Amita Schmidt is a licensed clinical social worker with a focus on trauma and meditation. She was the resident teacher at Insight Meditation Society from 2000-2006. She is the author of "Dipa Ma: The Life and Legacy of a Buddhist Master." She also has practiced with Adyashanti, a teacher of non-dual awareness.
This talk offers several practices and reflections on how to rest in your infinite essence/true nature. It also includes reflections on how to unblend from the constant commercials of your mind and the worries of your life.
This talk explores ways to increase your Spiritual Solidarity, both inner and outer, during difficult times. Included are ways to regulate your nervous system, and also connect with your deeper purpose.
This is a meditation will help you connect, regulate, repair, and soothe parts of yourself during difficult times. It includes principles from Internal Family Systems (IFS) and Metta (lovingkindness).
A response to a question about feeling joy during difficult times. The student was concerned that feeling joy might decrease connections with others who are suffering. They also felt some guilt about feeling joy when others were in pain.
Our true nature is loving awareness, and this talk gives you practices to strengthen both awareness and love. Learn to move from "my" awareness to THE awareness in every day of your life.
In this talk you will learn tools to loosen the attachment to the ego perspective: how to step outside the snow globe of you; how to move away from the trance of thoughts; and ways to pendulate to a bigger perspective/view. This talk also has some science quotations from Donald Hoffman and others on infinite consciousness.
This talk offers some basic tools and reflections to help meditation students with Depression and Anxiety. You will learn to recognize the optical illusions of mind, label distorted thinking patterns, and unblend from difficult mindstates.
If you have incessant or debilitating doubts here are a few strategies, including how to see/work with it as a part, and help update this part. Also includes a brief description about what Dipa Ma did for students.
It's important to have an orienting principle for Artificial Intelligence or AI. This talk will help you find an orienting principle, as well as give you tools and practices to use during times of great change.
The no self strategy of the Buddha is a tool for awakening. This talk includes a reflection on the 5 aggregates (5 characteristics that create the illusion of a self), as well as some daily micro practices/reflections to decrease the attachment to a separate self.
This talk explains the difference between horizontal verses vertical dharma practice. The talk also explores "The Four Reflections," or lojong teachings to inspire your sitting and daily life practice. These include reflections on precious human birth, impermanence/death, suffering, and karma.
A unique vertical, guided meditation for dropping below your thinking, to the body breathing, and then to awareness itself. This meditation is unique in that it doesn't try to stop thinking, but includes it as part of a vertical awareness of your whole being, here now.
Questions and Answers: 1)Why meditation can make your memory worse.
2) Why does practice create sadness sometimes? 3) Dementia and true nature. 4) Some reflections on chronic illness
Thinking itself is actually just a part, a protector part, and this meditation will help you have compassion for this part. The meditation will also give you insight into your thinking and what it's true purpose is. Knowing this will help you on the meditation cushion and in your daily life practice.
Instead of trying to bring mindfulness to emotions from the inside out, this meditation will help you develop awareness of the calm outside of emotions (eg. the outside of the storm). Some people have found this tool to be very useful in decreasing anxiety, overwhelm, and fear.
The first 3 minutes explains about Kuan Yin, and the practice of Compassion as a listening and bearing witness to suffering. Then there is a short and simple, 5 min Kuan Yin meditation, on listening with the ear of the heart.
This is a short, guided meditation exercise in extending forgiveness to a part of yourself. The meditation is designed for healing, and you can practice it as many times as needed, for different ages/parts of yourself.
A brief, additional comment to a student, who mentioned that my suggestion of a practice of "listening to all thoughts like they were a birdsong" was helpful to her.
A dharma talk about how to strengthen your spiritual resilience/immunity. This talk introduces the idea of dharma micro-dosing and includes some practices to do on a daily basis.
A daily practice to move out of the worries of your mind. This heart reset reminds you what's true verses what you fear. The heart perspective is quite different than the mind, and this meditation will connect you with this wisdom.
This meditation will help you connect with what is here now that outlasts death. Once you know and feel this, you can use it as an orienting principle to feel more calm and relaxed no matter what happens in your life.
In times of difficulty and change, it is important to orient to what doesn't change, what is deathless. This talk gives you some tools/reminders on how to access the one unchanging thing. The talk also offers ways to unhook from your story and the mind's constant narrative.
Tonglen is a guided meditation of Tibetan origin that is a reparative response to pain. It is a meditation that actually helps create connection in the midst of suffering. Tenzin Choedrak, during his time of torture, made a daily dedication, "May some human greatness be accomplished through this suffering."
A podcast interview by Todd McLeod where we talk about Adyashanti, the root guru, pure zen, collapsing into the now, THIS IS IT, everything is one thing, dropping the illusion of the individual self, the survival instinct and evolution, you are the infinite, impermanence, and realizing exponential love.
May this be the year for you to Awaken. Strategies, tools, and insights to move towards awakening even in difficult times. This talk is also available via video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UhZZONPLjoc
This is a guided meditation that can help you with concerns about the future. It accesses your Wisdom Self. There is a short version (this one) and a longer version (25 min).
Questions about; 1) listening to the dharma 2) how to reset from difficult experiences 3)what exists after we die 4) facing environmental change 5)and using the momentum of the stress of these times to awaken.
If you have concerns about the future this is a meditation to access your Wisdom Self. This is a longer version (25 min) and there is a shorter version available as well (10 min). Many people find this meditation very helpful and do it regularly.
A progressive meditation on letting go that simulates the death process. Letting go of the senses, emotions, thoughts, and perception. See what remains.
The dharma of difficult emotions. How to work with thoughts and emotions and find freedom through them. This talk is also on You Tube via Amita Schmidt. Here is the Spiritual Credo handout that goes with this talk: https://amitaschmidt.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/11/Spiritual-Credo.pdf
Question and Answers including: What is the one breath and one awareness? What is a spiritual bypass? What is a way to open up space when stuck in emotions? How do we act with right action in Buddhism?
A 20 min equanimity meditation that will help you navigate inner and outer difficulties. This meditation shows you how to rest in the eye of the storm, and open up space within the difficulty itself.
This talk explores tools to navigate the Cauldron of Emotions that is our changing times. The tools include working with the pain body, balancing and healing our psychology, equanimity practices, and zeroing out the mind. For the slides and video portion here is a video link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nB_zczbV8xE
The introduction to First Aid for the Soul, and dharma during times of change/annica. This introduction includes the trauma tool of "cat up the tree meditation."
During times of trauma, it's important to learn how to find a true refuge within you heart and mind. This talk will help you find some ways to do this. The talk was part of a zoom retreat with video clips and handouts, can see the video version at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BhAbMCLtfsQ&list=PLRGY6UiIOqoB-qwIQX53J-Bb5RH7T9FIs&index=2&t=6s
This is the introduction to a retreat on Finding a True Refuge During Times of Trauma. This introduction is about helping your nervous system reset in the pandemic or during any difficult time. It was part of zoom retreat with a film clip so if you want to see the video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OlA1_m33BQ4&list=PLRGY6UiIOqoB-qwIQX53J-Bb5RH7T9FIs&index=1
