Meditation with Brian M.

Clarity of techniques and principles, varieties of practices, depth of experiences, integration with daily life-- I find these to be lacking in a lot of popular teachings on mindfulness meditation, and I hope to do my part to remedy that. Meditation is about a lot more than just following your breath and getting relaxed. It's a powerful tool for exploring and unlocking the potentials of this wonderful human consciousness we are born with. My formal background is in studying consciousness through psychology and neuroscience research, but over the past 8 or so years I've really gravitated towards exploring and engaging with consciousness directly through spiritual practices. I've grown to see how much potential there is for engaging fully with the richness of life, transforming your relationship with difficult experiences in a way that can be healing, feeling connected to deep sources of well-being that are always with you, and flourishing in your experience of love and compassion. My primary meditation teacher has been Shinzen Young. I've been studying and applying his teachings for the last 7 years and have attended 8 cumulative weeks at his meditation retreats. Shinzen has decades of experience as a meditator and teacher, with heavy influences from Zen and Theravada Buddhism. Recently he's developed a synthetic framework for understanding and guiding spiritual practice which he calls "Unified Mindfulness," and this system is largely what I'll be teaching.