Meditatio

Outreach of The World Community for Christian Meditation

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Meditation as a Healing Response to Trauma

September 17, 2020 by katecoombs Leave a Comment

AN ONLINE SYMPOSIUM AND WORKSHOP HOSTED BY MEDITATIO

The practice of meditation within a cultural and wisdom tradition has been shown to help refugees heal these invisible wounds of trauma.

In 2019, the UN refugee agency reported 26 million refugees and over 4 million asylum-seekers worldwide. We need a public mental health response to help forcibly displaced individuals to heal from trauma.

Meditatio is convening leaders in the field of meditation, mind-body medicine, and global mental health to explore meditation as a healing response to trauma. All those interested in learning about the healing practice of meditation and an effective way of sharing with refugees and other survivors of trauma are welcome to attend.

MEDITATION AS A HEALING RESPONSE TO TRAUMA. AN ONLINE SYMPOSIUM AND WORKSHOP WITH LAURENCE FREEMAN OSB, DR GREGORY FRICCHIONE, DR RICHARD MOLLICA AND OTHERS 

Symposium Thursday 15 October 9.00am – 12.00 US Eastern Time/2.00 – 5.00pm UK Time
Workshop Friday 16 October 9.00 am – 12.00 noon US Eastern Time, 2 — 5pm UK Time

Thursday: Symposium – The Art and Science of Meditation as a Healing Response to Trauma 

Presenters
Laurence Freeman OSB, Director of World Community for Christian Meditation and of Bonnevaux Centre for Peace, Marçay, France
Gregory Fricchione MD, Associate Chief of Psychiatry at Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) and Director of the Benson-Henry Institute for Mind Body Medicine and the Chester M. Pierce Division of Global Psychiatry at MGH, Boston, Massachusetts
Richard Mollica MD MAR, Director of the Harvard Program in Refugee Trauma (HPRT) of Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard Medical School, Boston Massachusetts
Ashok Gurung MA, Biomedicine, Researcher, Co-Founder Bhutanese Community of Pittsburgh, Mental Health First Aid instructor and meditation group leader, Pittsburgh, PA
 

Friday: Workshop – Developing a Meditation Support Group for Refugees and Asylum-seekers 

Presenters
Timothy Kelly MA MSW, Meditatio Council, Program Specialist, Office of Refugee Resettlement, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Washington, DC
Marie Carlson PhD, Clinical Psychologist at the Center for Survivors of Torture, Austin Texas
Ailsa Adamson, Project Manager of Methodist Asylum Project (MAP) in Middlesbrough, England
Giovanni Felicioni, Associate Director, Bonnevaux Centre for Peace, Marçay, France
Odile Boekwa, Center for Survivors of Torture, Meditation Support Group, Austin, Texas

Register to attend HERE

NB Registration closes Wednesday 14 October 10 am UK time

Filed Under: Health, Meditatio, News, Uncategorized Tagged With: health, healthcare, mental health, news EVENT SOCIAL JUSTICE

Meditation in Schools

July 9, 2020 by katecoombs Leave a Comment

There is now a substantial evidence base reporting the benefits and complexities of meditation programs in schools. Much of this evidence has been collated in a comprehensive scoping review undertaken by Anne Graham at the Centre for Children and Young People at Southern Cross University, Australia, on behalf of the WCCM. The full evidence review is available along with an infographic summary capturing some key findings for schools. Christian Meditation in Schools: evidence of the benefits. Follow the links here:

Full report in English

Summary document in English

Summary document in Spanish

Summary document in Portuguese

This research was launched at the Meditatio Online Seminar A Gift for our Times on Tuesday 30 June 2020. More about that coming soon!

Filed Under: Education, Education, Meditatio, News, Uncategorized Tagged With: frontpage CONTENT

Connecting Prayer and Care for Creation

June 15, 2020 by katecoombs Leave a Comment

An online workshop from The Meditatio Centre London

In this workshop we will provide an opportunity for people to explore their feelings in relation to the destruction of our environment and how that can lead us to deepen our prayers for the earth.

 The workshop will be a safe  space to reflect on environmental stories and  issues and connect that to our prayers. We hope to encourage  better awareness of the ecological crisis and call out our imagination, prayer and action to show solidarity with people in poorer countries facing common experiences around the world.

Peter will  use some of his photos from his work in Bangladesh to stimulate our imaginations to pray for a different world and better understanding. You can see these in the links below.

https://petermusgrave.wordpress.com/2020/05/20/tobacco-road-to-sohogolpur/

https://petermusgrave.wordpress.com/2020/04/14/peoples-faces-at-the-brickfields-of-meherpur/

 Peter has worked for over 35 years in the field of community development . He has a special interest in Bangladesh where he has lived and worked for many years, a country on the frontier of climate change. Peter is a meditator with WCCM and a member of Green Christian. 

Filed Under: Environment, Meditatio, News, Uncategorized Tagged With: EVENT ENVIRONMENT

Sharing the Gift of Meditation with People on the Margins

May 28, 2020 by katecoombs Leave a Comment

Terry Doyle writes of his recent experience

Earlier this year, before lockdown, I facilitated a 2-day Wellbeing Retreat for 25 Asylum Seekers from the Methodist Asylum Project (MAP) in Middlesbrough and Redcar, at the beautiful Benedictine Monastery at Ampleforth in North Yorkshire, UK.

The days away proved to be a profoundly healing and beneficial time for all involved, and very humbling for me to be able to introduce the gifts of our meditation practice to such lovely but deeply wounded people. The time was not without its challenges however as many of the group were very hesitant at first to go into silence and apprehensive to begin to negotiate what traumatic memories might be lurking in their minds. Also, the mix between Christian and Muslim in the group made the use of the mantra Maranatha slightly problematic- an issue we overcame when some used Maranatha and others preferred the phrase, ” I am safe, relax, all is well “. 

We started proceedings with a small tour of the Abbey and Visitor Centre to help settle us in and a hearty lunch. Lunch provided much needed nourishment as most of the group wouldn’t have had much of a breakfast at home, if anything at all. Some of the group were struggling to feel relaxed enough in themselves to commence the inner work. Some even asked in our introductions if they could leave their eyes open when meditating. So, after lunch we had fun playing table tennis and pool before doing some Tai Chi to help relax and soften the body mostly locked in tensions and tightness through years of struggle and hardships.

We had more group sharing in a circle which helped to bond us as a group.  We did a session of “energy psychology” or Emotional Freedom Technique (EFT) which further served to build the necessary trust and confidence to begin the process of dropping our defences just a little bit, so we could, tentatively enter the healing waters to be found in the silence and stillness of meditation.

What happened in the first meditation period was so deeply beautiful it brought tears to my eyes.

One of the young men from Iran who had been particularly anxious before the trip because he had an important meeting coming up with a government official that was greatly troubling him. He was very fearful to the point that his body was shaking, but, he listened to my words and stayed with the process until he felt able to let go and started to relax for the first time in years:

“I cannot believe the meditation session; you have no idea what it is like inside my mind. I get no quiet, ever, and nothing stops it. My mind is so bad; I am dying in there. Then we meditated and it was, ohhh, I can feel the peace coming into my body. I had no idea this could ever happen for me. I had such problem because I cannot relax. In the meditation session, I could feel energy around me. All of a sudden my hand jumped similar to a shock and my body was coming from tight, tight, tight, to loose”.

The atmosphere in the room was just so peaceful and holy; a Sacred Space wherein the Spirit could begin the process of healing and harmony so needed by the bodies, hearts and minds of the group. 

Next came more food, games, music and laughter in between our other healing sessions and an excellent session on the Benedictine 12 Steps of Humility from Fr Christopher who commented that he had never experienced such honest and direct questions!

Then the bus arrived to take us home to a much starker reality – to Middlesbrough – but now, people were empowered with the gentle healing art of meditation, leading to all the nurturing that ensues for those that embrace the discipline of the regular practice.  Indeed, the process continued as a weekly group was started on our return home.

But now, as I write during lockdown, the meditation group has temporarily stopped and I am busy getting this work online so that the momentum keeps building and people feel supported until we can resume the face to face healing work.

It is a privilege to be part of this sacred work of taking meditation to where it is most needed, amongst people living on the very margins of society.  We are now being funded to develop a working partnership between Meditatio and MAP which I’m confident will bear much fruit as we move forward.

Filed Under: Meditatio, News, Social Justice, Uncategorized Tagged With: ARTICLE SOCIAL JUSTICE

Resources for Children to Learn to Meditate through the Current Pandemic

April 27, 2020 by katecoombs Leave a Comment

We hope you find these new resources for teaching meditation to young people useful. If you have developed any new resources, please share them with Paul Tratnyek

Meditation with Primary and Secondary School children

http://acontemplativepath-wccm.org/2020/04/22/wccm-and-the-catholic-childrens-society-present-a-series-of-videos-on-meditation-with-young-people/

Meet Frankie the Still Fox

Frankie the Still Fox is a beautifully illustrated new book by Ernie Christie and Mary Hosking. In this book children are invited to learn to meditate with Frankie who is looking for silence in his life. A lovely book to read aloud with your little ones. Click on the picture to purchase.

Meet The Little Mouse

Watch this online session with Paty Sanchez from Mexico reading her story The Little Mouse in Spanish and be inspired to lead your own sessions. In Colombia, Elba Rodriguez also reads this story aloud and meditates with children on live Facebook sessions.

Meditación con niñ@s

Taller 2: El cuento del ratoncitoGracias @wccmmexico!

Publiée par Meditación Cristiana Colombia sur Lundi 6 avril 2020

A Word from the Teachers

In this film teachers in two primary schools in Scotland share their experience and answer some practical questions about how to meditate with children.


Filed Under: Education, Education, Meditatio, News, Uncategorized Tagged With: frontpage CONTENT CHILDREN

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