Mindful U at Naropa University

"Emotional intelligence has completely revolutionized our lives and our business space. And because that's there there's now this foundation around intuitive intelligence. So, this is the next nuance that I'm really passionate to bring in, is that emotional intelligence is foundational and key. But it's not the whole story of how we discern information and how we navigate the world. Even though emotions are supercritical and a big part of that. Intuitive intelligence also weaves in a...

"Meditation is so important—particularly training and concentration. How to steady and fix the mind until conceptual thoughts fall away. We live so much in our conceptualizing nature that we can't imagine life without that. But when you start doing this practice, you find out that you can conceptualize, and you cannot. So, learning how to drop into that stillness, as the Buddha calls it, until you come to the absolute stilling of all thought. We think well then, there's nothing. Yes, there...

"It's said in Tibetan medicine that you have to have all five elements plus karma in order to be incarnated at all. So, even to obtain the precious human body you have to have all five elements in karma. So you're going to choose certain parents and situations. They're going to give you some genetic factors which are going to influence your inner elements and then also you're going to have the diet and the behavior that your mother has during your pregnancy is going to influence it. The...

Brigitte is an herbalist and nutritional consultant of Natural Health with almost fifty years of experience. She teaches Herbal Medicine at Naropa University and The School of Health Mastery in Iceland. She has taught at Omega Institute, Esalen, Kripalu, Sivananda Yoga Ashram, Arise, Envision and Unify Festivals, and The Mayo Clinic. She blogs for the Huffington Post and Care2. She is also a professional member of the American Herbalist Guild. Find out more about Brigitte: brigittemars.com/....

"Creativity is inherent in us as human beings. I think that we've, in some ways, lost the connection and the right to have our own creativity and our own artistry. For me, just touching into that in of itself is healing. It also takes you into a different part of your brain. It accesses different parts of your psyche and your spirituality and your soul in a way that maybe verbal therapies don't quite touch. And so, it's a deeper more integrated avenue dealing with you know whatever it is...

"You know, we're doing this job dealing with people's problems and not necessarily giving them advice, but just allowing them to tap into their own thoughts and weigh out their own options to create decisions. The more you hold on—you attach yourself to an outcome, then that becomes stressful and then it's not genuine anymore. It's also stressful on the other end of the person that is dealing with the actual problem. So just knowing that you may not see the results—but one thing I have...

"Anything dealing with meditation or anything dealing with children's emotional growth is difficult to quantify. And it's difficult to put a price on it. So, it's difficult for schools, principals in particular to bring programs when you have to pay some people to do some things inside of a school. So, meditation and things of that nature unfortunately will be put on the backburner. And a lot of people's levels of urgency tend be well, low on that on that scale. Because a lot of people just...

"Personally in ten years I see mindfulness implemented in every aspect of life -- whether it's school -- like a school will have like a mindful moment at the beginning of the day and at the end of the day and have alternative suspension rooms where kids de-escalate themselves. It would be cool if you know every business started their day off with the practice. I'm not saying that it's definitely going to get there, but you know I can have high hopes and be optimistic." Special Guests: Ali...

"Art and music is such a visceral thing, and it's so experiential. And storytelling is a way to convey eons of moral compass and tradition as well. Every culture of the world has their own stories, and by telling those you don't tell people, 'This is the exact history, and this is what happened, and this is what happened.' It's more like these myths emerge through these cultures that people really latch on to and people connect with. And so, I was hoping to kind of create this new myth in a...

I really enjoy this field so much because it gives you a very practical way of investigating the spiritual mysteries of the world. so that we can gain inspiration to look deeper into ourselves. But also, it is a very practical way of helping people with very difficult problems—people with very powerful kinds of pain and those that feel like they're locked in a body that's going to hurt for the rest of their life, and nothing can be done about it. And then I say, ‘You don't live in reality.’...

"So, I went to the first summer of Naropa. And, it was not cool to be like a hippie anymore. There was an aggression of turning away from society. So, we encourage students to do meditation practice, but also to cut your hair, become a member of society, get a job, and having sort of this basic sanity notion of just having a quote, unquote normal life. Cleaning up your kitchen and going to work and doing a good job and meditating—like that's all you need. You know, you didn't have to do this...

"[Meditation] can be a little unfamiliar and scary, but it's something that we all can do. We just lean into it. Lean into the openness. What is it like to just be free? I mean, think of when you graduated college for instance—you'd been studying your whole life—filling your time with acceptance essays or homework or a thesis or something like that, and then you come out the other end of the education curriculum. And suddenly there's all this room. It's like, what do I do? And society says...

"The natural world is unconditional, and it welcomes us in whatever state we bring ourselves to it. It invites a level of presence. It sort of insists on a quality of presence, because while there's incredible stillness in the natural world there's also sort of constant movement—even if that's grass being blown by the breeze in a meadow, or a squirrel in a pine tree preparing for winter. There's always a little bit of movement and there's this quality of vastness, right? The natural world is...

Bari Tessler is encouraging people to take a more mindful and conscious approach to their relationship with money. When Tessler finished a graduate degree in Somatic Counseling, she sought financial help to help guide her career. She found that most of the financial guidance offered was coming from older white males and was focused on traditional money management, how to pay off loans, invest, etc. Tessler was curious, “Where does the body come in?” and her subsequent work has been about...

"Dharma isn't sexy, or glamorous for me..., it’s just work. It's discipline and work, and I do it because the fruit is spaciousness; this openness. Where I can just be with my life. That spaciousness is where liberation actually happens. Over the years of practice, you realize you've become a different person. You begin to trust yourself more because you're always in tune with your experiences...and that is what I love. It just becomes very ordinary." - Lama Rod Owens Special Guest: Lama Rod...

Naropa University presents encore presentations of our most popular and heartfelt podcasts from 2018, including Phillip Stanley talking on The Relationships Between Sense Perceptions, Concepts, and Emotions : Dr. Phillip Stanley, PhD, speaks about one of his favorite class topics: the relationship between sense perceptions, concepts and emotions. Such an exploration leads to surprising insights that leave students often dumbfounded. We think we know what sense perceptions are–concepts, and...

Naropa presents some of the most popular and moving episodes of MindfulU from 2018, including "The Discovery of Meaning and Purpose, with Dr. Itai Ivtzan." The disciplines of psychology and spirituality both offer us humans a gift. Psychology, being the mind-oriented discipline, seems to offer us a chance to envision ourselves within our surroundings. At the same time, spirituality invites us to move beyond the mind, and even beyond the definitions of a self. Most of us tend to focus on one...

While Naropa University spends some contemplative downtime with families and friends for the holidays, we present some of our most popular an moving episodes from 2018, beginning with the Rev. angel Kyodo williams... Radical dharma and mindfulness - everybody is going to get a little taste of some meditation, and its great - whatever door you use to enter into practice is great. But - the conflation of mindfulness with a depthful practice that includes an ethic view is a problem. When...

How are we defining the self? Are we all getting into the real depths of the lie that we are separate, that we're separate entities? Sherry Ellms' students get to explore that separateness and realize that we've always been part of Earth. Consider this analogy: if you cut off my arms I will live. If you cut off my legs I will live. But, if you cut off my air, I will die. How can one say that my limbs are more a part of me than the air? We really are completely interdependent with all of...

Richard Rudis spent years in Tibet and Nepal, and in the Himalayas, where he met many teachers and many fundamental teachings came forward. At some point, the outline of sacred sound healing became clear, and he introduced the gong once he found a manufacturer who was creating a poly-tonal instrument that was noble enough and had as much expansion of sound, overtones, harmonics, and frequencies that would reflect sacred sound healing as it came from tradition. Then, he started on the journey...