Sharing meaningful stories from a life of practice, Gil Fronsdal chats about the impact of spiritual community, simplicity, and generosity.

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This week on the BHNN Guest Podcast, Gil Fronsdal outlines:

• Honesty, communication, and understanding as an alternative to LSD
• The impact of reading Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind, and going to the San Francisco Zen Center
• The importance of doing spiritual practice with other people and finding community
• Finding freedom within simplicity and generosity
• The practice of working through fear and becoming relaxed
• Gil’s mindful founding of the Insight Meditation Center, balancing the commercial forces of society
• How growing up in wartime inspired Gil’s interest in nonviolence and civil disobedience

About Gil Fronsdal:

Gil Fronsdal is the co-teacher for the Insight Meditation Center in Redwood City, California; he has been teaching since 1990. He has practiced Zen and Vipassana in the U.S. and Asia since 1975. He was a Theravada monk in Burma in 1985, and in 1989 began training with Jack Kornfield to be a Vipassana teacher. Gil teaches at Spirit Rock Meditation Center where he is part of its Teachers Council. Gil was ordained as a Soto Zen priest at the San Francisco Zen Center in 1982, and in 1995 received Dharma Transmission from Mel Weitsman, the abbot of the Berkeley Zen Center. He currently serves on the SF Zen Center Elders’ Council. In 2011 he founded IMC’s Insight Retreat Center. He is the author of The Issue at Hand, essays on mindfulness practice; A Monastery Within; a book on the five hindrances called Unhindered; and the translator of The Dhammapada, published by Shambhala Publications. You may listen to Gil’s talks on Audio Dharma.

This recording was originally published on Dharmaseed

“When I went to the Zen center, people didn’t participate; they didn’t pick up the cues and act accordingly. They became a mirror for me, and I said, ‘This is fantastic’, to be able to see myself clearly through other people. I wanted that mirroring to be seen. In that time of living at Zen Center, I am very confident that I couldn’t have practiced as much as I have done over the years without the support of the community that I was with.” –Gil Fronsdal

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Expressive artist & healer Phoenix Song explores the voice as a path to freedom and a means of releasing trauma.

Today’s podcast is brought to you by BetterHelp. Give online therapy a try at betterhelp.com/beherenow and get on your way to being your best self.

This week on the BHNN Guest Podcast, Phoenix and Vincent chat about:

• Connecting to our full emotional life via voice work
• The preciousness (and difficulties) of being born into this incarnation
• How breath impacts your speaking voice and your singing voice
• Phoenix’s profound experience during an ancestral healing ritual at Plum Village
• Focusing on voice work after recovering from dengue fever in India
• The journey to reclaim and inhabit our own bodies
• The invitation to ask yourself “what season am I in?”
• Crafting rituals for others and for yourself
• The importance of taking your time and healing at your own pace

This conversation was originally recorded on the Paths of Practice Podcast. Listen to more episodes HERE.

About Vincent Moore:

Vincent Moore is a creative and creative consultant living in San Francisco, California, with over a decade of experience in the entertainment industry and holds a graduate degree in Buddhist Studies. For years, he performed regularly at the Upright Citizens Brigade Theatre, an improv and sketch comedy theatre based in New York and Los Angeles. As an actor, Vincent performed on Comedy Central, The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon, The Late Show with Seth Meyers, Above Average, and The UCB Show on Seeso. As a writer, he developed for television as well as stage, including work with the Blue Man Group, and his own written projects have been featured on websites such as Funny or Die. Additionally, he received a Masters of Buddhist Studies from the Institute of Buddhist Studies with a Certificate in Soto Zen Studies and engages in a personal Buddhist practice within the Soto Zen tradition. Vincent is also the creator and host of the podcast, Paths of Practice, which features interviews with Buddhists from all over the world.

About Phoenix Song:

Phoenix Song is a queer, nonbinary Korean American adoptee teacher, performer, writer, and healer featured in SF Magazine’s Best of the Bay for yoga music. Phoenix was initiated on the spiritual path at Plum Village with Thich Nhat Hanh and is a dharma teacher at East Bay Meditation Center and Spirit Rock. They believe that everyone can sing and love to help people free their voices and rhythm in private and group classes.

Much of Phoenix’s life has been about exploring identity issues and healing ancestral, racial, sexual, and gender wounds. They offer tools that have helped them by leading ancestral healing, grief, and diversity/solidarity workshops and trainings that use expressive arts and somatic processes. To learn more about their sound healing offerings, classes, and performances, please visit phoenixsongmusic.com.

“By doing more voice work, people start to shake up their breath, their emotions, their body instruments so more of their colors, emotions, personality, what’s happening with them, can come through their voice, you start to hear a more expressive, free, emotional voice. It starts to feel like more colors are coming out than just a few.” –Phoenix Song

See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.