Guided Meditations from Senior teacher Celeste Young.
 
Titles include: 

10 minute Mindfulness of Breath Meditation

15 minute Mindfulness of the Body Meditation

15 minute Mindfulness of Emotions Meditation

15 minute Loving-Kindness (Metta) Meditation

24 minute Loving-Kindness (Metta) Meditation

25 minute Choiceless Awareness Meditation

25 minute Mindfulness of Thinking Meditation

27 minute Compassion (Karuna) Meditation Meditation

30 minute Equanimity (Upekkha) Meditation

Celeste Young: Guided Meditations.

Equanimity refers to the mind's capacity for finding balance and stability. These meditation instructions are found within the traditional 4 Brahma Vihara teachings on how to cultivate and awaken the boundless heart. In this practice, equanimity is cultivated and nurtured through the use of phrases and wise intention.

30 minute Equanimity Meditation with Celeste Young

Compassion is the awakened heart's natural response to suffering. These meditation instructions are found within the traditional four Brahma Vihara teachings on how to cultivate and awaken the boundless heart. In this practice compassion is cultivated and nurtured through the use of phrases and wise intention.

27 minute Compassion Practice with Celeste Young

In this meditation we learn the subtle difference between simply thinking a thought and becoming aware of a thought as it's arising in the mind. Through gentle noting and labeling, we can learn to observe the patterns of mind that arise and to also observe them as they also pass away when we don't follow them. Thoughts can come and go as they wish, but the meditator doesn't need to become involved with them! This is a liberating insight. Learn to rest in the awareness of thought instead of our habit of identification with the thinking mind and free yourself from mental afflictions.

25 minute Mindfulness of Thinking Meditation with Celeste Young

Find a sense of spaciousness and ease as you sit up straight right in the midst of experience unfolding…moment to moment. In choiceless awareness practice, we allow whatever is most predominant in our field of mindful attention to become our temporary object and to just rest in the field of spacious attention as experiences come and go, rather than continuing to come back to one anchor like the breath.

Celeste Young Meditations

25 minute Choiceless Awareness Meditation with Celeste Young

“Gather your attention around the intention to cultivate metta in the heart and mind.” "Metta", or Lovingkindness is a meditation practice in which we deliberately cultivate the capacity for caring and kindness. It is an aspect of the awakened heart, known as the "boundless abodes" or "Brahma Viharas" in Buddhist psychology. In this practice, we work with the repetition of phrases as our anchor, gently resting attention in the heartspace.

24 minute Loving Kindness (Metta) Meditation with Celeste Young

Lovingkindness is a meditation practice in which we deliberately cultivate the capacity for caring and kindness. It is an aspect of the awakened heart, known as the "boundless abodes" or "Brahma Viharas" in Buddhist psychology. In this practice, we work with the repetition of phrases as our anchor, gently resting attention in the heartspace.

15 minute Loving Kindness (Metta) Meditation with Celeste Young

In this meditation we learn to practice opening to the full range of our emotional experience with open, non-judgmental, and kind attention. As we rest in mindful awareness, we can experience emotions directly- recognizing feelings, allowing them to be as they are, and investigating the experience with curiosity and presence.

15 minutes Mindfulness Of Emotion Meditation  with Celeste Young

The Buddha taught mindfulness of the body as the first foundation of our practice. In this meditation, we learn to work with the direct experience of sensations as they arise and pass away and to inhabit the body fully with presence and caring attention. “There is an immediate experience of sensation - this river of sensation -- and that immediate experience of sensation is where we learn to rest our attention when we are practicing mindfulness of the body.”

15min Mindfulness of the Body Meditation with Celeste Young

Take ten minutes to connect with your breath and realign your body in this light and restorative guided mediation. With characteristic clarity and calm, Senior Teacher Celeste Young gently guides you to rest and relax into the center of your own natural tranquility. “The moment you notice you’re lost in the mindstream, you’re no longer lost."

10 minute Mindfulness Of The Breath Meditation with Celeste Young

This 30-minute heart practice was presented as part of a retreat talk given on 11/10/19.  The full class, including introductory remarks and a post-practice Q&A is available at https://soundcloud.com/insightla_meditation/20191110-005-50m-class-young?in=insightla_meditation/sets/2019-fall-into-silence-retreat-with-christiane-wolf-celeste-young .

May you be safe and protected from both inner and outer harm.
May you be truly happy and deeply peaceful.
May you be healthy (or live with ease) both in body and mind.
May you be free from suffering.

May I be safe and protected from both inner and outer harm.
May I be truly happy and deeply peaceful.
May I be healthy (or live with ease) both in body and mind.
May I be free from suffering.

00:00:00 Trudy’s introduction.
00:00:26 Meditation Begins: Be at Ease.
00:01:35 First Bell, Seated Posture, Relaxation, Body Sensations & Feeling Tone.
00:06:07 Metta-for-a-Beloved-Being: Visualization, Phrases.
00:13:11 Metta-for-Self: Visualization, Phrases, Challenges.
00:19:09 Metta-for-a-Benefactor: Visualization, Phrases.
00:23:27 Metta-for-a-Neutral-Person: Visualization, Phrases.
00:27:03 Metta-for-the-Sangha: Visualization, Phrases.
00:29:18 Survey Your Heart. 
00:31:05 Three Bells, Meditation Ends.
00:31:44 Trudy’s Close.
00:32:06 End of Program.

Celeste began formal meditation practice in 2002. She was invited to join the very first teacher development cohort at InsightLA under the guidance of founder Trudy Goodman in 2011 and has since taught thousands of students the essentials of mindfulness over the years. Celeste offers several classes a week as a core teacher at ILA, in both the mindfulness and Dharma programs, and sits on the InsightLA teacher’s council.

In addition, she teaches mindfulness for companies and non-profit organizations, works with individuals privately, and leads workshops, daylongs, and residential retreats both locally and internationally. Her background includes many years as a yoga practitioner, Peter Levine’s somatic experiencing training, Spirit Rock’s Advanced Practitioner Program and over a decade of sitting silent meditation retreat each year, with a strong commitment to long retreats of 1-3 months. In 2017 she was given teacher transmission in the Theravada Buddhist lineage by Trudy Goodman and Jack Kornfield. She loves sharing the practice of mindfulness with others and strongly believes in the power of mindful awareness to heal and re-connect us to our own inherent sense of ease and well-being.

2019 Fall into Silence Retreat

11/10/2019 Celeste Young, “Metta Practice,” a 30 min. guided meditation.

The heart practices (also known as the brahma viharas or divine abodes) enable us to put aside our conditioned, ego-centered perspectives, open our hearts, an extend goodwill to ourselves and others.  

We begin with metta, the heart quality of lovingkindness, universal goodwill, the first of the four qualities of the awakened heart.  When metta meets suffering it expresses itself as compassion, the wish to alleviate the suffering of another being.  Likewise when metta meets another’s happiness it manifests as appreciative or sympathetic joy- happiness in another's happiness, even if it's not our own.  When the open heart of meets the “ten thousand joy and sorrows” (the vissicitudes of life) it expresses the the stability of mind and heart we call equanimity. 

We develop metta by moving through progressive stages, generating goodwill first where it is easiest, and step-by-step expanding that expression outward: metta-for-a-beloved-person, metta-for-a-neutral-person, and on to eventually include those who are difficult and all beings everywhere, without exception. In this session, we will be extending the practice to the neutral person and our fellow retreatants.  In this way, we become familiar with “our edges,” where we find it difficult to extend goodwill, areas to reflect and work on.

May you be safe and protected from both inner and outer harm.
May you be truly happy and deeply peaceful.
May you be healthy (or live with ease) both in body and mind.
May you be free from suffering.

May I be safe and protected from both inner and outer harm.
May I be truly happy and deeply peaceful.
May I be healthy (or live with ease) both in body and mind.
May I be free from suffering.

00:00:00 Trudy’s introduction.
00:00:23 On Metta as Process of Purification.
00:07:54 Meditation Begins: Be at Ease.
00:09:03 First Bell, Seated Posture, Relaxation, Body Sensations & Feeling Tone.
00:13:35 Metta-for-a-Beloved-Being: Visualization, Phrases.
00:20:39 Metta-for-Self: Visualization, Phrases, Challenges.
00:26:36 Metta-for-a-Benefactor: Visualization, Phrases.
00:30:55 Metta-for-a-Neutral-Person: Visualization, Phrases.
00:34:32 Metta-for-the-Sangha: Visualization, Phrases.
00:36:44 Survey Your Heart. 
00:38:33 Three Bells, Meditation Ends.
00:39:08 Q&A Experiencing the Body Breathing vs. Thinking about the Breath.
00:42:51 Q&A Meeting Your Edge: The Near & Far Enemies of Metta.
00:45:39 Q&A Negativity Bias, “Survival Brain,” Recognition, Acknowledgement & Return to the Object.
00:49:29 Returning to Noble Silence.
00:50:02 Trudy’s Close.
00:50:25 End of Program.

Celeste began formal meditation practice in 2002. She was invited to join the very first teacher development cohort at InsightLA under the guidance of founder Trudy Goodman in 2011 and has since taught thousands of students the essentials of mindfulness over the years. Celeste offers several classes a week as a core teacher at ILA, in both the mindfulness and Dharma programs, and sits on the InsightLA teacher’s council.

In addition, she teaches mindfulness for companies and non-profit organizations, works with individuals privately, and leads workshops, daylongs, and residential retreats both locally and internationally. Her background includes many years as a yoga practitioner, Peter Levine’s somatic experiencing training, Spirit Rock’s Advanced Practitioner Program and over a decade of sitting silent meditation retreat each year, with a strong commitment to long retreats of 1-3 months. In 2017 she was given teacher transmission in the Theravada Buddhist lineage by Trudy Goodman and Jack Kornfield. She loves sharing the practice of mindfulness with others and strongly believes in the power of mindful awareness to heal and re-connect us to our own inherent sense of ease and well-being.

11/10/2019 Celeste Young, “On Metta,” a 52 min. class with a talk, a guided meditation & Q&A.

InsightLA offers the highest quality training in mindfulness practices available in the Greater Los Angeles area.  For 16 years, we have offered classes, retreats, and special events, and an open and welcoming community of practitioners.  Though our work is rooted in ancient traditions, we offer classes in both  secular mindfulness as well as the Buddhist Insight Tradition.  All of our efforts are dedicated toward our mission of calming minds, opening hearts, and changing the world.