipation of this experience brought back all sorts of warm memories of tranquility, insight, rest, and revelation. This time, over a hot cup of Chai tea, Sharon and I would chat for hours late into the night in the simple cottage. We reminisced and spoke about everything from life’s mundane, everyday, joys and hassles to coping with trauma. I was privileged to hear personal stories of some of her early experiences in India while discovering meditation. The practice of Loving- Kindness has been her life’s path.

Click to listen to Sharon Salzberg speak on Bhavana

The Journey to Benin Anew

Sharon Salzbert 28 day meditation challenge
The Journey
by Mary Oliver

One day you finally knew
what you had to do, and began,
though the voices around you
kept shouting
their bad advice—
though the whole house
began to tremble
and you felt the old tug
at your ankles.
“Mend my life!”
each voice cried.
But you didn’t stop.
You knew what you had to do,
though the wind pried
with its stiff fingers
at the very foundations,
though their melancholy
was terrible.
It was already late
enough, and a wild night,
and the road full of fallen
branches and stones.
But little by little,
as you left their voices behind,
the stars began to burn
through the sheets of clouds,
and there was a new voice
which you slowly
recognized as your own,
that kept you company
as you strode deeper and deeper
into the world
determined to do
the only thing you could do—
determined to save
the only life you could save.

The first time you have to do anything, it is new to you. I find that it really doesn’t matter if you have done something like it, or spent time thinking about it. There is just a process you go through when something is new. We may be tempted to label the experience as good or bad, and us as happy or sad. But those labels are often what keeps us stuck. What if we suspended judgment? I invite you to do so as you sit, for the first time, during our 28-day challenge (sign up for free meditations at http://www.sharonsalzberg.com No matter if you have meditated before—whether you’ve done so for years or days, on retreats, or in your room, through centered prayer, yoga, or martial arts. I invite you to meditate today like you are meditating for the first time.

I invite you to hold a curiosity for the meditation, like you might have when entering a foreign land. You might try envisioning the sitting as a great open field which you are entering, or perhaps like a fresh blanket of snow in which you may create your snow angel. Each breath a footprint, each thought a falling snowflake. And in this way, you may leave the time-worn past behind, and begin anew.
-Urszula Klich