IMS Online Learning Center

This program is now closed to new registrations.

Mindfulness is a quality of awareness in which our perception of the present moment’s experience is not distorted by biases such as old fears, assumptions, or projection into the future. It shows us what life looks like when we see through the lens of universal conditions such as impermanence and interconnection. Mindfulness spearheads the path of understanding our lives by helping us to notice what causes us suffering and what brings us freedom from suffering. It is the root of living our lives more fully and more truly. 

This program explores the meditative techniques of mindfulness applied in a variety of contexts, including wrestling with dukkha, making ethical decisions, seeking wisdom, coping with trauma, communicating, practicing lovingkindness, exploring equanimity, the commonality of science and mindfulness, and the role of mindfulness in everyday life.

Whether you use mindfulness to manage stress or difficult emotions, improve relationships, increase engagement, or enhance your overall well-being, these discussions can help you further live your mindfulness practice. This nine-month program features IMS teachers from many generations and backgrounds. You can participate in all nine months or pick and choose the topics that interest you most.

Translated from Pali as “unsatisfactoriness” but commonly known as “suffering,” dukkha is often the embarkation point for many on their contemplative journey. Meeting with dukkha is frequently the trigger for familiar patterns of reactivity that tie us to distress and confusion. Sati—translated as “memory” or “retention” but commonly known as “mindfulness”—is the tool we need to begin to unpack these reactive patterns, so that we may release ourselves from the cycle of dukkha.

Christina Feldman is a guiding teacher emeritus at IMS and the co-founder of IMS’s popular women’s retreat. In this module of Essential Mindfulness, she explores the relationship between dukkha and sati. She also reflects on the nuances of these two words as they are described in the early teachings of the Buddha and what their various translations illustrate about the practice.