Cultivating Wise Attention with Gina LaRoche and Melanie Cherng

Location: Summit Presbyterian Church

Address: 6757 Greene Street, Philadelphia, PA 19119

Date: 21 Sep

Join Gina LaRoche and Melanie Cherng for a daylong session of practice and discussion, hosted by Delaware Valley Insight.

Description

Cultivating Wise Attention: daily life conditions as fertile ground for practice: We will cultivate wise attention by seeing the truth of the way things are and embracing curiosity amidst life's challenges. We will explore:

• How do we bring curiosity and awareness to any situation, regardless of conditions?
• What are my personal hindrances to formal practice?
• What allows for awareness to be natural and what hinders it?
• How does wise attention shape our practice?

Come and discover how daily life's conditions become the rich soil from which your practice unfolds.

This is a hybrid event; the in-person portion will be at Summit Presbyterian Church, 6757 Greene St, Philadelphia, PA 19119 while the concurrent online portion will be via Zoom. Gina and Melanie will be in-person at the Summit Presbyterian Church.

This program is appropriate for both new and experienced meditators. Everyone is welcome.

Dana (Generosity) will be well received and shared with Gina and Melanie to support them in offering this program.

Teacher Bios: Gina LaRoche (she/her) was introduced to meditation in 2000 and had a sporadic mindfulness practice for a decade. In 2010 she began attending residential retreats out of a curiosity of what it would be like to practice in noble silence. Since that time, Gina has participated in several IMS retreats, sitting the annual People of Color retreat as well as other retreats with teachers such as Gina Sharpe, Larry Yang, Sharon Salzberg and DaRa Williams. She was a teacher at the New Haven (Connecticut) Insight Sangha now called Elm Community Insight and now serves as their board chair. She is a member of Cambridge Insight Mediation Center and sits often with the POC affinity group. An entrepreneur at heart, she is the co-founder and director of Seven Stones Leadership Group, where she is an organizational leadership consultant, facilitator and coach. She works with leaders to develop personal mindfulness practices that can then be brought into their organizations. Gina is a writer and collage artist, and the co-author of The Seven Laws of Enough: Cultivating a Life of Sustainable Abundance (Parallax Press).

In 2014, Gina was nominated by Sharon Salzberg for the Community Dharma Leaders Program at Spirit Rock where she graduated in 2017. She has completed the eight-week MBSR training. She is currently on the Board of Insight Mediation Society in Barre, MA.

Melanie “Mel” Huitse Cherng (she, her) was born and raised in a family that practices Pure Land Buddhism, and as a young adult she practiced meditation in the Chan tradition. She began exploring Vipassana meditation in 2010 at both IMS and Cambridge Insight Meditation Center, where she has been a People of Color affinity group leader and is currently a leader of the 35 & Under sangha. A licensed acupuncturist and herbalist, dancer, and qigong practitioner, she is interested in exploring different ways to hold open, spacious practice spaces that provide rest, transformation, and healing for her communities.