Dear Front Range Community,

An intriguing teacher will soon be visiting the Naropa Campus. Ms. Sylvia Boorstein, who combines her extensive background as a Psychotherapist, a Buddhist Teacher and her Jewish heritage to lead retreats across the United States, will be giving a Friday evening talk and weekend seminar/retreat Oct. 24th – 26th.

SYLVIA BOORSTEIN is a co-founding teacher at Spirit Rock Meditation Center in Woodacre, CA and a Senior Teacher at the Insight Meditation Society in Barre, Massachusetts. She has been a psychotherapist since 1967, a Behavioral Sciences faculty member at College of Marin from 1970-1984, a regular panelist at American Psychiatric Association conferences discussing the interface of psychotherapy and meditation, and has had a number of articles published in the Journal of Transpersonal Psychology.

In 1996, she was part of the 26-member delegation of American Buddhist teachers meeting the Dalai Lama in Dharamsala to discuss issues of teaching Buddhism in the West. She has spoken at many Jewish meditation conferences about the integration of mindfulness and loving-kindness practice into Jewish religious practice. She helped design the Institute for Jewish Spirituality, was a member of its first faculty, and co-leads an annual training retreat for rabbis who teach mindfulness. Dr. Boorstein has written five books on meditation and Buddhism, the most recent being Happiness Is An Inside Job: Practicing for a Joyful Life. She was honored as Noted Humanist Scholar by Saybrook Institute, has been elected to the Marin Women’s Hall of Fame, and most recently awarded an honorary Doctor of Humane Letters by the Reconstructionist Rabbinical College. Since 1991, she has taught an ongoing weekly class at Spirit Rock Meditation Center, and she has written a column for The Shambhala Sun magazine since 2002.

THE RETREAT will include the practice of focusing the attention on blessing phrases to both establish composure in the mind as well as to illuminate and lessen antipathy (metta, Lovingkindness practice.) It will include mindfulness meditation practice – where the exquisite ordinariness of the movement of breath, of the sensation of the body sitting on the earth and of the busyness of the mind and emotions may be discovered. This intensive weekend also introduces insight meditation, vipassana. Sustaining a compassionate response to the experiences in our lives requires balance of mind, which in turn requires both wisdom and compassion. Sylvia explores both in a retreat held in Noble Silence, with meditation, presentations and question sessions.

People may register through Extended Studies Department of Naropa University, 303-245-4800 or online at www.naropa.edu/cfwebstorefb/index.cfm?fuseaction=category.display&category_id=423

Entire Weekend: $275, or $233.50 by October 3
Friday night only: $15, $10 students and seniors.

Thank you,
Extended Studies, Naropa University
303-245-4800