FLOURISH
A Mindfulness Certification Program
for Jewish Communal Professionals
January 21 – April 8, 2025
Jewish clergy, educators, and other Jewish professionals: You are invited to join author and master mindfulness teacher, Yael Shy, and Rabbi Miriam Margles of the IJS Senior Core Faculty for a special edition of Flourish—a transformative 12-week program in Jewish mindfulness.
As a Jewish professional, you are regularly asked to lead in contexts where others are facing grief and heartbreak, fear and pain. Your community turns to you to guide and model the capacity to be clear and responsive, open-hearted, and present with the most difficult and most beautiful realities of life. No doubt, these demands and expectations have been significantly more challenging since October 7, 2023, and since the recent U.S. elections.
And yet, we cannot lead wisely when we feel reactive, depleted, or burnt out. We can only model what we ourselves embody—with skill, mindful awareness, and abiding sacred connection.
Flourish will offer you the space, tools, confidential community, and guidance to restore your own resilience and equilibrium while cultivating the self-awareness, insight, and skill to lead with greater wisdom. Flourish is designed to renew and deepen your meditation practice, reduce suffering and stress, and support you to access a vast and stable source of resilience, awareness, and joy.
Flourish features: 10 live practice sessions; two online mini-retreats; digestible, clear instructional videos; a rich array of grounding Jewish sources; guided audio meditations; journaling prompts; break-out groups for reflection and support; and chevruta (partner) practice. In confidential breakout groups, participants will be grouped by profession (eg. rabbis, educators, lay leaders, etc.) and will have opportunities to develop connections with other participants to support Jewish spiritual growth and leadership.
At the conclusion of the experience, you will have the (optional) opportunity to prepare and lead other participants in a meditation and receive feedback. Those who choose this option will receive a certification in Jewish Mindful Practices from Mindfulness Consulting, LLC.
“Thank you so much for this amazing program. I gained so much from everything I learned. This training really deepened my knowledge, experience, and understanding of Jewish meditation, in a way that was very meaningful. By providing it in a context for Jewish professionals, you [made it possible for me] to attend during a workday, as a part of professional development.”
After completing the course, you will have greater capacity to:
- Remain steady and grounded, resilient and open-hearted, using the tools of mindfulness and Jewish spiritual practice
- Access your inherent human qualities of stability, spaciousness, and compassion when confronted with challenging conditions around you
- Find clarity and vitality in your body, relationships, and life
- Draw upon Jewish and Buddhist teachings and practices as resources for ongoing insight and support
- Connect to a community of supportive, like-minded Jewish professionals and clergy who encourage your growth
- Work skillfully to overcome the distortions of inner critics and reactive habits with increasing friendliness, wisdom, and choice
- Lead your community in guided meditation, mindfulness, and Jewish spiritual practice
Regain the balance that enables you to lead, create, and flourish in work and life.
Over 12 weeks, we’ll move at a pace that allows you to sink deeply into the material and integrate it into your life as it is unfolding. You will have step-by-step guidance and support from Rabbi Miriam, Yael, and a caring community of fellow Jewish professionals and co-travelers.
Curriculum
The curriculum for this course weaves together Jewish and Buddhist teachings and practices.
Judaism is our grounding framework and the home of our souls. We’ll explore Jewish teachings that offer us clear and vivid focus for cultivating d’vekut (intimacy with Divine Presence in every moment) and becoming increasingly present with our inherent Divine nature. This mindful, soulful way of engaging animates both the traditional practices of the mitzvot and guides us to practice with our direct experience—with body, heart, mind, and soul.
Buddhism provides clear instruction and focused insight on how we learn to cultivate loving, non-judgmental, and clear awareness.
Week 1 – 4
Drop In
Step out of the stream of reactivity, overwhelm, and anxiety about the past and future and drop into the still waters of the present moment. This includes a three-part process of: 1) setting a kavanah, a clear intention to anchor yourself; 2) lasim lev—paying attention with an awakened heart and mind, and feeling your feelings; and 3) teshuva—the process of noticing when the mind is absorbed elsewhere and coming home, with clarity and compassion, to your anchoring kavanah.
Week 5 – 7
Move Closer
Get curious about the stories and beliefs you hold about yourself and others and unravel what is distorted, not serving you, or blocking you from more expansive and inclusive truths. This includes a three-part process of cultivating curiosity, questioning your narratives, and making space for all parts of yourself. You will learn practices to strengthen your capacity to clearly see what is within and outside you, holding emet (truth) with chesed (deep compassion).
Week 8 – 10
Open Up
Loosen attachment to our small and separate selves and fall open in relationship with the Oneness of Being. We will explore greater intimacy with our inner lives as a doorway to spacious, open hearts and expansive awareness. This includes a three-part process of radical acceptance, cultivating innately loving qualities of the heart, and opening into freedom.
Week 11 – 12
Leading Others in Meditation
Learn to craft and guide simple meditation practices for your community. You will have the opportunity to practice leading others and gain helpful feedback to refine your skills. Those who craft and lead a meditation will be eligible for certification in Mindfulness Practices from Mindfulness Consulting.
What’s Included
Live Zoom sessions:
- Opening Online Retreat: Tuesday January 21st, 2:00-5:00 pm ET
- 10 live weekly practice and discussion sessions: Tuesdays at 3:30-5:00 pm ET (All live sessions will be recorded.)
- Closing Online Retreat and Celebration: Tuesday, April 8th, 2:00-5:00 pm ET
Asynchronous Instruction:
- 10 Short (5-20 minute) instructional videos moving you through the curriculum
- Jewish sources to ground our learning and practice in Jewish wisdom
- Guided Jewish spiritual practices including prayer, ritual, chant, and embodied practice to integrate the teachings into our bodies
- 10 audio meditations to support your daily practice, week-by-week
- 12 weeks of journaling prompts to help you reflect, personalize, and integrate the material more deeply
- An opportunity to move through the material with a chevruta/learning and practice partner
- 1 Certificate in Jewish Mindfulness Practices from Mindfulness Consulting, LLC (pending successful crafting and guiding a meditation for others in the cohort) to use on a resume, as professional development, or as a precursor for teacher training programs
“… I greatly appreciated all the teaching, the wisdom, and the guidance you shared around meditation and meditation practices. The readings were always exceptional and the talks and support … were always deeply honest and real.”
How do I know if this experience is for me?
This program IS for Jewish Communal Leaders (clergy, educators, administrators, lay-leaders, etc) who…
- Want to engage more deeply in mindfulness meditation, drawn from Jewish and Buddhist teachings and practices, in order to flourish in their lives and leadership
- Want support from experienced Jewish meditation teachers and a like-minded community as they apply ancient and contemporary wisdom and transformative practice to their lives and leadership
- Are excited to dive in deeply, engage in the practices, and authentically and bravely show up in this experience
- Want to explore embodied mindfulness practices to nurture holistic healing and growth
- Want to eventually go on to lead and/or teach meditation to others
This program is NOT for those who…
- Are brand new to meditation (i.e. no familiarity whatsoever)
- Are seeking a teacher-training program (although this is a great precursor to one!)
Registration Closes January 13, 2025
IJS is pleased to offer this course at three tuition levels.
We encourage you to pay at the highest level you can, which will enable more students to participate.
Executives and Senior Clergy
$1,800
Cover Your Costs
$1,400
Supported Level
$999
If you’re in need of additional financial assistance, please contact us at [email protected]
Meet your instructors:
Rabbi Miriam Margles
Miriam has a long and rich association with IJS, having taught on various retreats and programs over the years. She joined the Institute as a Senior Core Faculty after over a decade as the rabbi of the Danforth Jewish Circle in Toronto. Her career has included service as a founding faculty member at the Romemu Yeshiva, serving as a fellow with the Rising Song Institute, co-founding the award-winning educational program engaging with the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, Encounter, and recording her original Jewish music with the Hadar Rising Song ensemble.
Miriam teaches and leads by creating an atmosphere of attentive, brave, playful and open-hearted exploration of Jewish text, prayer and practices, our inner landscapes, resilient connection with others, and relationship with the wider world, all working toward healing, wisdom and liberation. Her work integrates exploration through movement, voice and song and creative writing. She is a graduate of the Reconstructionist Rabbinical College, an alumna of the Wexner Graduate Fellowship and the Jerusalem Fellows at the Mandel Leadership Institute. She earned an MTS from Harvard Divinity School and a BFA from York University.
Yael Shy
Yael Shy is the CEO of Mindfulness Consulting, LLC, where she teaches and consults on mindfulness for universities, corporations, and private clients around the world. She is the author of the award-winning book, What Now? Meditation for Your Twenties and Beyond (Parallax, 2017), and the founder of Mindful NYU, the largest campus-based mindfulness initiative in the US.
Yael is a graduate of the IJS Jewish Mindfulness Teacher Training Certification and has over a decade of teaching and consulting experience and 20 years of meditation practice experience. She is adjunct faculty at the Institute for Jewish Spirituality, Or HaLev, as well as at New York University. She has been featured on Good Morning America, CBS, Fox 5 News, and in Time Magazine and the Harvard Business Review.
About the Institute for Jewish Spirituality
Since 1999, IJS has been a leader in teaching traditional and contemporary Jewish spiritual practices that cultivate mindfulness so that each of us might act with enriched wisdom, clarity, and compassion. These practices, grounded in Jewish values and thought, enable participants to develop important skills while strengthening leadership capacities, deepening their inner lives, and connecting more meaningfully with others, Judaism, and the sacred.
About Mindfulness Consulting, LLC
Yael Shy offers transformative mindfulness coaching and consulting, rooted in thousands of years of ancient wisdom AND the latest scientific research, for more ease, healing, and joy. It is her life’s purpose to support individuals and collectives uncover their inherent worth and capacity for deep joy.
Yael has been using the transformative power of mindfulness, rooted in her 20+ years of study in Judaism and Zen Buddhism, to support herself and others through the pressures of life.
