This event has been cancelled – please check our Upcoming Events for other offerings.
An Evening of Social Meditation
Join us for an immersive evening of Social Meditation, where mindfulness meets community. In this introductory session on social meditation, we will explore practices designed to deepen your awareness while engaging with others in a supportive environment. Guided by the principles of mindfulness, this evening offers an opportunity to experience how meditation can be both personal and collective. Whether you are new to meditation or looking to expand your practice, we invite you to join us for a unique evening of connection and reflection.
Thursday, February 5, 2026 7:00-8:30 pm Online – Zoom
This evening is offered on the basis of mutual generosity. There will be an opportunity to contribute to SIMC’s administrative costs and to support the teacher.
This event is cancelled.
Andrea Grzesina is a certified mindfulness teacher with the Mindfulness Training Institute, having trained under Mark Coleman and Martin Aylward in 2021. She also an authorized Buddhist Geeks Teacher, having completed a two year teacher training program with Vince Fakhoury Horn and Emily West Horn. Also as part of Andrea’s passion for the Dharma and continuous learning, she has completed the Intensive Practice Program at UCLA’s Mindful Awareness Research Center, various Social Meditation Facilitation courses, along with many dharma study programs, through centers like Spirit Rock and the Barre Center for Buddhist Studies. She has been a dedicated practitioner since 2014, and she contributes to SIMC as a community dharma teacher, planning committee member, volunteer, retreat manager, and occasional cookie baker.
This is for a past event – please visit our Upcoming Events page for current offerings.
Indigenous Presence Wisdom Teachings from the Indigenous and Insight Meditation Traditions
Fish Lake Metis Settlement, Saskatchewan
Saturday, January 24, 2026 noon-6 PM CST (1-7 PM EST, 10 AM-4 PM PST, other time zones) In-person in Saskatoon and online with Zoom
This very special hybrid daylong will bring together 5 friends who are Indigenous teachers, healers, and Insight Meditation teachers, from Canada and North America. They will weave Indigenous and Buddhist ways of knowing, exploring connections in the teachings of mindfulness, kindness, and Indigenous knowledge systems. Both traditions are anchored in a meaningful relationship with nature, ancestors, and healing silence. Gentle reflective practices will honour interconnection, and turn to our innate wisdom and capacity for peace.
This retreat is open to Indigenous and non-Indigenous people from around the world.
Portions of this retreat may be offered as a recording. In order to support a sacred, live opportunity for all present, we will make the decision of what is appropriate to share after the retreat is complete.
This retreat is offered through mutual generosity. When you register, there will be an opportunity to pay a registration fee to help SIMC cover our administration costs. During the retreat, we will provide information for those who are able to offer financial support to our teachers.
Registration
Registration is now closed.
Bonnie Duran, DrPH, an Opelousas/Coushatta descendant, began Buddhist meditation practice over 35 years ago. She enjoys teaching Spirit Rock’s Dedicated Practitioners Program, short and long retreats, and holds a People of Color and Allies Sangha in Seattle, WA. She also directs the University of Washington’s Center for Indigenous Health Research, is a member of Spirit Rock Teachers Council and a core teacher for IMS’s Teacher Training Program.
Carol Cano, M.A., began her practice over 30 years ago at Wat Kow Tahm in Thailand and has actively engaged in building communities and teaching Dharma internationally. She is a graduate of the 2017-2020 Spirit Rock Meditation Center’s Teacher Training program and a teacher at Spirit Rock often. She is a core teacher and a former board member of East Bay Meditation Center. Carol co-founded Philippine Insight Meditation Community in the Philippines. Her unique teachings are deeply grounded in Basque, Native American and Buddhist influences that braid the Dharma along indigenous wisdom and Earth-based practices. Her psychology background gives her a unique view into the human condition, which helps her hold community in a compassionate and confident manner. Carol reminds us to keep grounded in our hearts as we uphold spiritual ideals and encourages us to remain balanced within the demands of modern life.
Jeanne Corrigal is the guiding teacher for the Saskatoon Insight Meditation Community, and a graduate of the 2017-2021 IMS teacher training program. She has trained primarily in the Burmese lineage of Venerable Mahasi Sayadaw, with a great affinity for the Thai Forest Tradition of Ajahn Buddhadasa and for the teachings of Thich Nhat Hanh. She is a certified MBSR teacher, is certified with Indigenous Focusing Oriented Trauma Therapy (IFOT), and she has trained with Mindful Schools and Somatic Experiencing. She has taught with Mindfulness Magazine, Lion’s Roar and Tricycle’s online programs, and teaches across North America. She is Metis, and one of her first teachers in loving presence was Cree Elder Jim Settee.
Karen Waconda-Lewis is a native from Isleta/Laguna Pueblo. After initiation into the Native Medicine, she brought the native medicine into an urban American Indian health clinic in Albuquerque, NM and continues to expand the program to local hospitals, Indian Health Service, VA Hospital and surrounding organizations. She joins Western Medicine with Native healing in preventive health, mental health and overall well-being. She is the founder and director of Center for Native American Integrative Healing, LLC located in Albuquerque, where other indigenous healers practice their traditional medicine and extends out to the community. She also is the founder of Wa’Kanda Retreat & Spa which brings in holistic, chemical free, healing for those in chronic need.
Elvina Charley, Ed.S. is Diné (Navajo) school psychologist practitioner and integrates mindfulness as a part of serving children and youth. Charley has been practicing mindfulness since 2013, introduced to her by Bonnie Duran, Ph.D. as a way to heal from historical trauma. She found parallels between her Diné philosophy of life – Sa’ah naaghái bik’eh hózhó and Buddhism. Charley continues to cultivate her practice through people of color retreat programs through the Insight Meditation Society and Vallecitos Mountain Retreat Center. Charley also received training through Mindful Schools to bring back mindfulness to reservation schools.
Mindfully Unwinding Whiteness (MUW) is intended for “white”/Euro-Canadian participants because, as Ajay Parasram and Alex Khasnabish explain in Frequently Asked White Questions, it would be “unfair to non-white participants to have to offer . . . training and support” to white participants and also “unfair to expect white people to understand the politics of race when the very operation of racial politics in Canada has encouraged them to not think or talk about race lest they appear to be racist.” Please be prepared to answer when registering why you want to participate.
MUW will be offered free of charge thanks to partners the SPL, the Saskatoon Foundation, and the Saskatoon Insight Meditation Community.
Program Description
MUW invites participants to mindfully explore their educations in race and whiteness, and to cultivate understanding of the inevitable internalizing of racism in racist cultures. We’ll focus mostly on the invention of race and whiteness at the outset of European imperialism and colonialism, on interpersonal and systemic racisms, and on anti-Indigenous racism and antiracism. Conversations will, however, attend to a range of racialized identities and invite consideration of racism’s intersections with other oppressions. MUW aims to both foster reconciliation understood as relational repair and build support for Indigenous resurgence. Our sessions will familiarize participants with antiracist strategies, practicing interventions when observing interpersonal racism or systemic protection of the racialized status quo.
Mindfulness will be taught and practiced at each gathering, encouraging a gentle but intentional focussing on the present moment while with steadiness observing our thoughts and feelings. Mindfulness can thus help us regulate our emotions while discussing emotionally charged topics like racism and other oppressions. Framing the unwinding of whiteness within mindfulness and compassion practice invites a kind, non-shaming approach to such discussions while consciously pursuing difficult truths about race and racism.
Facilitator
Susan Gingell is a Euro-Canadian immigrant to Turtle Island/North America, grateful to live on Treaty 6 territory and the homeland of the Métis/Metis.
