Join the Bozeman Insight Community for a half-day online retreat with guest speaker nico hase.

Even if you consider yourself the kind of person who remains calm in the face of crisis, sometimes things just get to us. If we’re not careful, we might find ourselves growing tangled in negative thought patterns. Without a dose of healthy awareness, a cycle of reactivity can deepen, leaving us feeling disconnected from what we truly feel in every moment.

The Buddhist path offers us a way to untangle the tangles and step into freedom. In this half-day online retreat on Saturday June 21 from 10 AM to 1 PM, visiting teacher nico hase will offer reflections and practices that help us understand where our reactivity comes from, and how to gradually release ourselves from its grip.

We invite you for a morning of meditation and inquiry as we walk the path together to greater freedom, connection, and space.

The session will begin with a 30-minute conversation and opening talk around the theme, followed by alternating periods of sitting and walking meditation with light guidance. We’ll conclude with a closing talk and time for questions and dialogue.

Speaker bio: nico hase lived in a monastery for six years before earning a PhD in counseling psychology and becoming an Insight Meditation teacher full time. He currently mentors mindfulness teachers, teaches online and in-person retreats, and speaks with students in one-on-one sessions. He and his beloved life partner devon are the authors of How Not to Be a Hot Mess: A Buddhist Survival Guide for Modern Life. Find out more at www.devonandnicohase.com

Join the Bozeman Insight Community on Saturday February 1 from 9:30 am to 12:30 pm for an online half-day retreat with visiting teacher James Frank titled, “The Way of Meditative Warriorship.”

The uncertainty of these times calls for a commitment to live the truth and love this world yearns for. During this half-day retreat, we will explore the foundations of living a heart-centered and wakeful life. By emphasizing stillness and relaxation, we will support the natural and fearless qualities of the heart that characterize meditative warriorship. This period will involve sitting, walking, and relational practices that deepen a felt sense of belonging and inspiration for the journey ahead.

James Nepenthe Frank is a meditation teacher and somatic healing practitioner. He began practice as a young child in the Plum Village Tradition with Thich Nhat Hanh and began formally sitting in the Western Insight tradition at the age of 15. While dedicating years of his life to silent retreat, he serves a commitment to live this path in everyday life. He began teaching at the invitation of his teacher, Rodney Smith. He lives in Lincoln, Vermont.

Dave Smith will be offering an online workshop on Cultivating Emotional Balance on Saturday November 23 from 9 am to noon.

Emotions lead us to our greatest joys and most painful sorrows. They also provide the inspiration for what is most meaningful in our lives. When they become destructive, we are lost in the grips of anger, fear, sadness, and overwhelm. As we develop emotional awareness, we find that we are able to become honest about the difficulties in our lives. We can take responsibility for our destructive emotional episodes, diminishing guilt and regret. We learn the power of gratitude and compassion and promote positive change in our lives and in this world.

The Cultivating Emotional Balance training was sparked during a meeting between behavioral scientists, a neuroscientist, a monk, a philosopher, and the Dalai Lama as a new approach to understanding our emotional lives. Combining contemporary scientific research with contemplative practices drawn from Buddhism, this practice provides participants with tools for working with emotion and shows how mindfulness practices can be constructively integrated with emotional intelligence.

During this training, participants will:

• Understand how emotions work and how they can work for and not against us;
• Recognize and work with emotional triggers;
• Deepen awareness and stabilize attention;
• Increase compassion for the self and others;
• Cultivate genuine happiness and mental balance.