This annual cutting-edge conference hosts leading therapists and teachers who are exploring the confluence of nondual wisdom and psychotherapy. How does psychotherapy change when therapists and clients begin to realize they are not separate from the whole of life, that their true nature is lucid Awareness?

NONDUALITY

Nonduality is a term originally derived from the Sanskrit word Advaita which means “not-two”. What is not two is the apparent split between the perceiver and the perceived, subject and object, self and world. While these polarized distinctions appear to be obvious and are both deeply ingrained and quite compelling, they are fundamentally mental constructs. For millennia sages from a variety of wisdom traditions, both east and west, have penetrated these dichotomies and described an underlying unitive awareness that can be directly experienced. Contact with this, either spontaneously or through practice, brings an awakening out of conventional dualistic identity into a non-state of spacious, open, lucid, radiantly empty awareness, which is often referred to as our true or essential nature. Once quite rare, these nondual “awakenings” are happening with increasing frequency and have significant implications for the field of psychology and psychotherapy.

History of the conference

The first Conference on Nondual Wisdom and Psychotherapy was held in the summer of 1998 at the Mt. Madonna Center in Watsonville , California , a few hours south of San Francisco . It was hosted by The Center For Timeless Wisdom, a non-profit organization established by Peter Fenner, Ph.D.. Subsequent conferences have been held annually since 2000 in the San Francisco Bay Area. The 2005 Conference was hosted by the Institute of Transpersonal Psychology in Palo Alto , California . The 2006 Conference was hosted by John F. Kennedy University in Pleasant Hill , California . The 2007 and 2008 conferences were hosted by the California Institute of Integral Studies in San Francisco .

Who can attend?

Anyone is welcome to attend. While the conference presentations are geared towards the theory and practice of psychotherapy and are available to be taken for continuing education units, they are accessible to the interested public. Many graduate students and psychology interns attend along with licensed psychotherapists. Clergy, bodyworkers, and students of nondual teachings will also find the presentations of special interest.

CLICK HERE TO DOWNLOAD THE NDWP PROGRAM

Speakers

Peter Fenner, ph.d.

Founder and Director of Education, Timeless Wisdom,
Palo Alto, California

Peter has a Ph.D. in the philosophical psychology of the Madhyamika school of Mahayana Buddhism. His teachers included Lama Thubten Yeshe, Lama Thubten Zopa Rinpoche, Geshe Thubten Loden, Geshe Lhundup Sopa, Namkhai Norbu Rinpoche and Sogyal Rinpoche. He was a celibate monk for nine years.  He taught Asian philosophy and psychology for over 20 years at Australian Universities and supervised numerous postgraduate students. He subsequently founded the Center for Timeless Wisdom (wisdom.org), a Californian nonprofit organization, which offers the 9 month Radiant Mind course and 9 month Nondual Teacher Training.  Peter teachers in USA, Europe, Israel and Australia. His books include "Radiant Mind—Awakening the unconditioned awareness," "Sacred Mirror: Nondual Wisdom and Psychotherapy," "The Edge of Certainty: Paradoxes on the Buddhist Path," "Essential Wisdom Teachings," "Reasoning into Reality," and "The Ontology of the Middle Way."

Judith Blackstone, Ph.d.

Center for Spiritual Psychotherapy and Embodiment, NYC
Faculty, Institute of Transpersonal Psychology
Founder of Realization Process

Judith Blackstone, Ph.D., developed Realization Process and has taught it throughout the United States and Europe, and at Esalen Institute since 1987. She has been a clinical psychotherapist for over twenty-five years, and is on the faculty of the Institute of Transpersonal Psychology. She is the author of The Subtle Self The Enlightenment Process; Living Intimately The Empathic Ground: Intersubjectivity and Nonduality in the Psychotherapeutic Process and “Intersubjectivity and Nonduality in the Psychotherapeutic Relationship” in Listening from the Heart of Silence (Paragon House, 2007) and the Journal of Transpersonal Psychology (2006).

Rudy Bauer, ph.d.

Co-Director, Washington Center for Consciousness Studies Washington D.C.

Rudolph Bauer Ph.D. is a Diplomat in Clinical Psychology and holds Consultant Status in The American Society of Clinical Hypnosis. His postdoctoral studies include phenomenology at the University of Leuven, Belgium, psychoanalytic psychotherapy as well as phenomenological psychotherapy. He has over 30 papers and chapters on topics in psychotherapy. He was Director of Psychology Training at The University of Maryland Medical School as well as a faculty member of Johns Hopkins University. He is currently Co Director of The Washington Center for Consciousness Studies where he teaches seminars in non dual psychotherapy as well as Dzogchen awareness meditation. He has had the great fortune of studying for over 30 years with wonderful Masters of Kashmir Shaivism , Dzogchen Tibetan Buddhism and Daoist Qigong. Every morning he and his wife Sharon teach meditation practice through live video streaming on the internet www.meditatelive.com.

Peter Wrycza, ph.d.

Founder-Director, Nirarta Centre for Living Awareness, Bali
Founder, International Academy for Transformational Coaching and Leadership, Bali and Moscow

Peter has been exploring the links between non-dual awareness and personal and group transformation for the past 35 years. He is the founder of the International Academy for Transformational Coaching and Leadership and the Nirarta Centre for Living Awareness in Bali, where he lives when not travelling and teaching internationally. His doctoral research concerned the role of higher states of consciousness in literary creativity and poetics. He is the author of Living Awareness: Awakening to the Roots of Learning and Perception, and co-author of When Performance Meets Alignment: A Compass for Coaching and Mentoring,Moksha, and Living in the Spirit.

Dorothy Hunt, LCSW

Spiritual Teacher and Director, Moon Mountain Sangha, Inc.
Founder, San Francisco Center for Meditation and Psychotherapy
Licensed psychotherapist in practice since 1967

Dorothy Hunt, L.C.S.W. is a non-dual teacher who serves as the Spiritual Director of Moon Mountain Sangha. She teaches at the request and in the spiritual lineage of Adyashanti. Dorothy has practiced psychotherapy since 1967 and is the founder of the San Francisco Center for Meditation and Psychotherapy. She is the author of Only This!, editor of Love: A Fruit Always in Season, and a contributing author to both The Sacred Mirror: Nondual Wisdom and Psychotherapy, vol. 1 and Listening from the Heart of Silence: Nondual Wisdom and Psychotherapy, vol. 2. Dorothy offers satsang, dokusan and retreats in the Bay area and elsewhere by invitation.

John Prendergast, ph.d.

Adjunct Assistant Professor of Psychology, California Institute of Integral Studies
Senior Editor of The Sacred Mirror and Listening from the Heart of Silence

John J. Prendergast, Ph.D., is an Adjunct Associate Professor of Psychology at CIIS and has a private practice in San Rafael. He is the senior editor (with Peter Fenner and Sheila Krystal) of The Sacred Mirror (2003) and (with Ken Bradford)  of Listening from the Heart of Silence: Nondual Wisdom & Psychotherapy, Volume 2 (2007).

Marlies Cocheret, MA, CHP

Certified Hakomi practitioner
Spiritual teacher in the lineage of Adyashanti
Counselor in private practice in Santa Cruz

Marlies Cocheret de la Morinière MA, CHP, is a certified Hakomi practitioner, a spiritual teacher in the lineage of Adyashanti, and a counselor in private practice in Santa Cruz, CA. She works with individuals, couples and groups in USA, Canada and the Netherlands.

John Astin, ph.d.

Executive Director, The Baumann Institute
Research Scientist, California Pacific Medical Center

John Astin received his PhD in Health Psychology from the University of California, Irvine and completed postdoctoral training at the Stanford University School of Medicine. From 2000-2002, he served on the faculty at the Center for Integrative Medicine at the University of Maryland School of Medicine. Since 2002, he has held an appointment as a research scientist at California Pacific Medical Center in San Francisco, CA where he serves as the co-director of the Mind-Body Medicine Research Group. Along with his scholarly pursuits, John is also an accomplished singer, songwriter and recording artist having produced 6 albums of original spiritual-contemplative music that are distributed worldwide. He is also the author of Too Intimate for Words, and This Is Always Enough, collections of poetry and prose reflections on the nature of non-dual awareness.

Raja Selvam, PhD

Faculty, Somatic Experiencing Professional (SE) Training Programs
Faculty, Santa Barbara Graduate Institute
President, Trauma Vidya

Raja Selvam, Ph.D., a senior Somatic Experiencing (SE) trainer and a faculty member at the Santa Barbara Graduate Institute, lectures and teaches in the U.S., England, France, Germany, Holland, Belgium, Denmark, Switzerland, Italy, Israel, India, China, and Brazil. Raja’s increasingly eclectic approach draws from bodywork systems of Postural Integration and Biodynamic Cranio-Sacral Therapy, body-psychotherapy systems of Bioenergetics and Bodynamic Analysis, Jungian and Archetypal psychologies, psychoanalytic schools of Object Relations and Inter-Subjectivity, Somatic Experiencing (SE), Affective Neuroscience, and Advaita Vedanta, a spiritual tradition from India.

Lynn Marie-Lumiere, MFT

Family Therapist and Somatic Experiencing Practitioner

Lynn Marie Lumiere, MFT is a psychotherapist with 20 years experience. She has been involved with the exploration of nondual wisdom and psychotherapy since its beginning, and is one of the authors of the first book on that topic, The Sacred Mirror. She is co-author with John Lumiere-Wins, of The Awakening West.

Stephan Bodian, MA, MFT

Stephan has practiced and taught nondual approaches to truth for more than 35 years. After a series of deepening realizations, he received Dharma transmission (authorization to teach) from Adyashanti, a teacher in the spiritual wisdom tradition of Zen and Advaita. His life is now devoted to igniting and fostering the flame of truth in others through his counseling, mentoring, teaching, and writing. He's the author of the popular guidebook "Meditation for Dummies." His other books include "Living Yoga" (with Georg Feuerstein); "Timeless Visions, Healing Voices; and Buddhism for Dummies" (with Jonathan Landaw). Stephan also contributed the chapter "Deconstructing the Self: The Uses of Inquiry in Nondual Psychotherapy" for the anthology The Sacred Mirror (Paragon, 2003). His latest book is "Wake Up Now: A Guide to the Journey of Spiritual Awakening." www.stephanbodian.org.

Kenneth Bradford, Ph.D.

G. Kenneth Bradford, PhD, is a licensed psychologist in private practice, specializing in Existential-Contemplative psychotherapy. In addition to teaching advanced professional trainings in this specialization, he is an Adjunct Professor at John F. Kennedy University; formerly, Co-Director of Maitri Psychotherapy Institute. Ken has been a practitioner in the Theravada and Tibetan Buddhist traditions, particularly dzogchen, for over 30 years, and is in the vanguard applying meditative and non-dual sensibilities to the practice of psychotherapy. His recent publications include, Listening from the heart of silence: Nondual wisdom and psychotherapy (Edited with John Prendergast) and articles on, “Therapeutic Courage,” “Natural Resilience,” “The Play of Unconditioned Presence in Existential-Integrative Psychotherapy,” and “The Journey is the Goal: The Legacy of James Bugental.”

Loch Kelly, MDiv., LCSW

Loch Kelly , MDiv., LCSW has graduate degrees from Columbia University and Union Theological in Psychology and Spirituality, where he was awarded a fellowship to study Dzogchen and Advaita in Sri Lanka, India and Nepal from 1981-2. He is a non-dual psychotherapist who taught meditation for twenty five years and was a member of the New Insight Meditation Teachers Council. He is authorized to teach meditation by Mingyur Rinpoche and was invited to teach in Adyashanti's Lineage. Loch is the Founder and Director of the non-profit Natural Wakefulness Center in New York City and teaches the 8 month Course of Awakening. www.lochkelly.org