Workshop 1 - Opening the Heart in Meditation
Workshop 2 - The Compassionate Witness: Freeing Yourself in Meditation
Workshop Schedule
Student Comments

Workshop 1
Opening the Heart in Meditation

The heart center in the human body is one of our main doorways into the great Heart: the true source of love, peace and wisdom. Once we learn how to enter the heart in meditation, we can connect to the heart in every moment of life. In this workshop, Master meditation teacher Sally Kempton, (formerly Swami Durgananda) will unfold a powerful series of practices for opening the heart. She will also guide participants in working with some of the obstacles and emotional blocks that keep the heart closed. This workshop has a powerful transformative effect-participants share that working with Sally has revolutionized their meditation practice.

The workshop includes:
- Five points of successful meditation posture
- Meditation in the heart center, using sound, breath, awareness and visualization
- Mantra and witness practice
- How to work with thoughts
- Transforming emotions in the heart
- Holding heart-awareness from moment to moment as you move through your life

Level I of Opening the Heart focuses on meditation fundamentals, and is suitable for meditators who are beginning their practice or would like a refresher. Level II, for practiced meditators, focuses on exploring the heart energy.

Workshop 2
The Compassionate Witness: Freeing Yourself in Meditation

The secret of inner freedom is this: Get to know the witnessing presence at the root of your own mind.
Sally Kempton

Your thoughts and feelings determine the way you experience your life. Yet behind all thoughts is the pure awareness known as the inner witness. This witnessing presence is the source of your power, intuition, and compassion. It is your core self, and it is free. This retreat with master meditation teacher, Sally Kempton (Durgananda) is designed to help you become intimate with the compassionate witness of your own mind.

You'll learn:
-How to identify and meditate on the witnessing consciousness
-How to go beyond thoughts by working with the energy within thoughts
-How your own awareness can free you from inner obstructions

This workshop can be taken on two levels, and most weekends with Sally include both. Level One is a four hour workshop that offers fundamental principles and practices of meditation, including posture alignment, breath work, practices for grounding your meditation in the body, basic witness practice, and processes for finding your own core self in meditation.

In Level Two, you'll deeply explore the inner witness, learn how to work with your consciousness both as a field of awareness and as a dynamic pulsation of energy, learn a process for moving beyond obstructive thoughts, and how to use the energy within thinking to go beyond thinking.

If you would like to be kept informed about Sally Kempton's lectures, workshops, retreats and other activities, please fill out the mailing list.