“I want you to know that I have been using a lot of “loving kindness” meditation and behavior in my everyday life.  I see major differences.  Your classes have been such a blessing in my life and I appreciate it more than I can say.”
Karen Walker, Therapist
“I’ve always known that my mind is powerful, but I didn’t know how to work with it.  Your Creative Visualization class has taught me simple steps for getting clear about what I want and how to let go of those old beliefs that kept me from accepting it.  It’s very clear and valuable information that I use everyday.  Thank you."
Robert Driscoll, Journalist
"I have taken three courses from Matters of the Mind.  Each class has built upon the others and assisted me further in my daily life.  I use the knowledge from these classes everyday.  I am very conscious now of what I put into the universe and I try to understand the messages the universe has for me."
Judy Tucker, Law Enforcement

 

At , you can learn a variety of techniques of meditation. All of these techniques focus the mind in specific ways to create different qualities of consciousness - to expand awareness, insight, empowerment, kindness, equanimity, and optimum health.

Classes are available in group or private sessions. Please see below for Course Descriptions, and see our Quarterly Calendar for a current schedule of classes and retreats.
 

Finding Stillness                                                                                                                     
 

Finding Stillness Through Meditation CD


In four 2-hour sessions, you will learn what meditation is, why it works, and how to do it. Learn classic techniques that combine to reduce accumulated stress ("Relaxation Response") and the perceptions that cause stress ("Mindfulness"). 

  • Learn the fundamentals of meditation and be trained in a focus that best suits you.
  • Learn practical aspects such as when and where to meditate, optimum posture, and how to overcome common difficulties like finding time, mental chatter, judgment, sleepiness, and restlessness.
  • Learn the mechanics of stress - how to identify stress, how the body functions differently during stress, and how stress deteriorates health.
  • Learn how negative and fear-based thinking causes stress, the importance of non-judgment and non-attachment in managing stress.
  • Explore the many benefits of meditation - physical, mental, emotional, spiritual, and social.
  • Learn powerful breathing exercises and how to combine them with short "mini-meditations" that can be easily integrated into a busy schedule.

Sessions are designed to give you time for practice and review, and they provide the tools, confidence and inspiration to enjoy a successful meditation practice.  Workbook included.   

Group Classes:  Our classes are small, friendly, and informal.  Join folks you don't know yet, or create your own group class with friends and family. 

Private Instruction:  Learn Meditation in private one-on-one instruction with dates and times arranged at your convenience. 

The Finding Stillness CD:  This 80-minute audio workshop guides you step-by-step as you learn the classic technique "Relaxation Response." Use the 20-minute Practice Section over and over as a tool for your daily meditation. This CD stands alone and it also complements our Beginning Meditation Class.


Eat with Peace, Pleasure, and Purpose
 
 

Do you eat too much, too often and too fast? Do you eat unconsciously and automatically? Do you neglect and disrespect your body? Is dieting a way of life and has eating become a source of fear and guilt?

Step beyond dieting and learn a powerful, proven and liberating way to look at food, eating, and your body. Mindfulness is being aware in the present moment without automatic reactions and negative self-judgment. As you become wiser about how your mind and body experience food, your choices also become wiser. Learn skills to eat without stress, reprogram unconscious eating patterns, and reconnect with your body's wisdom and beauty – from the inside out! Cultivate your taste buds as you explore true nourishment, and discover how natural and deeply fulfilling eating can be.

Non-Reactive and Empowered Living

Mindfulness is about being fully awake, present, and accepting in our lives. It develops a moment-to-moment awareness that is calm and non-judgmental.  While other forms of meditation help eliminate existing stress, mindfulness cultivates insight to outgrow perceptions of fear and attachment that cause stress. Learn to open to the moments of your life with trust, gratitude and joy even when things don't go as planned. Learn to stay conscious to respond instead of react to difficult people and situations with increasing skill, balance and ease.  Learn how to use your breath, a mental phrase, difficult emotions, and even physical pain to create inner peace, self- understanding, and health .
Loving Self, Loving Others

We know intuitively that love harmonizes, empowers and transforms our lives. And research now confirms that loving is quite literally good for our health. But when we're caught in the primitive fear-based mind, loving can seem difficult and remote. This timeless meditation technique directs intention and attention toward loving. It softens and opens the heart to create a wonderful connection with ourselves and others, and a deep sense of belonging in the world. It's a powerful and systematic process of acceptance and forgiveness that cultivates compassion and goodwill for ourselves first, loved ones, strangers, difficult people, difficult aspects of ourselves, and eventually all beings.
Discover the Mind's Creative Power

Did you know that your mind creates your experience through the Law of Attraction? Learn how to activate your natural and creative imagination to manifest more of what you want in life. Quantum physics tells us that everything is made of energy and that our minds influence what form the energy takes. We are always creating with our minds, often in unconscious ways that allow negative beliefs to manifest as “self-fulfilling prophesies.” Learn how your brain and bio-computer work. Learn six powerful steps for creating life consciously without self-sabotage.

A Language of Peace & Empowerment

Based on International Program of “Nonviolent Communication.”  Is your communication filled with misunderstand and conflict? Does it result in confusion and hard feelings? Even when your heart is loving, the language often isn’t.  In this training, you’ll learn simple communication skills that foster trust, understanding, emotional safety, and mutual respect. Instead of habitual responses that defend or attack, your words can become conscious responses based on what you are Observing, Feeling, Needing and Requesting.  You’ll learn to…
* Listen with empathy & compassion to yourself & others 
* Express honestly/clearly what’s on your mind and in your heart
* Be “real” instead of “nice” and set healthy boundaries      
* Resolve misunderstandings and conflicts
* Get your needs met peacefully and powerfully                    
* Deepen connection with yourself and everyone you interact with.
Different training emphases include relationships in general, for business, and for family and parenting.

Making Peace with Pain

Learn to relieve pain using proven, cost-effective techniques. Research shows that the newest breakthrough treatment for pain is also the oldest. Patients suffering everything from AIDS to cancer to work stress are learning to harness the power of their minds to overcome physical suffering. Learn to transform your relationship to pain by reframing your perception of it, even intense and chronic pain.  By observing pain, relaxing into it, and opening up to it, we can learn to stop judging, resisting, and reacting. We learn to dis-identify with pain and make peace with it in deep and satisfying ways.

Moving Beyond Fear

How much of your life do you spend in fear? What would your life be like if you outgrew your fears? Learn to recognize ego consciousness and the many clever ways it sabotages lasting peace and fulfillment. Awaken insight to outgrow the fear-based Ego-Self and cultivate the love-based Essential Self. Move from lack and limitation to a sense of abundance; from feeling separate and inferior to belonging and wholeness; from a compulsive striving to a loving detachment that brings inspiration, empowerment, and freedom .
Resting in The Sacred Presence

Learn how contemplative, or “listening” prayer can be used to find peace and receive divine guidance in everyday life. This is an ancient, devotional technique from the Christian Contemplative Tradition that can be practiced by people of all faiths. The divine is ever-present, but our experience of it is hampered by the stress static of our modern world and our frenetic minds.  This technique creates an inner stillness that lets go of thoughts, emotions, and sensations, and consents or “intends” to be in the Presence of God. This practice helps to accelerate spiritual transformation and communion.
A Chakra Workshop

Learn to live in the higher centers of consciousness. Our body has within it seven energy centers that bridge the physical, emotional, and spiritual systems.  This chakra system was first described by yoga over 2,500 years ago, and it is now being validated by western science.  Learn the principles and physiological influences of the chakra system, and how they correlate with the stages of childhood and the seven centers of consciousness.  Learn which centers serve the ego (fear), and which serve the higher self (love). Learn how to identify which center you are in at any given time, and how to up-level for more energy, well-being, personal power, and spiritual wisdom.
Bringing Qualities of Soul to Life & Work

We live at a frenetic pace that scatters our attention, depletes our energy, and looses touch with what is deeply important in our work and in our lives. There is an intimate connection between Mind, Body and Spirit, and the more balance we have between these, the more healthy, happy and empowered we are. This seminar offers meditation skills that calm the Mind, relax the Body, and reconnect with the Spirit. Participants look beyond traditional concepts of career development to craft livelihoods rooted in their individual “genius”. They explore creative and practical ways to bring the qualities of soul to their work for a renewed sense of Intuition, Creativity, Authenticity, Passion, and Purpose.

Please view our calendar for course schedules and registration, or contact us.