The Aligned Center

Path of Awakening - Introductory Course
2022-02-15 18:45 - 21:00, 2022-02-08 18:45 - 21:00, 2022-02-01 18:45 - 21:00, 2022-01-25 18:45 - 21:00, 2022-01-18 18:45 - 21:00, 2022-01-11 18:45 - 21:00, 2021-12-28 18:45 - 21:00, 2021-12-21 18:45 - 21:00 (America/New_York) and 5 more dates
John Baker trained directly with Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche for decades, and worked intimately with Trungpa as he adapted Tibetan meditation to a western audience. In this online course, Path of Awakening, John will help to distill some of the unique insights of his teacher as well as his own, unique take on meditation.
This ongoing online meditation class is for anyone interested in Buddhism and open to anyone. It starts with 30 minutes of meditation followed by a class and discussion. You may prepare by reading the suggested chapter for each week from The Profound Treasury of the Ocean of Dharma, Vol. 2 or just join us online via Zoom to meditate, listen to the lecture, and participate in the discussion.
Register Here
Tuesdays, 6:45 – 9:00 pm ET

6:45 – 7:00 PM ET: Social Conversation
7:00 – 7:30 PM ET: Meditation
7:30 – 9:00 PM ET: Talk and Discussion

Suggested donation is $10 per class, or $100 for every 12 weeks.
No one will be turned away for lack of funds.

Romemu Friday Night Services
2022-02-11 18:30 - 20:30, 2022-02-04 18:30 - 20:30, 2022-01-28 18:30 - 20:30, 2022-01-21 18:30 - 20:30, 2022-01-14 18:30 - 20:30, 2022-01-07 18:30 - 20:30, 2021-12-31 18:30 - 20:30, 2021-12-24 18:30 - 20:30 and 2 more dates | Romemu, New York, United States
Friday Night Kabbalat Shabbat Services combine traditional liturgy with chanting, meditation, spontaneous dance and lively song.

Join Rabbi David Ingber for these live-streamed, joy-based and contemplative progressive services that engage the heart, mind, and body.
All are welcome to join in this transformative spiritual practice regardless of religious affiliation, race, gender, sexual orientation, and belief.
Friday Night Kabbalat Shabbat Services are live-streamed and the time changes depending on the time of sunset.

WEDC Webinars for Entrepreneurs: First Steps to Starting Your Own Small Business
2022-01-14 12:00 - 13:30
Upcoming Webinars for Entrepreneurs from WEDC
We are pleased to let you know about upcoming WEDC webinars for entrepreneurs led by Persephone A. Zill, who is WEDC’s Women’s Business Center Director, and a friend of The Aligned Center.

First Steps to Starting Your Own Small Business
For those who are ready to start their own business, this free webinar will guide you into how to avoid common mistakes, things you’ll need to keep an eye on, and ways to ensure that your business is successful right out of the gate.

WEDC is recognized at the federal, state and county level for empowering entrepreneurs to build successful businesses in Westchester and the Hudson Valley by providing high quality training programs, advisory services, and access to capital.
Persephone Zill is an incredible resource who brings a wealth of experience with entrepreneurial education. She has an MBA in Management/Entrepreneurship from Baruch College, was the Associate Director at Fordham University’s social innovation lab, and has been training and counseling entrepreneurs for over 11 years.
DATE: Friday, January 14, 2022
TIME: 12:00 – 1:30 pm ET
COST: Free
LOCATION: Zoom
LINK TO REGISTER: https://us02web.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_OkeJFuC5S_aJ2vUJnlrxRw

Webinars for Entrepreneurs: Path To Entrepreneurship Program from WEDC
2022-01-05 18:00 - 19:30
Upcoming Webinars for Entrepreneurs from WEDC
We are pleased to invite you to upcoming webinars for entrepreneurs led by Persephone A. Zill, who is WEDC’s Women’s Business Center Director, and a friend of The Aligned Center.
WEDC is recognized at the federal, state and county level for empowering entrepreneurs to build successful businesses in Westchester and the Hudson Valley by providing high quality training programs, advisory services, and access to capital.
Persephone Zill is an incredible resource who brings a wealth of experience with entrepreneurial education. She has an MBA in Management/Entrepreneurship from Baruch College, was the Associate Director at Fordham University’s social innovation lab, and has been training and counseling entrepreneurs for over 11 years.

Path To Entrepreneurship Program
If you have an idea for a business, some experience in the field, or have started a business, this webinar will guide you in creating and sustaining your small business.
DATE: Wednesday, January 5, 2022
TIME: 6:00 – 7:30 pm ET
COST: Free
LOCATION: Zoom
LINK TO REGISTER: https://us02web.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_33tpa-gzSPuo9r7bHc3ttg

Aligned Living Conversation: The New Rules of Aging Well
2021-12-16 19:00 - 20:30 | The Aligned Institute Online
Aligned Center Founder Matt Ludmer is delighted to sit down online with Danielle Claro to discuss Mind-Body Awareness. They will discuss Danielle’s new book, The New Rules of Aging Well: A Simple Program for Immune Resilience, Strength, and Vitality, written with the renowned integrative doctor Frank Lipman.

The New Rules of Aging Well offers a radically simple program to reverse the symptoms we reflexively call “normal aging.” They include feeling achy, stiff, sluggish, weak, and vulnerable to chronic illness. Dr. Lipman’s approach improves both our life span and, more importantly, our health span – our quality of life and how we feel.
Built on a series of lifestyle changes that energize the body and build and strengthen its immune system, The New Rules of Aging Well is based on ancient wisdom backed up by science: Eat less and practice intermittent fasting. Do 20 minutes a day of something meditative. Switch to gentler workouts, but move as much as possible. Unlock the incredible power of mushrooms. Grow your tribe. Walk barefoot when you can.
The result: a rejuvenated you that looks great and feels healthy, happy, sexy, agile, and strong.
Join Matt and Danielle in this fascinating discussion that will help you grow professionally and personally!
At The Aligned Center, our model for Aligned Living is inspired by a Four Quadrant framework used in Ken Wilber’s Integral philosophy that represents four dimensions of our experience–individual inner and outer experience, and collective inner and outer experience. Our Four Quadrant model includes Mind-Body Awareness, Work & Wealth Abundance, Heartfelt Community and Knowledge of Systems.
Aligned Living Conversations shed light on the possibilities and practices for living fully into all dimensions of our lives. With our world in the midst of seismic shifts, Aligned Living allows us to foster positive change for ourselves, our families and the world.
This conversation sits in the quadrant of Mind-Body Awareness. We invite you to join us.
This conversation takes place on Zoom. Please sign up in advance.
Date: December 16th, 2021
Time: 7:00 to 8:30 pm ET
*This event is now on Zoom only.*
Cost: $0/$20/$50

Leading Without Easy Answers with Doug Sundheim
2021-12-01 19:00 - 21:00, 2021-11-17 19:00 - 21:00 | The Aligned Institute Online
Build momentum for your big idea.
We have had a lot of uncertainty in the last 18 months, from Covid to inflation to political polarization. Yet it is the ability to move forward in the face of uncertainty that allows for success. In fact, this course can teach you how to harness the power of uncertainty for yourself.

This course will allow you to build momentum for your big idea, through:

Understanding how to take smart risks in uncertain times
Getting clear on your objectives and goals
What it means to execute your idea
Working with polarity (doubting yourself vs trusting yourself, needing to move fast vs moving slow enough to be thorough, the need for stability vs the need for dynamism, and the creative tension between taking risks and seeking safety)
Bringing a passion project to life

This course will explore how you can fine-tune and sharpen your skills in a world that seems to be in a near-constant state of uncertainty. You’ll bring a specific idea, project, or company challenge you’re trying to overcome and advance, and dig in with Doug and the rest of the group. Classes are highly interactive workshops with a talk, presentation of a new skill set, sharing with others, and individualized coaching with Doug.
Take this class if:

You have led well in the past but are finding the current state of the world hard to navigate
You need a better understanding of how to lead
You’re launching something and want to be as prepared as possible
You are managing others and want to feel more confidence in your skills
You have been successful as a leader in the past but have plateaued in your skills

We’ll explore the four ways you can lead without an easy answer.
Week 1: Get clear
This first class is foundational. We’ll get clear on what you’re doing and why, your directional vision, and your underlying values. We’ll look at your values driving you, and how to keep them from getting static. Clarity comes from seeing your ideas in a dynamic way, not a static goal line to be crossed.
Week 2: Get aligned
Alignment builds on clarity. From here, we’ll talk about the reality that we can’t always get everyone aligned with our vision, and what we can do about it. Alignment might not mean that everyone agrees with the path ahead, but it does mean that everyone is on-board with moving in that direction. In this week’s class, we’ll talk about how to do check-ins and establish open dialog that allows convergence around your idea and helps inspire others to follow your lead, even if they’re not totally sold on the direction.
Week 3: Get moving
Moving means knowing all the moving parts of what’s to come. Movement requires the plan be implemented in a way that some are doing work, some are overseeing it, and everyone is being held accountable to delivering on their end of the task. We learn to evolve as we move. There’s a dynamism in moving and we’ll learn, evolve, and change as we go.
Week 4: Get better
Here we stop and look at the big picture. If you’re an operator, the leader, what are you doing to personally grow? How are you helping the team excel better? Doing the right kind of research, which we’ll explore, is one of the foundational practices in getting better. We will look at the conditions for a highly effective team and see how yours is stacking up. We’ll analyze your approach to personal development and see if it will help you better lead. The idea here is that leaders learn to sharpen their own saws, not other people’s, to inspire growth and innovation from everyone on the team. In other words, we lead by example.
The course will be by Zoom, and will be every two weeks on Wednesday nights from 7-9 pm EST, starting October 20th, 2021.
Dates: October 20, November 3, November 17, December 1
Time: 7 – 9:00 PM EST
Cost: $150 for the 4-part series

One-Day Meditation Workshop: Learn to Meditate or Deepen your Practice
2021-11-20 10:00 - 17:00 | The Aligned Center, 1 Bridge Street, Foundry Building Suite 64, Irvington, New York, 10533
Join us for this special one-day program designed for beginning and aspiring meditators, as well as people who want to deepen their meditation practice. The workshop will include talks, practice sessions, interviews, and guided meditations that support building a daily practice with compassion and openness. This workshop is presented by the Westchester Meditation Center (WMC) and led by one of WMC’s three senior teachers, Derek Kolleeny.
WMC is dedicated to diversity, equity, inclusion, and fostering belonging for all. Everyone is invited. Differences and unique perspectives are embraced.
The meditation technique taught in this workshop was developed by Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche (1939-87), a Tibetan Buddhist meditation teacher who offered a uniquely different form from other forms of meditation and in many ways contrary to the usual notions about meditation. His view was that “meditation is a process of working through our self-deception.” Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche was a highly accomplished meditation master, scholar, translator, poet, and artist. He taught extensively in North America during the last seventeen years of his life and authored dozens of books based on hundreds of talks given on a broad array of topics. Many people of many generations have found his guidance inspiring to their daily lives and meditation practice.
If you have any questions, please email westchestermeditationcenter@gmail.com.
Date: SATURDAY, November 20, 2021
Time: 10:00 am ET until 5:00 pm ET (Lunch provided from 1-2 pm)
Location: The Aligned Center, 1 Bridge Street, Foundry Building, Suite 64, Irvington, NY 10533
Suggested Donation to Westchester Meditation Center: $20* (includes lunch)
*WMC maintains a policy of making our programs affordable to all. Those with limited income please offer what you can afford.
Space is limited; COVID-19 vaccination and registration are required.
Register here.

Writing Workshop: Visionary Knowing & Mythic Imagination in Writing and in Life
2021-11-16 18:30 - 21:00 | The Aligned Institute Online
The business of stories is waking up. ~ Dr. Martin Shaw
We are living in a time of unprecedented change when the stories we have assumed to be true about identity, what has value and whose story matters are undergoing radical revision.
Our words matter. The stories we tell ourselves and each other matter. And each of us has a role to play shaping the evolving narrative of our times.
But to do so we need to find wisdom in unexpected places and learn to see what has perviously been unseen.
Our own visionary knowing and mythic imagination offer volumes of understanding in a flash of insight, though it may be difficult to describe. We are left to discern dream-like symbols, savor newfound awareness and wonder at these leaps in consciousness.
So when it comes to the liminal and the literary, how do we make sense of these mysterious moments? And how do we translate the ineffable into writing?
Join award-winning author Kristin Kaye to explore liminality in our lives and on the page.
Literature that includes so-called ‘fantastic’ experience tends to fall into a range of fiction sub-genres, from Sci-Fi and Fantasy on one end to Magical Realism on the other. Where Sci-Fi and Fantasy create entirely new worlds, Magical Realism is largely based in the mundane with elements that blur the lines of reality.
But are the elements ‘magical?’ Or are they ‘real? The answer is different depending on culturally accepted definitions of what constitutes ‘reality.’ As a writer this becomes an interesting question when considering how to write varieties of experience.
This writing workshop offers:

meditation to quiet the mind to see old stories with new eyes
tools and practices to explore liminality
writing time with simple exercises to get the flow going
reading your pages if you are so inspired
frameworks for translating hard-to-express experiences into powerful scenes and stories

Writers of all ages and skill levels welcome. The only prerequisite is curiosity and a desire to share your insights and stories with others.
ABOUT YOUR HOST: Kristin Kaye holds an MFA in Creative Writing and is an award-winning author, ghostwriter and book coach. Books include her novel TREE DREAMS (Winner 2018 Int’l Book Awards, ‘A superbly written tale filled with realistic, engaging and quirky characters.’ ~ Kirkus Reviews) ) and her memoir IRON MAIDENS: The Celebration of the Most Awesome Female Muscle in the World (Finalist 2006 Oregon Book Awards, One of 5 Books for Women Who Resist Easy Definition ~ Utne). Kristin has taught workshops at schools, colleges and environmental organizations across the US. She is a meditation teacher and her own decade-long practice of Tibetan Buddhism informs her creative process. Learn more at kristinkaye.com.
November 16, 6:30 – 9pm EST on Zoom, $65
REGISTER NOW

SHARE THE GOLD: Kristin is offering a free workshop to encourage writing in community during these challenging times. When you register for MINING for GOLD you will receive a coupon code to either give to a friend to join you in MINING for GOLD, or use it yourself to register for this course, VISIONARY KNOWING & MYTHIC IMAGINATION. One free workshop pass per person.

Register Now
