This session will introduce you to trauma-sensitive meditation instruction. Two primary forms of meditation are covered – mindfulness meditation with a breath focus, and chakra (energy center) meditation. The first part of the session discusses the most effective forms of mindfulness meditation for trauma survivors, including its benefits and challenges. The second part of the session discusses ways to make your meditation instruction trauma sensitive, as well as how to handle potential triggers. The final part of the session introduces chakra meditation, which may be of interest to those yoga instructors who already incorporate chakra work into their yoga sessions. A 12 minute sample guided meditation is included as a separate recording for your reference.
Your Instructor
Lisa Erickson is an energy worker, writer, meditation teacher and mom to three. Lisa’s primary modality is chakra-based meditation and energy work, although she is also a certified mindfulness meditation instructor, and a certified Feeding Your Demons facilitator. Her specialty is Women’s Energetics – women’s subtle anatomy, and practices and tools that women can employ to heal, empower, and awaken themselves.
Lisa draws on many different traditions in her work, including Tantra, Buddhism, shamanism, kundalini yoga, astrology, and several energy healing systems, most particularly the work of healer and author Cyndi Dale, with whom she has trained. She is a certified Feeding Your Demons facilitator through Lama Tsultrim Allione. Lisa is also a second-degree black belt in Shotokan karate, and a member of several professional healing organizations, including the International Association of Meditation Instructors, the Institute of HeartMath, and the American Holistic Health Association. Lisa is a graduate of Sarah Lawrence College where she received a Liberal Arts B.A., with a focus in philosophy and comparative religion.
As part of her Women’s Energetics work, Lisa offers both regular classes and private phone sessions to help women release limiting conditioning and draining energy patterns in order to fully own their personal power. She also provides meditations and tools women can use for support during crucial life transits, including pregnancy, motherhood, perimenopause and menopause. She is the creator of a popular DailyOm course Fall in Love With Your Feminine Power that offers an introduction to these practices. She offers private phone sessions for more in-depth work.
A major focus of Lisa’s work is energy healing for women sexual trauma and abuse survivors. She has published a free e-book on this topic: Healing the Subtle Body Wounds of Sexual Trauma and Abuse: 10 Practices for Self-Healing and Empowerment. She also is a practitioner with The Breathe Network, a non-profit organization dedicated to connecting survivors of sexual violence to healing arts practitioners who offer trauma-informed, mind-body-spirit techniques to support integrated and sustainable healing. Much of her private phone session work centers on supporting sexual abuse and trauma survivors in their healing process.
Lisa has practiced meditation for 25 years, and taught both chakra and mindfulness meditation for 15. She has taught in a variety of settings including community centers, schools, adult education centers, yoga studios, and rape crises centers. For several years, she taught meditation in corporate settings as part of wellness programs and retreats. While that is no longer a focus of hers, she still teaches meditation as part of the spiritual journey in both in-person and teleseminar classes. She offers annual retreats for those wishing to move more deeply into the healing and meditative process. She currently helps coordinate the Tara Mandala Los Angeles sangha, focused on offering meditations and teachings from the lineages of Lama Tsultrim Allione.
In addition to teaching and private sessions, Lisa also writes for her popular women’s spirituality blog, Mommy Mystic, where she has long shared insights and resources on sexual trauma healing, energy work for women, chakras, women mystics, and women’s spirituality. For many years she was the Buddhism editor at Bellaonline.com, and also a founding writer for MeditateLikeAGirl.com.
Lisa regularly speaks at conferences and is available for speaking engagements. Recent workshops include sessions at the National Sexual Assault Conference and the Mankato State’s annual Women’s Spirituality Conference.