The Holistic Life Foundation is a Baltimore-based 501(c) (3) nonprofit organization committed to nurturing the wellness of children and adults in underserved communities. Through a comprehensive approach which helps children develop their inner lives through yoga, mindfulness, and self-care HLF demonstrates a deep commitment to learning, community, and stewardship of the environment. HLF is also committed to developing high-quality evidence-based programs and curriculum to improve community well...
Apr 23, 2018•49 min
How do we blend contemplative practice with service in the world? How can we extend ourselves, offer ourselves to that world in an authentic way? One where we're not burning out at the same time? How can we support people both at the peak of tragedy, getting over the most difficult parts, as well as the lasting repercussions? We meet people there, with them, where they are, with an open heart, acknowledging with them moment by moment by moment. I feel that's where our contemplative practices are...
Apr 16, 2018•31 min
T.I.P.I., the French acronym for “Technique d’Identification des Peurs Inconscientes,” or "Technique for the Sensory Identification of Unconscious Fears" in English, resets our emotional response to trauma naturally, using the body’s sensory memory to reconnect with the trauma's origin. Joey Marti discusses TiPi and how he uses it, and how Naropa's MA programs in transpersonal psychology helped him. A Colorado transplant who moved here to attend Naropa, Joey received his Bachelor’s Degree in 201...
Apr 09, 2018•32 min
Improvisation is a wonderful contemplative practice–a mindfulness practice–a discipline that has to do with paying attention in a very precise way to what's going on in the present moment. It's about showing up–being open to whatever is happening musically, to whatever my colleagues are playing, or to the environment of the room–the acoustics, the audience, that sort of thing–and really drawing inspiration from that. Paying attention to all of that requires one hundred percent concentration. Mus...
Apr 02, 2018•29 min
Radical dharma and mindfulness - everybody is going to get a little taste of some meditation, and its great - whatever door you use to enter into practice is great. But - the conflation of mindfulness with a depthful practice that includes an ethic view is a problem. When mindfulness becomes yet another thing that we can modify, and we think is something that is there so that we can consume it, then it’s actually serving our ego. It's serving our ideas of who we are and who we would like to be s...
Mar 26, 2018•35 min
I remember it was after the first year I came back to Naropa–I was actually upset with my professors. I was like, "What did you all do? Whatever you offered me, I see the world in a new way now!" I was upset because I saw the world in its fullness. There were things I saw then–when I came to Naropa I was all sunshine and rainbows. It was all "...the world is beautiful and the world is great, and I am going to study Buddhism, and I'm going to be one!" It was an 'absolute' kind of thinking. But Na...
Mar 20, 2018•34 min
"Dharma isn't sexy, or glamorous for me..., it’s just work. It's discipline and work, and I do it because the fruit is spaciousness; this openness. Where I can just be with my life. That spaciousness is where liberation actually happens. Over the years of practice, you realize you've become a different person. You begin to trust yourself more because you're always in tune with your experiences...and that is what I love. It just becomes very ordinary." - Lama Rod Owens Special Guest: Lama Rod Owe...
Mar 13, 2018•37 min
When people hear the words "gross national happiness," they tend to envision a sort of idealization of what's really going on in Bhutan, the country that originated the concept. I watch our students while we're in Bhutan sometimes idealize things, and then hit a sort of crash as they see the reality, and then come out with a really deep sense of excitement and amazement about what's actually happening. We'd like to take that idealization off its pedestal altogether. Special Guest: Anne Parker. S...
Mar 07, 2018•27 min
Think of the martial art behind the idea of "ninja," and the associations that pop culturally in all our heads when we hear that. Ninja art is still around, and it really is an art. Ninja literally means "persevering person;" Someone who faces life and is able to win - not just for themselves, but for everybody. As indigenous peoples, we've had to learn how to keep going in the face of enormous, overwhelming adversity. also, the spiritual lineage of ninjitsu is Buddhism, and a whole lot of that ...
Feb 27, 2018•30 min
A person can look far less healthy than they actually are in moments of extraordinary stress. When we put ourselves in another person's shoes and we have some sense of the weight and the burdens and the stresses and the different directions they're being pulled in, it makes more sense, but we all seem to fall away from remembering that. When someone is fed, their kids are ok, they're housed, and they have what they need - that in itself makes a person infinitely more healthy. We teach a lot abou...
Feb 20, 2018•29 min
What would you see if you were looking at the world from the point of view of a person in a wheelchair? Or if you're mobility impaired, or blind, or deaf? As architects, we need to learn to look at what kind of physical environment we are creating for people. What's missing? What else could we do here, in this central courtyard, that would make the space better? Students will answer "a fountain," "a garden," "a shaded area where you could study." We could add benches, hammocks–you name it. And t...
Feb 13, 2018•32 min
Gestalt therapy is a methodology one can use for therapy or for growth. I like to call it Gestalt Awareness Practice because it’s a way of working in the here and now for healing and growth. Gestalt - from German and not truly translatable into English - essentially means "the whole." Or something ever greater than the whole. It’s the idea that we're whole with everything and that our goal is to be whole within our self - not divided - not split. Special Guest: Deborah Bowman. Support Mindful U ...
Feb 06, 2018•32 min
People already know many things. People arrive at school with their own intelligence, and they come here to cultivate that intelligence through contact with one another - embodied contact with teachers, administrators, other students - as well as with various resources and wisdom traditions, academic traditions. Real learning and transformation both take place in that contact, not through the input or memorization of knowledge or information. They come through grounding and body-based awareness ...
Jan 30, 2018•30 min
There's a real diversity of tactics about how to integrate contemplative practices into the study of writing and the study of literature and the creation of those ways of being. This is about what it means to approach writing through a contemplative way. One of the great joys about teaching here at Naropa is the openness of students to experiment. The real readiness at which they're willing to implicate their person and their body and their spirit. That approach to the whole person in the classr...
Jan 16, 2018•30 min
At Naropa, the notion of contemplative education is about drawing out the full richness of the student as well as the teacher in the learning process. It's about utilizing different contemplative practices such as mindfulness, awareness, compassion, and contemplation to draw out the wisdom of the various dimensions of who we are as human beings. It’s not just about thinking. Conventional education trains us to be thinkers and doers–which is very important–but there's an emphasis in contemplative...
Jan 02, 2018•31 min
We're going to be imagining what this ideal city might be like. There are thousands of different aspects of a city ecosystem that we could address, but I want to address just four: community ownership, ecological sensibility, economic democracy, and people power. Special Guest: Stephen Polk. Support Mindful U at Naropa University
Dec 19, 2017•25 min
Ecopsychology is a field whose goal is to bridge our cultures' long standing historical gulf between the psychological and the ecological to see the needs of the planet and the person as a continuum. Transpersonal ecopsychology is the evolving exploration expression and embodied practice of the inter-dependence of humans in the more than human world, which tends towards to the health balance and optimal well being of all. A change in our internal landscapes might change our relationships with th...
Dec 05, 2017•29 min
In this episode, Dr. Stanley delves into the real differences between sensory perception and experience, and touches on how our emotions affect what we see, and which qualities we project onto our world. Once we see that our perceptions are different fro our experiences, can we learn how we're really experiencing our world, versus how our minds tell us our world exists? It's classes like this that set Naropa's curriculum apart from other universities - adding a level of contemplation to this typ...
Nov 21, 2017•29 min
Brigitte is an herbalist and nutritional consultant of Natural Health with almost fifty years of experience. She teaches Herbal Medicine at Naropa University and The School of Health Mastery in Iceland. She has taught at Omega Institute, Esalen, Kripalu, Sivananda Yoga Ashram, Arise, Envision and Unify Festivals, and The Mayo Clinic. She blogs for the Huffington Post and Care2. She is also a professional member of the American Herbalist Guild. Find out more about Brigitte: brigittemars.com/ . Sp...
Nov 07, 2017•27 min
Scott Rodwin, Naropa University faculty teaching Building Design in the Environmental Department, is one of the leading green architects in the country. An architect and a builder, Rodwin owns and runs a 13-person design build firm in Boulder. Scott graduated from Cornell in 1991 with an architecture degree and moved out to Boulder shortly thereafter, and has been working as an architect for about 26 years. During this time he has focused his career on creating the greenest buildings possible, a...
Oct 24, 2017•32 min
Jeanine Canty is a full time and professor and chair of the Environmental Studies Department at Naropa University, which includes the MA and Resilient Leadership Program and the BA Environmental Studies major. In this episode, Canty shares on the topic, ‘Oppressions of People and Oppressions of the Earth Go Hand and Hand’. Canty explains the link between social and ecological injustice and how throughout human history, the oppression of people of color has been inseparable from the oppression of...
Oct 17, 2017•30 min
Acharya Judith Simmer-Brown is a Distinguished professor of Contemplative and Religious Studies at Naropa University. In this episode, Simmer-Brown discusses an undergraduate course she teaches at Naropa, Wisdom & Compassion: The Buddhist Path. Simmer-Brown discusses how much of the scientific research done in the West has focused on the negative, or what is wrong with humans/human nature. Looking at the ‘new’ science of compassion, by contrast, allows us to focus on what is right about huma...
Oct 11, 2017•26 min
Chuck Lief is the President of Naropa University, and a long time student of Naropa's founder Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche. In this inaugural episode of MindfulU, Lief discusses his various roles at Naropa since its founding, and explains what makes Naropa University unique. Lief then gives an overview of the course he teaches at Naropa as a part of the Peace Studies undergraduate program, Social Innovation and Entrepreneurship. He explains how the idea of a social enterprise has shifted over time t...
Oct 04, 2017•33 min
