Lovingkindness

Support for Heartfelt Living & Change — A course with Dahlia
From June 8 – August 17 (space for grace around travel)
Pricing variable, see details below
Scholarships, equity pricing, and payment plans are available

This course is an exploration of what it can look like to live in the practice of lovingkindness, a practice which begins in and even for ourselves. Initially, it helps us ground into curiosity and compassion. When well-established, it can become a profound, radical source of peace, understanding, clarity, and a strength which is both gentle and ferocious. Lovingkindness as the true central ground of being helps solidly connect our moral compass to everything else.

Diego Perez, writing as Yung Pueblo, has a beautiful little poem which says —

i was never addicted
to one thing, i was
addicted to filling a
void within myself
with things other
than my own love

What we are cultivating together here is the antidote. We begin with attending to ourselves, with cultivating lovingkindness within and for ourselves. This is a transformational practice. It involves meditation, but meditation is not the destination; it is a means of connecting with ourselves. Contemplation and conversation continue the process, and are led by your needs and interests, by what arises for you as we explore together. In the spring, questions about how lovingkindness could be useful in relation to anger and with clear boundaries were central concerns in our conversations which are likely to continue.

This is a powerful time in the world — and for many people, a difficult one. How can we live in a way that brings deep healing to ourselves and through us to the wider world? We need to be able to express and unwind our grief, fear, and rage; we also need inspiration, meaning-making, hope, and joy. I aim to offer you tools and resources for this as inner work, spaces in which to share this work, and the chance to discuss how it is unfolding in our lives.

You probably have some summer travel planned. I do, too! Our structure aims to support this with grace.

Gathering

Teaching will be presented in a one hour Saturday morning Gathering via Zoom. Each will be recorded in video and audio formats so that you can join live or later at your leisure. Video recordings will be available for three weeks. The meditation portion of each session will be shared as an audio file which you can stream or download for your personal use during our course and beyond. Sessions meet from 8 – 9 AM Pacific. You are welcome to attend camera-off and pajamas are warmly encouraged!

For summer, we’ll try something new: Gatherings will take place on 8 of the 12 Saturdays that fall within our course. This will allow for a few weeks of Integration, which also offer grace to catch up on sessions that might occur while you are enjoying summer travel. Also, darling? It’s really okay to just do as much as you can do. The goal of this course is to spur your interior process in a way that supports your wellbeing and your skill in living. During integration weeks I will share my written speaking notes from the prior Gatherings; this can support both review and catch-up, depending on where you are at.

• Gathering: June 8, 15, 22
• Integration: June 29, July 6
• Gathering: July 13, 20, 27
• Integration: August 3
• Gathering: August 10, 17

"Thanks so much for the course on lovingkindness! The meetings with both discussion and meditation sessions, the sharing circles from participants, the recordings and supplementary readings, and the 1:1 sessions you offered have all helped me to deepen my meditation practice, to work on areas that continue to open up for me in this work, and to face longstanding wounds. In particular, our conversations and our work in the group on the relationship between lovingkindness and love on the one hand, and healthy anger and boundaries on the other, has brought me unexpected and welcome new insights. I have felt welcomed and heard and loved in this class."
— Christopher

“Learning meditation from her is more than just learning to sit. The guidance, modeling, support and creativity in her courses is incredible. There's no comparison to any other meditation class, podcast, app that I can make."
— Amelia

Sharing Circle

A hallmark of my online courses is our written conversation: each person gets the opportunity to share about their experience and ask questions and to receive from me in return a reply which may contain appreciation, reflection, support, teaching, and advice. You have the option to specify how you do and do not wish to be met by me in this, to ask specific questions or seek particular guidance, or simply let me respond with my own best judgment. These posts and my replies are shared with our course community. These Circles offer you the opportunity to be known and witnessed by the community, supported and advised by me, and for all of us to learn from one another. Circles takes place weekly, so there is steady inspiration and teaching available if you wish for it. In early courses we had these conversations by email; now they take place via Google Docs, which makes for an easier flow of attention while reading.

1:1 Support

Connecting with me directly for private conversation brings greater intimacy and immediacy to our experience. During these sessions we can connect one to one via phone or video chat as you wish. Most people choose to engage in conversation about how the rubber of practice is hitting the road of their personal lives and we share counsel and coaching. Some people choose this time for guidance in yoga, self-massage, energetic healing for themselves or relationships, or to have me create them a personal meditation recording. All of my skills are available for you during these sessions.

Participation Options & Pricing

This time around, I’m experimenting with structure to allow for different capacities, learning styles, and social preferences. Please choose one of these options —

• Deep Weave: All gatherings, two Sharing Circle posts & responses, reading access to all Sharing Circles, 2 private hours with Dahlia
  $450 – 650
• Core Weave: All gatherings, one Sharing Circle post & response, reading access to all Sharing Circles, 1 private hour with Dahlia
  $350 – 550 
• Light Weave: All gatherings, no Sharing Circle, 1 private hour with Dahlia
  $200 – 400
  The Light Weave omits the weekly Sharing Circle completely, which is a significant portion of the teaching. This was requested as an accommodation by community members enduring seasons of great challenge — I wish to make it available but also to make it clear that it will be a very different experience.

Your spot is reserved when you register with your $175 deposit. Balance is due on June 15. Scholarships, equity pricing, and payment plans are available. Not sure which weave is right for you? Wondering if this can work with your summer schedule? For questions of any kind, drop me a line! I truly love to hear from you; this is how I understand what folks need as I create my work. Contributions toward scholarship are warmly received and always granted to someone in the current course.

I have, as the decades of my teaching have passed, honed my experience and my offerings ever more toward love, and this is what I wish to share here with you now: the cultivation of lovingkindness.

Lovingkindness lights the way. It lights our way toward one another both in joy and in sorrow. In difficult times, its light within our hearts helps us to carry on. In easeful times, we can strengthen our capacity to shine with love. In all times, it encourages us to act to create the world we want to live in – for ourselves, our children, and everyone everywhere. 

Of all the tools and skills that I have had the honor of learning, holding, and passing on, this is the one that people turn to most in painful seasons, which makes this capacity wise to cultivate before those times arrive, and a balm when they do.