Dates & Topics
KTG 1: Mindfulness-Awareness and Contemplative Education
February 23 - 25, 2024 • Hybrid: online & in person at Human Universal Health in Denver, Colorado.
An in-person retreat focused on seating mindfulness-awareness practice and training on how to design and transmit contemplative experiential work. Deepening the practice of meditation instruction and how to seat contemplative experiential work is the lesson of this program.
We will look deeply into the mirror at our own relationship to practice and will learn how we understand it and communicate about it with others. Participants will learn how to teach contemplative experiential work and unlock the container magic of Body, Speech, and Mind group practice. This work is to grow our skills in the dynamics of contemplative facilitation. The end result is an ability to create a contemplative container for experiential work.
KTG 2: The Body, Speech, and Mind of Contemplative Experiential Work
April 27 & 28, 2024 • Hybrid: online & in person at Human Universal Health in Denver, Colorado.
This online course aspires to introduce the logic and skills to facilitate the Body, Speech, and Mind group in multiple applications; for example the body, speech, and mind of organizations, relationships, and families, and institutions.
In addition, this course focuses on Introducing methods of creating contemplative experiential exercises; with a ground, path, and fruition framework. Participants will practice creating and facilitating experiential work during this course. The Graduate Practicum project draft proposal is introduced, as well as a form of contemplative process notes to be utilized in the 75-hour practicum.
KTG 3: Compassionate Exchange and Self Care
July 6 & 7, 2024 • Hybrid: online & in person at Human Universal Health in Denver, Colorado.
This online course is specifically dedicated to the art of self-care when working with others. Each participant will be doing a plan and create the opportunity to implement self-care over a period of time with report-outs to their continuity group and as part of their practicum. We call this learning to live Karuna in everyday life.
KTG 4: Maitri Intensification Deepening Week & Speaking from the Heart Group Facilitation
September 14 - 20, 2024 • In-person residential 7 day retreat at Drala Mountain Center
Participants learn how to facilitate Speaking from the Heart contemplative groups while they are doing intensive Maitri Space Awareness work in a retreat setting. We will also have the opportunity to present a contemplative experiential exercise during the deepening week in small groups.
The Maitri emphasis this deepening week is the ‘wisdom of no escape’ in that we stay in and intensify one or two colors the entire deepening week. This is the fruition of Maitri practice and where the potential transmission of a buddha family can occur in relationship to the rest of the buddha family mandala.
KTG 5: Maitri Space Awareness in Everyday Life
October 11 - November 23 2024 • Online: weekly for 2.5 hours
This course introduces participants to practicing Maitri Space Awareness at home, and explores the Buddha Family energies in everyday life situations. Participants explore one or two Buddha Families for the entire seven weeks. The investigation is to learn the ways in which the Buddha Family chosen is coloring our awareness specific and counter to that respective energy.
The course offers a trauma-informed approach to building one’s intensity capacity and growing our capacity to stay with emotional pain in a contemplative way. We can in turn teach others to work with their energy in the same way. Additional investigations of emotional habits in one’s family, relationships, and culture are explored. The wisdom of each family is investigated in relation to all the other Buddha Families. The application of compassionate exchange in daily life settings is also reviewed.
The Practicum: On Your Own Time, Working with a Mentor
Ongoing online monthly cohort meetings with Karuna Mentors will be implemented for additional hours from January through April 2024 - dates and times TBD.
The heart of the training is the 75-hour practicum which includes 20 – 25 hours of direct work with others in a practicum of your design and choice. It includes 50 hours or more preparing for, evaluating, and writing and recording a journal of your practicum along the way, meeting in regional groups and with your faculty mentor.
The idea of the practicum is to stretch you, to make it personal and challenging in a way that you never dared to manifest. The practicum begins with a written plan and approval from your faculty mentor. The point of the practicum is to live your compassion and to apply it directly in an area of your life that will challenge you deeply in personal growth.
KTG 6: Graduation
January 16 - 19 2025 • Hybrid: Online & In-person non-residential retreat held at Human Universal Health in Denver, Colorado
Participants will spend a half hour presenting their practicum to the cohort. The emphasis is on living Karuna in the world and on the practicums and lessons learned are the main aspects of the presentation at this graduation.
Completion of the program: It will be acceptable to miss one seminar and receive certification.