Deepening Embodiment: 8-Week Course

Deepening Embodiment is an eight-week online spiritual workshop in Buddhist mindfulness and insight meditation, taught by Stan Eisenstein over Zoom. It is for people who want to come more fully home into the body: to settle the nervous system, find where emotions live, work with pain and discomfort, and listen for the intuitive guidance the body carries. Because it meets online, you can take part from wherever you are.

The course rests on an old idea. The Buddha taught that mindfulness immersed in the body brings many benefits, including overcoming fear and pain and entering deeper states of practice. Embodiment practices can also help train kindness, peace, joy and emotional steadiness, and they support self-inquiry by bringing to light the subconscious knots that shape our habits, so they can be gently untangled.

What to Expect

Across eight live experiential sessions of two hours each, students try a range of meditative techniques for living more fully in the body. The topics unfold in this way:

- Grounding and calming the nervous system
- Finding emotions in the body
- Using body awareness in self-inquiry
- Working with pain and discomfort
- Learning to inhabit the body
- Cultivating intuitive guidance
- Using the felt sense to cultivate desired qualities of being
- Using body awareness to foster spiritual growth

Alongside the live sessions come eight guided meditations, each designed to cultivate a different aspect of embodiment, so the practice continues between meetings. The February 2027 cohort gathers on Wednday evenings from 6:30 to 8:30 p.m. Eastern Time, with information available through the Insight Meditation Community of Washington (IMCW).

Past participants describe a patient, respectful atmosphere. They speak of moving through difficult emotions held in the body for years, meeting physical pain with acceptance rather than resistance, and noticing the felt sense of stress and of losing and regaining grounding. One describes gaining access to "a core, central voice of wisdom" that is available at any moment.

About Stan Eisenstein

Stan Eisenstein is a mindfulness and meditation teacher whose work centers on embodiment, self-kindness, self-inquiry and inner guidance. He says his teaching comes largely from life experience: decades of working to resolve an early trauma through a self-awareness training, therapy, inquiry-based meditation, integrated breathwork, energy practices and ongoing study of Buddhist teachings.

He has meditated since 1988 and practiced Insight Meditation since 2004. He is a full teacher with the Insight Meditation Community of Washington and a graduate of the Meditation Teacher Training Institute. He trained in Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction with Jon Kabat-Zinn in 2004, and has studied Somatic Experiencing, Integrative Breathwork and Tantric Qigong. He holds a Masters of Social Work from the University of Maryland and taught high school physics for 32 years.

Before You Go

Some prior meditation practice is suggested, though no formal prerequisite is listed. The course is taught in English. Tuition covers all eight live sessions and the eight guided meditations, and a scholarship is available by applying directly to the teacher. You will need a device with Zoom and a quiet place to sit or lie down during the evening sessions.