by Shelley Adler, student
I’ve taken three of Liên Shutt’s classes: Meditation Training, Accessing Ease in Practice, and, most recently, Access to Zen. As part of my work as an educator in integrative medicine and end-of-life care, I’ve been lucky to have the opportunity to experience many types of meditation training, offered by wonderful teachers of different traditions and backgrounds—but Lien’s approach has been uniquely impactful.
Her meditation instruction emphasizes ease, accessibility, inquiry, exploration and joy—illustrated with insightful, often hilarious, personal anecdotes. Lien’s teachings are based in traditional practices, but are blended with a practical approach to incorporating meditation in everyday life.
One quick example of the type of beneficial insight the instruction brings has to do with my favorite hobby, endurance cycling (bike centuries and other long-distance rides). I injured my knee several months ago and had begun to focus on the resulting pain and physical limitation (the “first arrow”). Taking the classes helped me to remove the optional “second arrow” of frustration and discouragement. Rather than fixating on dis-ease, I was able to distinguish between the actual injury and the layers of imagined significance—and that made all the difference not only in my own recovery, but in my increased awareness of others’ experiences of dis-ease.
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Click here for information on Liên’s next installment of Meditation Training: Establishing a Meditation Practice in Four Short Weeks.
