OLLI0163 - Reverse Meditation

Course Description

This meditation class is open to both beginning and experienced meditators. This winter we will continue our exploration of the territory of meditation by studying Andrew Holecek’s Reverse Meditation: How to Use Your Pain and Difficult Emotions as the Doorway to Freedom. Reading Holecek’s book is not a requirement for the class, but doing so will deepen your understanding and practice of Reverse Meditation. Holecek is familiar with the realities of physical and emotional pain, and how we habitually contract both somatically and mentally in the face of challenge and difficulty. “Reverse meditations are counter instinctual, counterintuitive, and counter to our normal versions of conditional happiness. They go against the grain of our comfort plan. But these unusual meditations lead to the discovery of unconditional happiness…”. This is a quite a large claim, that obstacles, even large ones, can be doorways to opportunity, and that self-defensive contractions can be gifts to unwrap. If you’d like to explore this claim, bring your curiosity, skepticism, and personal experience in joining us for this meditation class. This course will be recorded.