Artwork by Wesley Cabral

Register by March 27th
Don't worry if you can't make every session — recordings will be shared each Sunday evening so you can revisit the teaching and practice throughout the week.

Who is this for?

New to meditation or just starting out — Learn foundational techniques to build a practice that actually sticks.

Experienced meditators — Discover new approaches to deepen and enrich what you already do.

Practitioners looking for a rooted spiritual tradition — Come home to a practice with real depth, lineage, and heart.

We ignore what is primordially present within us: our buddha nature. Instead, immersed in confused emotions, we chase illusory aims that endlessly result in more deluded experience. That's called samsara.
~ Tulku Urgyen Rinpoche

What is buddha nature?

Buddha nature refers to the aspect of our being that becomes apparent when the distraction of thinking, worrying, and controlling grows quiet. This deeper, awakened nature is rooted in connection: to all beings, to the natural world, to the unseen world, to our ancestors, and to the entire cosmos.

In Vajrayana Buddhism this view is called Sacred World — the understanding that all experience, everything that arises, is an expression of a basic goodness, sanity, and love that weaves through all of existence.

Samsara, as Tulku Urgyen describes above, is what happens when we lose touch with that. We become lost in fear and wishful thinking, cycling through aversion, dullness, and grasping.

Meditation practice creates the container and ground for a journey back into our awakened nature. It offers techniques to loosen the grip of thinking and fixed notions of self, and orients us toward our innate awareness: spacious, responsive, and alive with creative energy.

About this program

This six-week series introduces practices from a somatic style of meditation. Somatic simply means rooted in the lived experience of having a body — using physical sensation, breath, and presence as a gateway to awareness rather than concepts or analysis. Working with the body in this way creates a strong foundation for practice and taps into the deep wells of wisdom and energy we each carry.

We'll also develop and refine a sitting meditation practice alongside these somatic approaches.

The series draws on the view and practice of Vajrayana Buddhism, a tradition from Tibet, via India. As Reginald A. Ray writes in The Awakening Body, our deepest realization is found in "our life, our body, our emotions and relationships, from the totality of this rugged, gritty human incarnation of ours." Not by withdrawing from life, but by turning toward our experience, exactly as it is.

The specific practices we will study come from Ray's collection of teachings, The Awakening Body. Ray was a student of Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche, one of the first teachers to bring the Kagyu and Nyingma lineages of Tibetan Buddhism to students in the West.

Your guides

Wesley and Denmo have been on this path for a while now, with over three decades of combined practice between them. Both find that creative work and meditation practice are expressions of the same spiritual path.

Wesley Cabral is a visual artist who began studying with Reggie Ray (Reginald A. Ray) in 2011. He also holds closely the teachings of Lama Willa Miller and Lama Rod Owens, and has helped facilitate many retreats and meditation programs over the years. Wesley loves sharing these teachings, both as a guide for others on the path and as a mentor for artists moving through creative blocks.

Denmo Ibrahim is an actor, playwright, and teacher who first encountered Reggie’s teaching while studying theater at Naropa University. That meeting opened a lifelong path of practice. Retreat and meditation have been cornerstones of her creative and spiritual life, offering a container for healing and for loosening the narratives that keep us from fully knowing ourselves and each other.

Use the contact form to register, or reach out with any questions.