Metta and the Divine Abodes: Meditation, Yoga, and Wisdom to Live a Better Life

The Brahmavihārās (Divine Abodes) are profound practices that uncover your natural capacity to live your life easefully with love, connection, wisdom, and joy! In this experiential workshop, we’ll experience daily guided meditation practice, story-telling and song, relational mindfulness practices, self-directed neuro-plasticity, yoga, and somatic play to explore the Divine Abodes.

Considered the classical Buddhist Heart practices (also known as the “Boundless States” or the “Four Immeasurables”), they are:

• Loving-kindness (metta) practices which cultivate self-acceptance, relational healing, gratitude, forgiveness, and kinship with all beings.  
• Compassion (karuna) practices which cultivate tenderness, resilience, an open-heart to suffering, and a greater sense of our shared humanity.
• Sympathetic joy (mudita) practices which cultivate enthusiasm, authentic joy, generosity, and celebratory participation in life. 
• Equanimity (upekka) practices that cultivate wisdom, perspective, clarity, and an unwavering sense of trust.

Our days will follow a nourishing schedule of experiential practices balanced harmoniously with relaxing meals, community connection, and starlit soaks in Esalen’s healing baths. Music, nature, poetry, shadow work, journaling, breathwork and ritual will be woven artfully throughout our time together.

Whereas some spiritual practices are aimed at otherworldly enlightenment, the Divine Abodes help us awaken to the beauty, clarity, and vast possibility available right here — in our complex, often messy, mundane, and wholly sacred human experience. They are a pathway of unburdening ourselves of self-doubt, resentment, and regret. They guide our way home to that wellspring in our hearts from which unconditional love flows; where we contact our wholeness, discover radical acceptance, and remember our belonging in this world.

Join us if you long for a deep, playful, tenderizing workshop that may just touch your heart and leave you forever transformed. No matter who you are, where you are on your spiritual path, or what you’ve been through, join us in discovering that renewal is possible.