Online: Somatically Sensing – Knowing Thoughts and Emotions through Sensations
with Jill Satterfield
Tuesday, June 24th, 2025 | 7:00pm – 9:00pm ET
When we’re feeling stressed or overwhelmed, our instinct is often to get caught in the story—cycling through the thoughts and emotions we believe are to blame. This can lead to rumination, self-criticism, and even more distress.
But there is another way to meet our experience.
This program offers a direct, embodied approach: turning attention to the felt sense of thoughts and emotions—their physical expression in the body. By exploring how thoughts and feelings show up as sensations, we can relate to them without getting pulled into identification, judgment, or narrative.
Through guided practice and investigation, participants will experience firsthand how this simple shift in awareness can help release emotional knots and bring insight. This approach also reveals how consciousness takes form—and how body and mind interact moment by moment.
Registration:
Please register below. If you are able, registering at the “Supporter” level enables others to attend at the “Subsidized” level. Thank you for your generosity! (Please note that the registration price includes a base level of teacher support, and you will have the opportunity to donate more after the program.)
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Volunteering
All of our programs rely on volunteers to support our teachers and staff with various tasks and responsibilities. Volunteering allows you to participate in our programs at no cost. To inquire about volunteering opportunities, please fill out our inquiry form, and we will get back to you as soon as possible.
Teacher(s)
Jill Satterfield
Jill Satterfield has been a quiet pioneer in the integration of embodied awareness practices and Buddhist teachings for over 30 years.
Her heart/mind and body approach developed from somatic and contemplative psychology, 35 years of Buddhist study, extensive meditation retreat time and decades of living with chronic pain.
At the invitation of her primary teacher, Ajahn Amaro, Jill was the first to offer mindful movement and somatic practices on silent retreats first at Spirit Rock Meditation Center and then the Insight Meditation Society 30 years ago. She has since developed teacher trainings and mentoring programs that integrate embodied awareness with Dharma ever since.
In addition to teaching embodiment and Dharma with Ajahn Amaro, she was also invited to teach on Tsoknyi Rinpoche’s retreats in the US and Nepal. It was at his urging that she teach subtle body practices to his students. She contributed movement practices to his brother Mingyur Rinpoche’s retreats and was a consultant for his 2 best-selling books.
Jill’s Applied Embodied Mindfulness Trainings were part of UCLA’s Mindful Awareness Research Center. She was on the faculty for Spirit Rock’s Mindful Yoga and Meditation Training, and she is currently a mentor for Jack Kornfield and Tara Brach’s Mindfulness Teacher Training, was the scholar and teacher in residence at Kripalu Center in 2003 and is a graduate of the Sati Center’s Buddhist Chaplaincy Training.
Her organization School for Compassionate Action was a training and service organization that taught mindfulness and somatic practices for chronic pain, illness and post 9/11 trauma in NYC hospitals and at-risk facilities for over ten years.
She has been featured in and has written for numerous publications such as Tricycle, Lion’s Roar (who named her one of the 4 leading mindful movement teachers in the country) and the NY Times. She contributed to the book Freeing the Body: Freeing the Mind by Michael Stone.