Classes and Workshops
UP COMING CLASSES FOR 2025
FOUNDATIONS OF MINDFULNESS
January 9, 2025 @ 7:00 PM
(Hybrid)
In just four weeks, transform your relationship with stress, anxiety, and life’s challenges through our time-tested Zen mindfulness practices. Join us at the Zen Life & Meditation Center, where for over 10 years we’ve guided thousands to find clarity and calm in the heart of Chicago.
MINDFULNESS AND THE ART OF IMPERFECT PARENTING
Begins Wednesday, Jan. 29, 2025 @ 7:30 PM
(online only)
5 week course, Wed. evenings from 7:30–9:00 PM
Perfect parents don’t exist–we all struggle and make mistakes. Despite the many joys of being a parent, we also experience a flood of other feelings like anger, frustration, anxiety, guilt, overwhelm, and loneliness . . . sound familiar?
This 5-week course is designed to help you slow down, build compassionate awareness and transform the way you relate to parenting challenges and stress. Join us as we explore mindfulness, meditation, and practice rooted in insights from both science and Zen Buddhism to cultivate more calm, presence, and balance in our lives as parents. Caregivers of children of all ages are welcome, and no past experience in meditation is required.
PATH OF ZEN: From Chaos to Clarity
Begins Saturday, Feb. 15, 2025 @ 10:00 AM
(Hybrid)
5 week course, Wed. evenings from 7:30–9:00 PM
Explore the essence of Zen spirituality through clear, practical teachings from an experienced Zen Master. This course guides you from mindfulness to profound spiritual awakening.
Course Highlights:
• Understand the turning point from mindfulness to deeper spiritual practice
• Explore how the ego contributes to suffering and learn to transcend it
• Embrace a life guided by vow, leading to greater joy, meaning, and service
Writers Workshop
Release Your Creativity Energy and Renew Your Writing
Begins Saturday, March 22, 2025 @ 2:00 PM
6 week course
Have you been working on a book or writing project for years? Have you used vacation time “to write” only to not write at all? Have you been describing the same book project for years but no further along than you were last year? Have you been thinking about a book or writing projecty and not started it? Welcome to Our World! We may have a book or writing project inside of us that we want to exist – and yet, it doesn’t make it from head to hands to readers. Why is that? Can we change that?
Course will be limited to 10 people.
WEEKLY YOGA
EVERY WED. @ 9:00 AM
Alignment based yoga that is meditative and focuses on integrating body and mind.
YOGA FOR MEDITATORS
ONCE A MONTH
These gentle yoga classes are designed to help you have more ease and flexibility for meditation. Everyone is welcome!
Hula, like Zen is life! It is the dance and heartbeat of the Hawaiian people. It includes mindful awareness of body, arms, hands and feet.
ONLINE SELF-PACED OFFERINGS
ONLINE SELF-PACED CLASSES
These online courses are self-paced and taught by our Abbot, Roshi Robert Althouse. All three of our core curriculum classes are represented here:
• Foundations of Mindfulness
• Path of Zen
• Six Paramitas: Courage and Grace Under Fire
Buy a series and take it at your own pace.
