Essential Tips for a Peaceful and Transformative Meditation Retreat
To attend an online gathering or retreat with Jon Bernie from anywhere around the world, please visit: https://www.inspiredaliveness.com/gat...
Meditation retreats can be surprisingly challenging! Get tips and guidance for the best attitude for finding joy and peace on a silent retreat. Learn how to be with the ego-resistance of the mind and the expectations that might be preventing you from aligning with your authentic true nature. Former Zen monk and spiritual teacher Jon Bernie of Inspired Aliveness shares how to be gentle and have patience with yourself and the skillful way to be with the energy and emotions that can arise. That it is not about becoming attached to awakened states or escaping into bliss, but rather to embrace and integrate your full humanity.
Leave all beliefs, judgements, expectations behind and give yourself time to unwind and realign with simple silent stillness at these affordable online retreats which are suitable for both beginning and advanced meditation. This is a talk from the first day of an in-person 3-day silent meditation retreat held in Northern California in 2018, and gives a full orientation, including tips on posture and how to be present for the schedule, even when you are tired.
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Jon Bernie is a contemporary spiritual teacher who has devoted his life to inner consciousness development and to supporting others through their own unique process of self-healing and transformation. He is deeply committed to the work of Inspired Aliveness, an approach that has helped many cultivate more authentic, happy, and fulfilled lives that are rich in meaning and connection.
Jon has over five decades of practice and study in the Zen, Theravada Buddhist and Advaita traditions and was formally asked to teach by Adyashanti in 2002. A series of early awakening experiences as a teenager led Jon to ordain as a monk in the lineage of Shunryu Suzuki Roshi, and subsequently to the practice of retreat-based Vipassana (insight meditation) as an early student of Jack Kornfield.
In the late 1980s, Jon’s spiritual trajectory was profoundly altered by Jean Klein, an accomplished teacher of Advaita Vedanta and Kashmiri Yoga, with whom he studied intensively for an extended period.
Jon subsequently spent time with H.W.L. Poonja (Papaji) and Robert Adams, both direct disciples of Ramana Maharshi. Jon’s spiritual development was also greatly aided by his decades-long relationship with Brother David Steindl-Rast, who, along with Thomas Merton, was one of the first Christian monks to seriously practice in the Zen and Tibetan traditions and has since been instrumental in building interfaith networks worldwide.
In addition to his work as a spiritual teacher, Jon is also an experienced healer and teacher of somatic embodiment via his extensive training in the Alexander Technique, the Qigong system of Dr. Yu Penxi and the Zero Balancing system of Dr. Fritz Smith. He has been in private practice since 1981 and has given lectures and workshops on the Alexander Technique and other modalities at the Suzuki Method Teacher’s Conference, UCSF Medical School, JFK University, the Whole Life Expo and other conferences.
Jon offers online gatherings and retreats and special in-person events. He also offers private, one-on-one Zoom sessions with clients when his schedule permits.
Website: https://www.inspiredaliveness.com
Facebook: / jonbernie
Instagram: / jonbernie