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.

When we bring mindfulness to our relationships and communication we create more wholeness in our hearts, connection in our communities, and efficacy in our work in the world. This program will offer foundational principles and practices for bringing mindfulness to all your relationships and conversations, to build a more effective and meaningful dialogue. You’ll learn skills to understand and transform your own habitual communication patterns, create understanding with others (regardless of how they’re speaking to you), and develop an inner foundation of clarity, kindness, and resilience to bring to difficult interactions.

Oren Jay Sofer teaches mindfulness, meditation, and nonviolent communication in secular and Buddhist contexts. In this module of Essential Mindfulness, he will lead an exploration of the basics of bringing more presence to conversations and relationships, as well as key tools from Marshall Rosenberg’s Nonviolent Communication from a mindfulness-based perspective.