Meditation for Managers and Helpers
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I am a Licensed Psychologist-Doctorate and a Licensed Alcohol and Drug Counselor with 35 years of clinical experience in community clinics, schools, professional organizations, and universities (OSU, UVM, etc.). I have been the past Clinical Director of Howard Center, and Past President of the Vermont Psychological Association. I have provided clinical training on various clinical topics to therapists from all over New England, and as far south at Alexandria, VA and as far west as SanDiego, CA. I serve as the head teacher at The Eleanor R. Liebman Center for Secular Meditation in Monkton, Vermont, home of the Monkton Sangha. I have published numerous clinical articles, books and workbook. The most recent being Mindful Happiness… I provide various posts for my blog, mindfulhappiness.org. For many years I have served as a State of Vermont (DMH, ADAP, AHS) trainer in co-occurring disorders. I also train for NEIAS and AdCare New England. I have been practicing meditation since 1982.
This piece serves as an advertisement for local Vermont managers and therapists as well as a regular post on the blog. Below I will list the proven benefits ( now thousands of studies on these) for managers and therapists who complete repeated meditation retreats and how the retreat process works. Managers and therapists who complete meditation retreats often report the following benefits. My own short retreats occur on a scheduled Saturday afternoon from 1 to 5/6 PM. Longer retreat periods are also available upon request. Participation is by invitation or you contacting me at anthony1@gmavt.net. My retreat costs are extremely affordable! More on retreat details after we review the benefits.
Common Benefits of Meditation Retreats and Personal Practice –
- Expanded self-understanding
- Improved attentional focus
- Better focused awareness
- The personal experience of being present in mind and body
- Adjustments to silence and being without all electronic/digital devices (highly addictive)
- The possibility of noticed clarity
- Experienced forms of inner energy
- More centered calmness or activation
- Flowing with, complying or rejecting gentle meditation instructions
- Discovery of the many benefits of pure silence
- Letting go of day-to-day stressors and torments and simply settling into the “being” process – “choiceness awareness”
- Being open to unexpected emotions – could be joy, could be sadness, could be new, could be old, etc.
- Experience of staying with the arising emotions without attempts to flee them if unpleasant
- Ultimately improved emotional self-regulation
- With practice, improvements in anxiety, depression, trauma, and addictions (mainly emotion regulation)
- Noticing the phases:
- A) – Settling into the process and being at surface levels of awareness and experience; B) – Deepening into emotional realities of just BEING – deeper opening up to personal realities of past-present-future and not trying to escape anything positive or negative; C) – Slow re-adjustment to non-meditative experiences, and a readiness to enter into more typical personal experiences.
How I Manage My Own Silent Retreats (Typical Saturday Afternoon or for Longer Periods) –
- People arrive at 1 Pm for a brief social period and tea.
- At the sound of the singing bowl, we enter the living room and sit in a circle and listen to the day’s plan.
- Then we check in – voluntary. Do you wish to share your hopes for the day or share anything else with the group?
- We enter the retreat center for the Nine Bells Meditation, a brief meditation focused on any important person/s or relationship/s you have lost. It may also focus on something inside of yourself you feel you have lost.
- Loving Kindness Meditation follows the Nine Bells.
- We now do kinkin, or slower and silent walking meditation (outside weather permitting, inside if not).
- In warmer weather, we may add outside yoga, tai chi or qigong practices.
- We move back into the meditation room, where I lead meditations I have designed for your specific needs or retreat request.
- We do kinkin again.
- We sit in the circle in the living room again and write in our journals – voluntary. We are still silent. Bring a journal.
- We check out in our circle – voluntary sharing.
- You decide if you wish to take written copies of the meditation you experienced.
- You decide if you want meditation coaching from me at an agreed-upon, low cost.
Anthony R. Quintiliani, PhD., LADC
From the Eleanor R. Liebman Center for Secular Meditation in Monkton, Vermont and the Home of The Monkton Sangha
Author of Mindful Happiness