Meditation Teacher Training
Meditation as an unequalled life skill.
The ability to quiet, still and heal the mind is essential, today more so than ever. But for many meditation remains difficult, illusive, and for some boring.
Effective training in meditation involves insight into how the mind works.
The mind by yogic definition is a fourfold psychic instrument (antarkarana). This level of our personal experience is intensely conditioned. The way we think, feel, imagine, dream, fantasise, intuit, know, react and respond is greatly impeded by conditioned entrained states of mind.
Yogic knowledge is the greatest aid to understanding the nature of the mind. With this understanding we can better utilise the practices of yoga to decondition the mind and awaken it to its capacity to perceive beyond itself. We learn to bring mind to its natural partnership with prana (vital energy or life force). When the two are united the mind heals, the impressions of life events subside, and the mind achieves its natural peaceful and lucid state.
In each of us the mind expresses tamas or rajas or a mix and fluctuation of both. Tamas expresses as inertia, dullness, fatigue and not knowing. Rajas expresses as hyperactivity, disturbance, distraction, aggression, anger, arrogance, and other similar aroused mental states. The mind’s natural state is peaceful lucidity. This natural state has an expansive, calm and joyous quality. The mind must be first healed and cleansed to then awaken to its powerful naturalness.
The mind will be guided toward the greater perception of what is ‘real’ rather than its habitual external orientation with appearances and patterns of cyclic thinking and obsession. Meditation is such a means to awakening the mind. Once reoriented the mind facilitates access to deeper sources of knowledge and experience as it recedes to allow a more potent intelligence to come forward..
Meditation must start with drawing the mind to be interested in the process of meditation. Simple techniques can be mastered to facilitate the initial return of the mind to its source and centre. Such techniques are best guided and gradually refined.
A skillful meditation facilitator will have already gained a certain degree of mastery over the mind’s energy and tendencies.
A skillful meditation facilitator will have their own ability to sit in stillness and draw from that experience as they guide others.
A skillful meditation guide will know the nature of the mind and how to direct others toward the direct experience of lucid clarity and unitive awareness that is the object of meditation. Essential nature then reveals itself.
Traditional Meditation is not a guided visualisation technique. It is a skill that is awakened powerfully and irrevocably. Stillness and silence of a deep and abiding quality is accessed which then infuses and refines all the surface layers of our individual nature. Skilful easeful meditation takes consistent practice over a long period of time. How we practice will either support or obstruct our ability to arrive in the state of absorption that is the expression of deep meditation. The outcome will be the natural expression of a joyous and peaceful nature.
The Shantarasa Meditation Teacher Training instructs traditional meditation as initiated by the Siddhas of southern India. The various stages and pillars of practice will be introduced and practiced. The teachers have each been practicing these methods for almost 45 years. They have sat with Siddhas and teachers of remarkable skill and insight. The gifts of their teachers are skilfully imparted to others.
If you wish to gain your own deep understanding and direct experience of the benefits of skilful meditation this course will guide you to that experience. If you wish to guide others with inspirational practice this course will set the groundwork for you to do that in a highly beneficial way.
The Training will include
Overview of what constitutes meditation
its various stages and facets and applications, origins and various styles- Vedantic, yoga sutras (Samkhya), Buddhist-mindfulness, mantra meditation, mahayoga meditation, Kashmir Shaivism
Relationship between meditation and mind
Understanding the nature of mind and how to work with it skilfully and compassionately
Stages of meditation: preliminaries- pranayama, pratyahara, dharana
Pranayama- specialised means to capture the energy of the mind and return it to its source of power and awakening
Pratyahara- enables releasing of distracting and dissipated mind states and cultivates healing ‘sense withdrawal’ practices
Dharana- introduces practices for harnessing the energy of the mind to be directed toward one stable object of focus, enhancing concentration and accessing higher states of awareness
Developing a meditation practice
Stages of practice to suit different individual natures
Shakti and meditation
Gathering the energy of meditation itself to lead and guide a powerful, intelligent transformation
The meditation journey and map
Establishing a practice and how to guide others
The course includes
5 x 2 day in person training sessions
Online study material and practices
Personal mentorship