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#Meditation
I lived in Marin County near the bucolic hinterland of West Marin where Spirit Rock was a Monday night happening. I would drive out there from Larkspur and pay $8 to listen to Jack Kornfield give a Dharma talk in the Vipassana tradition ( to see things as they really are), insight meditation and the whole event was long and transformative. He was always talking about human nature and the truth of our complicated souls in a simple way that would make us laugh or shake our heads in deep understanding in the isolated country where information could seep in slowly. Then we would meditate for 40 minutes. Lots of coughing and shuffling and stomach gurgling and quiet punctuated by cookies and tea and the long dark drive back required some planning. It was a package of bliss, not just the mindful talks Jack gave to the earnest meditators in the country retreat, but being at the retreat center itself.
What I was used to
Spirit Rock vs. The City thing
Now
Hammer Museum- Billy Wilder Theater weekly free drop in meditation
David Lynch Transcendental Meditation Guru
Holds Court at The Hammer
I made it to The Hammer Museum where mindful meditation is a weekly drop in free offering at the Wilder Theater. The first time I went I was rattled at how different it felt from the sock wearing sanaga @ Spirit Rock hippie center. Meditation as social hang out adult day care casual where Jack Kornfield once cut me off to park in his Lexus because he was running a little late. It was fun and felt like vacation. At The Hammer, it was mid day during business and the formality was totally different, but the message the same and refreshing in the more structure environment of a city museum. Slow down, pay attention to the moment, let thoughts slip by like clouds, breathe, get quiet, get a mantra, do it everyday. City bites vs. country meals welcome.
Here's the latest wave of fast growing slow trends. Meditation stations in major cities. I live down the street from The Hammer Museum in Westwood CA and on Thursdays I can jump into The Wilder Theater for a mindful lunch. On campus, UCLA has been offering free sessions every weekday for quite a while and the concept of power meditation breaks for busy people is sweeping LA and New York. For Suits, soccer moms, entertainment industry moguls, artists, students and entrepreneurs everyone can breathe easy together and slow down as this practice is starting to mainstream.
A piece from New York Times below on Unplug the self proclaimed dry bar or Soul Cycle of meditation on the westside of Los Angeles:
Meditation
because some questions can't be answered by Google.
LOS ANGELES — I’ll just be honest: I expected Suze Yalof Schwartz and her new guided meditation studio to be highly annoying.
A former Vogue and Glamour editor, Mrs. Schwartz, 47, leaves New York and settles on the west side of Los Angeles, land of the liposuctioned soccer mom. She opens Unplug, calling it “a SoulCycle for meditation,” a reference to the exercise-and-empowerment chain. Her cutely contradictory slogan: “Hurry up and slow down.”
Oh, yes. In a snap, I was convinced that I knew what this would be: pop health at its most maddening, a mob scene of judgmental Brentwood women.
And then I actually went.
Meditation, rooted in Buddhism and greatly varied in method, has long been mainstream. Joel S. Goldsmith’s “Art of Meditation,” first published in 1957, has sold millions of copies. Oprah Winfrey and Deepak Chopra now regularly offer 21-day meditation experiences in which people (some 3.2 million worldwide so far) practice living in the moment by listening to Internet audio recordings.
But for a lot of people, the practice still has a better-than-thou New Agey whiff, which, as it turns out, is something that Mrs. Schwartz is trying to vanquish.
“The people who need to meditate are lawyers and bankers and stressed-out mommies,” she told me, smiling sweetly. “And those people get turned off by the Buddhas and sage and all the woo-woo talk. I wanted Unplug to be meditation for Type A personalities: clean, modern, secular, effortless to attend.”
Other Slow Spots- UCLA & The Hammer Museum
click for more info
Free Drop-in Meditations
Free Drop-in Meditation Sessions
Mindful Awareness is the moment-by-moment process of actively and openly observing one's physical, mental and emotional experiences. Mindfulness has scientific support as a means to reduce stress, improve attention, boost the immune system, reduce emotional reactivity, and promote a general sense of health and well-being.
The weekly "drop-in" sessions are led by UCLA Mindful Awareness Research Center's Diana Winston, Marvin G. Belzer Ph.D, or guest teachers.
Open to anyone interested in learning how to 'live more presently' in life.
In New York
How to Find a Job With Meditation and Mindfulness
By LAURA M. HOLSON
photo by Piotr Redlinski for The New York Times
Meditation has been good for Olivia Chow’s career.
In her first month of attending Ziva Meditation on 38th Street, the trend forecaster met Noël Rohayem, a clothing designer whom she later helped to find a new job. That led to a partnership, forged last summer, for which the two are creating a made-to-fit clothing line that will be introduced next year. Most weeks, they meet at Ms. Chow’s apartment — starting every business meeting with a short meditation — to go over marketing plans, fabric swatches and sketches.
Meditation is more than peace of mind for Ms. Chow; it fuels work. Recently she said she was hired by three fellow meditators to make custom-fit clothes. “I network wherever I go,” Ms. Chow said.
There could not be two less compatible concepts: the quiet of the ancient practice of meditation and the heart thump of striving New Yorkers looking for the next opportunity. Now, meditation studios and conferences catering to Type A Manhattan careerists are becoming a new hub for networking without the crass obviousness of looking for a job. It is hard to quiet the mind in a city where competitive cab-hailing is a blood sport. So why not look for a little stress relief, or start-up financing, among empathic meditating friends?
Ben Bechar, a technology entrepreneur, said he had attended as many as four networking events a week with little to show for it. However, at the Path, a new invitation-only meditation class that officially opened last month, he said he had met not only a potential investor, but also five beta testers for his new app. The investor introduced Mr. Bechar to other financiers, too, and he said he hoped to find out in a few weeks whether he will get the funding he seeks. “I’ve had more success at meditation than I’ve had at any networking event I’ve attended,” Mr. Bechar said.
New York’s wave of mindful networking is an export from Silicon Valley’s highly caffeinated technorati. Soren Gordhamer, who lives in Santa Cruz, Calif., about 30 miles west of Facebook and Google, used to work for the actor Richard Gere at the charity Healing the Divide, an affiliate of the Gere Foundation.
In 2009, Mr. Gordhamer founded Wisdom 2.0, a conference held in San Francisco and attended by technology entrepreneurs eager to raise their consciousness as well as investment dollars. Mr. Gordhamer leads them in guided meditation as they explore compassion and awareness in the digital age. Two years ago, he brought the conference to New York, calling it Wisdom 2.0 Business. More than 400 people attended last month.
What makes meditation palatable to entrepreneurs and executives these days is that it is perceived as a tool to help increase productivity. A quiet mind more easily recognizes unexpected business opportunities and is poised to react more astutely. “If you are looking solely for an investor, you might be guided to, or looking for, the guy in the business suit,” Mr. Gordhamer said. “Instead, you may need to be talking to the guy in jeans.”
wide-reaching clientele, including Broadway actors and investment bankers. “If you come to meet an investor and you meditate, that is great,” she said. “I don’t care why you come. I’m just glad you did.” If you want to meditate at Ziva, finding an investor may not be a bad idea. Ms. Fletcher charges $1,100 for a four-day introduction, as well as unlimited access to follow-up classes and support. Her online meditation course costs $250.
Few meditation studios have capitalized on mindful networking more than the Path, which has emerged as a downtown hub for technology and fashion entrepreneurs. Clients must be invited and pay $20 to attend an 8 a.m. session on Mondays at a 12th Street studio space. The class tends to be jammed; more than 90 people regularly show up. Attendees are encouraged to drink tea and mingle after class.
“When someone says, ‘I’m an engineer working for Google and I want to jump to a start-up,’ people in class are more open to helping you out,” said Dina Kaplan, a former local television news reporter and founder of the Path.
Even when striving for quiet reflection, the extremely connected can’t help doing what they do best — expand their network. Laurel Touby is an entrepreneur and the founder of Mediabistro, a media industry community-building platform. At the Path, she met a product manager from The Knot, a wedding website, who was willing to set up a friend of Ms. Touby’s with a company recruiter. Drew Austin, a founder of Augmate, a company that makes wearable technology, said he met a job-seeking engineer with whom he planned to have coffee. “We are hiring aggressively,” Mr. Austin said. “Finding people is the hardest part.”
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On Slow Life covered more retreat centers and longer sits in an earlier post Slow Insights click here http://bit.ly/1A9FixO
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