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Mary Stancavage

Mary Stancavage

Mary Stancavage has practiced meditation, yoga, and cultivated a spiritual practice for over 35 years and in 2009 was empowered to teach Buddhadharma. She teaches classes, retreats, coaches and mentors individuals and has facilitated several Year-to-Live groups over the years. She has served as a volunteer hospital chaplain and been involved with leadership in several non-profit organizations over the years both in meditation and in the social justice arena. She is currently a member of the Guiding Teachers Council for Insight Community of the Desert, serves on the Los Angeles District Attorney’s Interfaith Task Force and is a Board Member of both Meditation Coalition and CLUE: Clergy and Laity for Economic Justice. For the last several years, Mary has investigated what it means to live with an undefended heart and more information on this can be found on her website, marystancavage.org. Fun fact: Mary has an MA from UCLA and spent several seasons working as an archaeologist in Syria.

Website: marystancavage.org


Teachings

  • February 4th 2024Finding Ease in the Present Moment

    Finding ease in the present moment can sometimes feel like an impossible task – there is so much going on in the world and in our own lives and it’s easy to become overwhelmed. When things are challenging, we tend to fall into familiar patterns of reactivity which keep us either stuck in this overwhelm or getting lost in stories that don’t serve us. In this talk Mary will discuss different ways we get entangled and how we can get unstuck and move towards both equanimity and ease, regardless of what’s going on.

  • February 5th 2023All You Need is Love

    In our world it seems that hate and anger are so prevalent it can feel overwhelming at times. In our own lives, it's also quite easy for us to slip into aversion and othering while finding it fully justified. In this talk Mary discusses the need to name love as a foundation of our practice. The Buddha gave us the Metta Sutta as well as other teachings on how to be with a mind imbued with lovingkindness and compassion. This foundation of love will allow us to fully open to the world and to ourselves, letting go of the need to create barriers. Turning towards love is the answer.

  • May 1st 2022Letting in the Joy

    Our practice and our recovery are often about recognizing our struggles and where we are stuck. Although it's necessary that we do this, sometimes we miss the joy that is also present in our lives. Joy is one of the Seven Awakening Factors and an important experience on the path to liberation. In this talk Mary will offer suggestions on how to recognize and cultivate joy in your life, even in the midst of difficulties.

  • April 4th 2021Relax the Body, Relax the Mind
     

    Our bodies hold so much that we’re not aware of. Our shoulders are tight, our jaws are clenched. This tenseness is often a reaction to cravings, aversions, and other habits of mind that we’re also unaware of. In this meditation and talk, Mary will invite us to relax the body and mind which allows us to be with our thoughts and feelings as they arise and develop the ability to respond with clarity and compassion. This practice is helpful in dealing both with addiction and with moving through our day to day lives.

  • December 6th 2020Moving into Spaciousness

    In this talk Mary will talk about identifying those constricted and frightened parts of ourselves that we may not even be aware of. When we're caught in any type of addictive behavior, we're also often trapped in habits of mind that are driven by fear and an inability to be with reality. When we hold on to our beliefs of the way things are supposed to be, or fight off the way things are, we're often tense and cling tightly to our ideas. This practice offers us a way to recognize what this constriction feels like in our bodies and how to let go and make more space. As we release the "shoulds" and "shouldn'ts", we can breathe more easily and allow ourselves to be more intimate with our experience. We learn to trust the what's actually happening instead of what we think might happen. This moves us into the calm and ease that spaciousness allows. 

 

 

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