Peak Performance and Flourishing

in Everyday Life During the Pandemic
(via Zoom)

Daniel P. Brown, Ph.D. & Gretchen A. Nelson, M.S., P.T.

Saturday June 6th, 11:00a-2:00p Eastern Time
$100 General Admission

This evidence-based course is an integration of the best of Western scientific research from peak performance and positive psychology with the great contemplative traditions of the East. The course addresses a gap in the Western psychotherapy traditions, which emphasize the eradication of negative emotional states, by instead focusing on the implications of various positive emotional states for psychological and physical health. Through lecture, demonstration, and experiential exercises, you’ll learn how to use mind-training practices to enhance performance excellence, vital engagement in work and everyday activities, mastery over everyday living, and to enhance positivity and pro-social behavior to flourish in everyday life.

Daniel Brown is the author of 15 books including Transformations of Consciousness (with Ken Wilbur & Jack Engler), and a book on Mahamudra, Pointing Out the Great Way: The Mahamudra Tradition of Tibetan Meditation-Stages (Wisdom Publications), and two books on public dialogues with H.H. The Dalai Lama. He is also the co-author of a book on the Bon A Khrid lineage of Bon Great Completion Meditation.

In graduate school at The University of Chicago he studied Sanskrit with Hans van Beutenen, and also studied Tibetan, Buddhist Sanskrit, and Pali languages in the Buddhist Studies Program at the University of Wisconsin, Madison WI. He spent 10 years translating meditation texts for his doctoral dissertation on Tibetan Buddhist Mahamudra meditation.

He has studied meditation practice for about 45 years, beginning with reading Patanjali's Yoga Sutras and its main commentaries in the original Sanskrit with the great historian of religion professor Mircea Eliade, as well as practicing Patanjali's stages of meditation directly with Dr. Arwind Vasavada. At the same time, Dr. Brown studied the Burmese Theravadin Buddhist mindfulness meditation, first with Western teachers in the United States like Jack Kornfield, Joseph Goldstein, Sharon Salzberg, and Christopher Titmus, and then directly with the originator of the Burmese mindfulness tradition, Mahasi Sayadaw in Rangoon, Burma and other masters like Tungpulo Sayadaw and Achaan Cha.

Most of his meditation experience has been squarely centered within the Indo-Tibetan Mahayana Buddhist tradition. He lived with his Tibetan root lama, the Venerable Geshe Wangyal summers between school for about a 10-year period. Geshe Wangyal, H.H. the Dalai Lama, and the Venerable Denmo Locho Rinpoche, former Head Abbott of Namgyal Monastery, the Dalai Lama’s monastery were the main students of senior teacher Ling Rinpoche in the Gelukpa lineage.

Dr. Brown first learned Indo-Tibetan concentration and insight meditation with Geshe Wangyal, and then years later co-taught concentration and insight meditation with Denmo Locho Rinpoche and Yeshe Tapkay at Geshe Wangyal's retreat house over a 15-year period. Dr. Brown learned Mahamudra from numerous Tibetan lamas mainly in the Tilopa/Marpa tradition and its subsidiary traditions, such as the Dwags-po/Karma or 'Seat' lineage, the 'Bri gung' or 'Five Parts' lineage, and the Drug pa or 'One Taste' lineage, and also from the ecumenical Rime movement wherein Mahamudra and Gelukpa emptiness practices were integrated and Mahamudra and Great Completion practices were integrated.

Dr. Brown spent 10 years translating meditation texts from Tibetan and Sanskrit, including translating Tashi Namgyal’s great commentary on the Mahamudra, Moon Beams, as well as translating most of the important Mahamudra meditation practice texts found in Jamgon Kongtrul’s great collection of meditation texts, The Treasury of Instructions.

As a Western psychologist he spent 10 years conducting outcomes research on beginning and advanced meditators.

He has taught meditation retreats for 20 years.

More recently, Dr. Brown has been studying the Nyingma Dzogs Chen [Great Completion] lineage from Garab Dorje and Vairocana with Rahob Tulku Rinpoche, and the Bon po A Khrid and Zhang Zhung snang gyud lineages of Dzogs Chen [Great Completion] lineages with H.H. the 33rd Menri Trizin, Abbott of the Menri Bon Monastery, Donaji, H.P. India, and spiritual head of the Tibetan Bon religion.

Dr. Brown is currently translating both the A Khrid and Six Lamps Bon po Dzogs Chen teachings into English.

danielbrownphd.com

pointingoutway.org

Gretchen began teaching yoga and meditation in 1984, a year after winning the NCAA division 1 Cross Country title for the University of Oregon in 1983, setting a record for the closest finish in history. Due to early onset osteoporosis resulting on hundred’s of stress fractures annually, she decided to specialize in the mind/body in order to be able to access what came naturally to elite athletes in 1985. She was one of the first yoga teachers in this country. Bikram asked Gretchen to train as a teacher when there were only 3 Bikram yoga schools in the country by 1986. Gretchen also mastered Astanga yoga, levels 1 & 2. She was the first Astanga/flow yoga teacher in San Francisco, and at that time there was only Iyengar and Bikram yoga. She was chosen as the yoga teacher for well known San Franciscans such as George Lucas, Tim Burton, and Kamila Harris. She noted that clients often asked about injury, and also that yoga seemed mostly available to affluent white people. She was accepted into UCSF medical school, where she received her MSPT degree in physical therapy. Immediately, Gretchen took her knowledge into the Mission district in San Francisco, where she worked with the Latino population at St Luke’s Community Hospital. In private practice she served the elderly population mainly in their homes, and also rode her bicycle to all kinds of neighborhoods to serve the poor. She is well known to yoga and pilates teachers in the Bay Area for her injury awareness/prevention course for teachers. In order to supplement the lack of focus on the mind as yoga in the West evolved into something physical, Gretchen began taking mindfulness meditation at Spirit Rock, and Zen meditation at Tassajara and Sonoma Mountain. Nothing settled quite right until she came to Dan Brown’s Pointing Out retreat on Tibetan meditation in 2006. She became POGW in 2008. Since then, she is the only Western teacher authorized to teacher level 2 courses, and also the only Westerner other than Dan authorized to teach the advanced Bon Great Completion courses. She, along with Dan were both students of H.H. the 33rd Menri Trizin, the lineage holder of all Bon teachings and Great Completion teachings. For now she is cutting back on teaching courses, in order to have all the necessary patience and energy for Dan as his Parkinson’s continues to progress. She will however continue to follow students one-on-one. When she teaches she has insight, clarity, a sense of humor, cutting through with her wisdom-sword with her unique fierce and fearless delivery. She is very protective of Dan and the Dharma, and as a teacher-couple combination Dan and Gretchen have a wonderful playful complimentary style when teaching together. Sitting all day in front of 50 people has never been her dream-job but she does it to support Dan, and the teachings. Her primary focus now is Dan, training 4 teachers thoroughly to carry on level 1& 2 teachings, as well as overseeing training for Bon teachings with Geshe Sonam Gurung. Gretchen loves the student relationships that develop with 1:1 follow up interviews. She is willing to support Dan by taking on more students, so that Dan doesn’t have to make so many slots available, beyond his physical capacity right now.