Mindvalley Intuition Training

Mindvalley received an unexpected boost when 19-year-old tennis player Bianca Andreescu defeated Serena Williams, one of the all-time greats, in the final of the US Open in New York earlier this month. Asked by journalists how she remained so focus during the raucous tournament, where countless competitors have succumbed as much to doubts and derision as devastating forehands, Andreescu credited her daily practice of meditation.

Did she have any recommendations for self-help books? Absolutely. Code of the Extraordinary Mind, Andreescu exclaimed, citing the title of the best-selling 2016 work by Vishen Lakhiani, the founder of Mindvalley, a personal growth company whose own recent growth is nothing short of phenomenal.

Mindvalley made its local on-site debut with the Become Extraordinary one-day seminar at Unity of Santa Barbara in late spring. Next weekend, the stakes are doubled with the company’s newest offering – Mindvalley Intuition Training: Accessing Altered States and Deep Meditation for Tapping into Enhanced Intuition and Inspiration. The training is derived from the work dating back to the 1960s of the late Jose Silva, whose books including The Silva Mind Control Method have sold more than 10 million copies. Lakhiani studied the program in 2002, and wrote in Extraordinary Mind about how inspiration and intuition had helped him advance his career in Silicon Valley. Fifteen years later, working with Jose Silva’s descendants and family, Mindvalley got the rights to take the work, develop it further with the eventual goal of making intuitive functioning mainstream in schools and companies by 2038. Mindvalley became one of the first companies to start training its workforce in intuition in 2018.

The Mindvalley training is the culmination of Silva’s work, condensed into an approachable format to immediately apply to your life via a method of dynamic meditation to help you tap into Theta levels of mind to source intuition and creativity, make better decisions in life, move faster towards goals and objectives, find inner peace, accelerate healing, and tap into heightened levels of creativity and inspiration. The seminar spans different types of meditation practices – from Creative Visualization and Directed Healing to Shadow Work and Re-Programming – and synthesizes many of them into a simple single practice, which is taught along with Delta Level Access, a more controversial meditation technique designed to tap into specific states of mind accessible only during sleep. Fully half of the seminar hours are spent in deep guided meditation listening to specific sounds and guided instructions by the instructor.

The training, which takes place 10 am to 7 pm on Saturday and Sunday, September 28-29, at the Kenny Loggins Community Center at 110 West Sola Street, will be led by D’Aun Moore, a Master Certified Trainer and Coach with Mindvalley who traded 25 years of business experience as a human resources leader with Johnson & Johnson, Covidien, and The Nature’s Bounty Company to focus on transformational education, where she has become a certified Lifebook Leader and Coach and certified Intuition Facilitator. She will be supported by Marcus Kettles, the founder of Fit Buddha Evolutionary Fitness, which melds fitness with the spiritual practices of moving meditation, who led the earlier Mindvalley seminar at Unity.

For details and registration, visit www.eventbrite.com/e/mindvalley-intuition-training-is-coming-to-santa-barbara-tickets-66453667709. 

Buddhism by the Beach

Santa Barbara Institute for Consciousness Studies (SBI) and Tara Ling Santa Barbara are combining efforts to bring Her Eminence Jamyang Dagmo Sakya and accompanying Sakya Lama Kelsang Dukpa for a weekend of Buddhist teachings and empowerment in Winchester Canyon. The offerings begin at 10 am Saturday, September 21, with Lama Dagmola’s “Bodhichitta in Everyday Life,” a transmission of Chenrezi practice, Filling Space to Benefit Beings. Following a potluck vegetarian lunch, Lama Kelsang will teach “Shamatha (Calm Abiding Practice) in the Sakya Tibetan Buddhist Tradition,” from 2-4:30 pm. On Sunday, Lama Dagmola will offer a “Green Tara Empowerment and Teaching” from 10 am to 12:30 pm, while Lama Dagmola will lead “Vipashyana (Insight Practice) in the Sakya Tibetan Buddhist Tradition” from 2-4:30 pm. Dr. Alan Wallace, Founder and President of SBI, will be translating at all sessions.

Lama Dagmola is the niece of one of the most highly realized Sakya Masters of the twentieth century, H.E. Dezhung Rinpoche III, and has received extensive teachings and empowerments from many great lamas of all four schools of Tibetan Buddhism throughout her lifetime. Lama Dagmola is currently the Acting Head Lama of the Sakya Monastery of Tibetan Buddhism in Seattle, Washington, where she specializes in Tara empowerments, practices and teachings, and has many students throughout the world. Lama Kelsang, who was born in 1980, studied Buddhist philosophy for five years and received empowerments and teachings from H.H Dalai Lama, H.H Sakya Trichen Rinpoche, H.E Luding Khen Rinpoche, H.E Thartse Khenpo, and Khenchen Kunga Wangchok. He completed five times the requisite 100,000 accumulations for the preliminary practices (ngondro) and has also completed the preliminary and main practice of Luminous Great Perfection, and the ritual practices of the Longchen Nyingtik tradition. Suggested donation for the full weekend is $125, or $30 for each event ($45 for the Green Tara Empowerment); no one will be turned away for lack of funds. Donations at the door, where registration begins at 8:45 am; RSVP to vidya@taralingsb.com. EMID is located at 224 Vereda Leyenda in Goleta. 

POYO’s 40 Days to Personal Revolution

Power of Your Om Yoga Studio’s major autumn offering is more than just a typical fall season personal health challenge, instead serving as an opportunity to take a look at your whole life and create a new path forward by combining a daily yoga practice, meditation, diet, group discussions, and personal reflection to cultivate a solid foundation for growth. The 40 Days to Personal Revolution program, based on the book of the same name by Baron Baptiste, the creator of Baptiste yoga who will be teaching later in the year in Ojai, is open to all regardless of level of experience, and is meant to unleash mental clarity, lightness of body, and an illumination of spirit.

The program, led by Tricia Speidel and Power of Your Om Santa Barbara studio owner Adrienne Smith, includes weekly group meetings for an hour every Sunday evening; yoga practice six days a week (in person or online); in class and at home meditation, starting with five minutes one week one and increasing as the program progresses; weekly nutrition and dietary awareness themes centered around discovery and centered around eating the way nature intended, for your body and with the seasons, and cultivating new habits; and reading and journaling via the “40 Days” book and a manual provided at the first meeting.

40 Days to Personal Revolution takes place September 22 to
October 31 at POYO, 1221 State Street, upstairs in Victoria Court. The $200 fee for non-POYO members includes unlimited yoga classes for the full 40 days. Visit www.powerofyourom.com for details and registration. 

Sacred Space Seminar on Surrender

Michael Eselun, who serves as the chaplain for the Simms-Mann/UCLA Center for Integrative Oncology, has a rather unusual background in that he is neither an ordained minister, nor even particularly religious in any conventional way. Rather, the seed for his chaplaincy was planted when he did volunteer hospice work during the peak of the AIDS crisis in the 1980s and ‘90s. That’s where Eselun gained experience in speaking from the perspective where all of us may find ourselves at one time or another – the place of the outsider, in the margins, misunderstood, isolated, abandoned, perhaps doubting long held beliefs and holding more questions than answers.

Eselun, who will lead a reflective conversation at The Sacred Space in Summerland at 3 pm Saturday, September 28, is a two-time TED speaker whose style is highly entertaining, especially given the heavy topics he tackles. Audiences often find themselves laughing, crying, and being awed by the succinct and poignant connections he makes. Colleagues have said he “manages to hit that sweet spot between meaning and uncertainty and then brings us all closer together because of it.”

All are welcome to hear Eselun talk from his heart and inspire listeners to find a place of loving serenity within, although seating is limited to 45. Admission is $27. Visit www.thesacredspace.com. 

Antidote to Anxiety

Nancy Seagal, a Santa Barbara-based Certified Clinical Hypnotherapist and BrainWorking Recursive Therapy practitioner who is also a best-selling author and speaker, has founded the Debilitating Anxiety Support Group as a MeetUp. The extra hook is Seagal knows that one of the best ways to ease the pain of anxiety is to share with other people who can relate, but also recognizes that anxiety can often stop people from saying yes to doing things that involve leaving the comfort of home. So, she’s created the group to meet online only.

Anyone experiencing any level of anxiety is welcome to share thoughts, tools, and insights with each other as Seagal offers various coping mechanisms, mindfulness techniques, and implementable strategies. The group will also discuss nutrition, physical exercise, and other essentials to maintaining a calm mind. The first meeting, which takes place 10 am on Saturday, September 21, will take a look at challenges, impacts, feelings of being stuck, and strategies that have failed, plus imagining what an anxiety-free life might be like. Active participation in the Zoom meeting – accessible at https://zoom.us/j/719019490 – is encouraged, but people will have the option to mute themselves and turn off the video at anytime. Visit www.meetup.com/Debilitating-Anxiety-Support-Group-Online for details.

Yoga Soup Sessions

Monique Minahan’s Grief in the Body workshop validates the physical experience of grief in the body by explaining emotions science, movement science, and trauma-informed yoga in an explorative and experiential format. Participants will learn the five places in the body where grief is often held, why grief moves through the body, and the science behind emotions in the body, and how to explore grief in the body in a safe and anchored way. This workshop, slated for 2-4 pm on Saturday, September 21, includes slow, full-body movement. Admission is $20 in advance, $25 day of… Singer-songwriter and facilitator Elisa Rose’s Embodiment Alchemy, which takes place 7-9 pm on Saturday, September 21, is a two-hour journey in which participants will turn attention inward via wearing blindfolds to learn somatic tools to connect to the body’s wisdom, nourish the nervous system with restorative practices, and open voices to the innate healing power of expressing through sound. All ages and abilities are welcome to the “come-as-you-are party” where the invitation is to explore at your own pace each step of the way. Admission is $25.