Online: White Awake
with Elaine Retholtz and Gary Singer
Mondays, July 27th – August 31st | 6:30pm – 9:00pm ET
We are living through unprecedented times that call us to examine and disrupt the status quo. What has been ignored can no longer be so.
New York Insight is offering a course for white practitioners to create a space to examine our privilege, blind spots, and racial conditioning in the context of Dharma teachings and practice.
Using the tools and perspectives offered by the Dharma we will explore these issues, and encourage concrete actions to help dismantle racism in its many guises: personal, interpersonal, institutional, systemic, and cultural.
We ask you to agree to:
-maintain or renew your Dharma practice as a frame for supporting this inquiry.
-be willing to grapple with difficult, sometimes painful issues, and to stay engaged, as you explore your experience being part of a racist world.
-seek support of the program facilitators, as needed.
When you register, you will be asked to tell us a bit about your interest in this course and your Dharma / meditation background.
All proceeds will be donated to Soul Fire Farm. Soul Fire Farm is committed to ending racism and injustice in our food system. It is a BIPOC*-centered community farm committed to ending racism and injustice in the food system. We raise and distribute life-giving food as a means to end food apartheid. With deep reverence for the land and wisdom of our ancestors, we work to reclaim our collective right to belong to the earth and to have agency in the food system. We bring diverse communities together on this healing land to share skills on sustainable agriculture, natural building, spiritual activism, health, and environmental justice. We are training the next generation of activist-farmers and strengthening the movements for food sovereignty and community self-determination.
This program is limited to 22 participants. If you would like to join us, please register as soon as possible to reserve your place. For those who aren’t able to register, we plan to offer White Awake again later in 2020.
Registration:
Please register at the highest level that your generosity offers.
Explanations of levels follow below.
If you are registering via a mobile device such as a phone or tablet, you can scroll right and left and up and down within the below form if it is partially obscured or cut off. Please contact registration@nyimc.org if you need assistance.
Registration Fees include Teacher Support
New York Insight Meditation Center has streamlined the registration fee levels. Members of our Circle of Friends are eligible to receive 20% off of the Sustaining Rate via a code provided in the email confirming membership, which you can enter after clicking the Sustaining Level registration.
*Benefactor Level: Supports NYI’s ability to offer the Subsidized Base.
**Sustaining Level: This level reflects the actual costs to support this program. Circle of Friends members eligible for 20% discount with code. Click here to join.
***Subsidized Base: Made possible by the generosity of Benefactor Level above and other donations to ensure participation by those requiring financial assistance.
If you have questions about your registration (cancellation policy, membership discount, email confirmation, etc.), please read our FAQs. If your question is not addressed in the FAQs, please email registration@nyimc.org.
If you are unable to pay the Subsidized Base Fee, you can learn about volunteering to offer work exchange and letting us know how much you are able to pay for this program by emailing registration@nyimc.org.
Teacher(s)
Elaine Retholtz
Elaine Retholtz has been studying and practicing the Dharma since 1988. In addition to teaching Dharma at New York Insight, she is a certified Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction teacher and has a deep interest in helping students integrate mindfulness practice into daily life. Elaine is committed to deepening her own understanding of issues of diversity and the way racial conditioning in the United States affects all of us — both as individuals and in relationship to the institutions we are a part of, including New York Insight. She’s been involved in New York Insight’s diversity efforts for many years, serving on the diversity committee, and working with others to create spaces – for diverse groups of practitioners as well as for white practitioners meeting separately – to explore these issues within a Dharma frame.
Gary Singer
Gary Singer is a teacher of New York Insight and a graduate of the Community Dharma Leader’s teaching program. He’s been practicing vipassanna meditation since 1992 and integrates mindfulness into his psychotherapy practice. As a founder of NYI’s Family Sangha program, he writes and gives workshops on mindfulness, stress reduction, work/life balance, and intercultural/interracial relationships.