Elliott Dacher – Integral Meditation for Optimal Health

We begin with the age-old and universally-shared vision of the preciousness and promise of human life. We will explore how and why integral meditation is the keystone of this timeless vision for health and human flourishing. In this session, you’ll also learn the time-tested basics of meditation training – techniques that will serve as the foundation for your daily practice. This module will help you:

• Understand why inner development through a precise meditation practice is the key to evolving a precious human life.
• Differentiate between meditation for relaxation versus personal transformation.
• Learn the characteristics of each of the three progressive states of meditation.
• Understand the essential, preliminary practices for meditation, including techniques for calming an overactive mind.
• Extend and integrate your practice into daily life by incorporating mindfulness into your daily routine.

In this session, you’ll learn more about the integral approach to health and healing. This holistic and evolutionary view of well-being serves as a road map to a comprehensive and expansive health. It is a leap that both embraces and transcends the biological view of modern times. This module will help you:

• Learn about the four quadrants of integral health: psycho-spiritual, biological, interpersonal and culture/community.
• Identify the core elements of the integral model.
• Understand the role that the development of consciousness plays in driving the entire process of integral health.
• Further develop your meditation practice by introducing techniques that increase clarity and presence, and reduce mental dullness.
• Integrate meditative listening into your daily life.

We are all aware of the mind-body interface. For instance, we know that when we are nervous that we have a physical response. It’s both common sense and well established science. But how much do we know about the subtler interactions of mind and body – about the effect of an expanding consciousness on brain function, structure, and beyond? How do we translate the capacities conveyed by meditative stability into biological harmony and well-being? This module will help you:

• Honor your body as precious, because it is the home of your consciousness.
• Learn about the evolution of our understanding of the mind-body interface – including perspectives on psychology, biofeedback, psychoneuroimmunology and neuroscience.
• Integrate a subtle-mind body awareness and practice into your daily life.

How do we transform disconnection into connection, and disharmony into harmony? In this session, you’ll gain a deeper understanding of how meditation and inner development can help transform your personal relationships. You’ll learn how interpersonal relationships grow and evolve in tandem with the expansion of consciousness. We will also explore the movement from “I” to “other” to “us” to “all of us” to “one.” This module will help you:

• Discover how meditation restores basic well-being, which is the foundation for extending ourselves to others.
• Recognize the connection of consciousness to the development of “otherness.”
• Understand the characteristics and levels of authentic love and compassion – personal, human condition and non-referential.
• Learn and practice the skill of “equalizing and exchanging” as an adjunct to your meditation practice.

In this session, you’ll gain insight into how ordinary work can be transformed into a spiritual practice. It is possible for you – regardless of the nature of your job. Selfless service opens the heart, clears the mind, and advances your path towards integral well-being. This module will help you:

• Learn about the timeless understanding that drives this transformation.
• Identify five skills that underlie the development of compassionate service – regardless of the type of career or project.
• Integrate these skills into your daily tasks.
• Take on the role of “healer” in your work environment.
• Integrate the practice of transforming work into service into your daily life.

In this session, you’ll discover, that adversity – both inner and outer – can be a powerful opportunity for personal development. Irrespective of your particular circumstance, there are skills and techniques for transforming challenges and conflicts into opportunities for growth. When we you gain mastery over this process you will no longer fear yourself – your emotional afflictions – nor the expected adversities of life. This module will help you:

• Understand the fundamental cause of suffering and emotional afflictions.
• Discover the three common habitual responses to suffering or adversity that inadvertently feed the problem.
• Cultivate the five skills that transform suffering and adversity into opportunity – bringing challenges onto the path to an integral health and life.
• Learn how to integrate inner mental calm and mental clarity – the basis for becoming peaceful and carefree inside – while dealing with complexities in the outer world.

The great sage Aurobindo spoke about what he called, the Perfection of Health. And, it is available to all individuals, irrespective of their state of physical health. The perfection of health – human flourishing – is a state of being, rather than a state of biology. This module will help you:

• Understand how it is possible to sustain high-level well-being throughout the cycles of human life.
• Learn the skills for human flourishing: intention, attention, mental/emotional stabilization, mental clarity and insight.
• Discover the qualities and three developmental phases of human flourishing – a serenity that surpasses understanding, penetrating wisdom, enduring happiness, compassion, boundless freedom and the perfection of health.
• Identify the key components of our course: the cultivation of a stable and progressive meditation practice – and the knowledge to bring all of life’s activities on the path to a larger life of integral health and well-being.
• Identify resources and directions to build upon what we have learned into your future practice.

Aurobindo speaks of integral health as a vertical ascent that develops our spiritual life and a downward descent that infuses an expanded consciousness into day-to-day life. The upward movement leads to a healthy human life. The downward movement, compassion, leads to a noble life. Compassion, rooted in a mature consciousness, finds its focus in a concern for our personal relationships, the welfare of humanity, and the environment we inhabit.

In this powerful session, James O’Dea and Elliott Dacher explore the role of consciousness as the basis of selfless service. They will also explore how we meditate in the field of action and how spiritual principles guide informed work in the world.

James O’Dea is the award-winning author of Cultivating Peace, Creative Stress and other works. He is lead faculty for the Shift Network’s acclaimed Peace Ambassador Training. He has conducted frontline social healing dialogues for many years. James is former president of the Institute of Noetic Sciences, Office Director of Amnesty International (Washington) and CEO of the Seva Foundation. He offers consulting and leadership intensives at his mountain home in Crestone Colorado.

Traditionally, there are three progressive stages of meditation that relate to three levels of consciousness: calming the overactive mind, resting with alertness in the still mind, and the non-dual aspect of consciousness when mediator and meditation, subject and object, drop away. In this latter level of consciousness the great traditions speak of special powers and capacities that reveal themselves. In this discussion Larry Dossey and Elliott Dacher will discuss the character and significance of the non-dual state of consciousness, and its impact on integral health and well-being.

He is executive editor of the peer-previewed journal Explore: The Journal of Science and Healing. He is the author of twelve books on the role of consciousness and spirituality in health, which have been translated into twenty languages. Dr. Dossey’s most recent book is ONE MIND: How Our Individual Mind Is Part of a Greater Consciousness and Why It Matters. He lectures around the world.