Now Online: Free At Last – Identifying Our Suffering Around Race
with DaRa Williams and Karen Williams
Saturday, June 6th, 2020 | 10:00am – 4:30pm
In this online workshop we will create connection and build sangha in order to explore our individual and group level relationships to systems of oppression, e.g., race, immigration, gender, class, etc. We will devote time to better understand how we can integrate wisdom from the Dharma with contemplative practice to find freedom from pain and suffering. We will do this through engaging with small groups, dyadic exercises and other experiential activities. By reflecting on liberatory teachings we will develop skillful ways of responding to the dissatisfaction, discontents, and disappointments we experience as People of Color.
This program is open to all self-identified People of Color. Beginners to advanced practitioners are welcome.
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)
DaRa Williams
DaRa Williams is a trainer, meditation teacher and psychotherapist. DaRa has been a meditator for the past 25 years and is a practitioner of both Vipassana and Ascension meditation. She is a graduate of the Spirit Rock/Insight Meditation Society Teacher Training Program and is currently a Guiding Teacher at IMS. She is the Program Manager and a core teacher in the current IMS Teacher Training. DaRa has been a clinician and administrator in the field of Mental Health for over 25 years and currently maintains a private practice in Manhattan. She is a certified trainer and practitioner of Indigenous Focusing Oriented Therapy and Complex Trauma. DaRa integrates these skills, understandings and world views in her intention for contributing to the ending of suffering for all beings.
“Both formerly and now, it is only suffering that I describe, and the cessation of suffering.” The Buddha
karen g. williams
karen g. williams, Ph.D. (she/her) is on New York Insight’s Teachers Council and the board of Insight Meditation Society. She also co-chairs the Diversity, Equity and Liberation committee at New York Insight. In 2017 she graduated from the joint Insight Meditation Society and Spirit Rock Community Dharma Leader Training Program; and since then she has taught around the NYC metropolitan area, primarily in communities of color and in the LGBTQI community. karen is an Assistant Professor of Anthropology at Guttman Community College. Her research focuses on the carceral state and the aftermath of mass incarceration. Specifically, her scholarship examines how the institutionalization of evidence-based practices has ushered in a new wave of governance, one that synthesizes punitive power with systems of care within prisons. She brings mindfulness and meditative practices to her research and teaching to build compassionate engagement and to recognize the interconnectedness of all things. When karen is not writing or teaching, she can be found knitting or inhabiting her alter ego, “BackAlley Dred” (ohh, dare we talk about egos) who coaches junior roller derby.