Workshop Details

Join us for a weekend to explore the benefits of practice. Meditation teacher, psychotherapist, and author Sylvia Boorstein will guide participants in an essential integration of meditation with daily life. UC Davis neuroscientist Clifford Saron will explore how remarkably adaptable (and maladaptive) we are and the difficulties and possibilities of change. He also will provide insights from basic neuroscience and the research work he leads investigating the effects of meditation practice on attention and emotion. San Francisco Symphony cellist Barbara Bogatin will illustrate how musicians turn required practice into contemplative practice, providing a rare glimpse from within the discipline of maintaining a high level of craft. She will perform several musical examples by Bach that inspire an understanding of the ways the depths of human creative expression are also present and accessible in the symphony of our sensory awareness. The days will consist of sitting practice, guided listening, informal talks and dialogue among the presenters, and active engagement with participants during ample discussion periods.
Recommended reading: Boorstein, Happiness is an Inside Job; Kandel, In Search of Memory; Kabat-Zinn and Davidson, The Mind's Own Physician.