Meditation for Teachers and Classrooms

Session 1

Khenpo Karma Tenkyong, Grace O'Keeffe — Karma Triyana Dharmachakra Monastery, NYCDOE

Mindfulness is a new buzzword in education. Recent research shows with proper guidance meditation practices decreases stress, attention issues, depression, anxiety, and hostility, while also benefiting health, well-being, social relations, and academic performance.

Beyond helping students and teachers to be more calm and happy, we explore the motivation of our meditation practice and work together toward understand our interdependence.

With this conversation you will: -Consider and refine your motivation -Develop and refine your own practice of meditation and wellness -Enhance your capacity for applying meditation in your personal and professional life -Understand the historical context in which meditation practice has its roots in secular society e -Work with meditation master Khenpo Karma Tenkyong, who has over 40 years of meditation training and teaching experience internationally.

Khenpo Tenkyong is the president of Karma Triyana Dharmachakra Buddhist monastery and well as a primary teacher there. Khenpo Tenkyong will be joined by Grace O'Keeffe, NYCDOE Educator, meditation practitioner, and Breathe for Change Wellness trainee. Together, they will help you develop a practice for you and your classroom.

Khenpo Karma Tenkyong was sent to KTD in July 2014 by His Holiness the 17th Karmapa where he currently serves as a resident teacher and President. A native of Nepal, Khenpo Tenkyong became a monk at a young age and later undertook an eleven-year course of Buddhist studies at Karma Shri Nalanda Institute at Rumtek Monastery, earning a Shastri (B.A.), Acharya (M.A.) and Master’s Degree in Buddha’s Teaching in the Sutra Tradition. Khenpo Tenkyong has extensive experience teaching religious history, Buddhist philosophy, and logic. He was awarded the title of Khenpo by the 17th Karmapa, who also gave him the name Tenkyong. He worked for more than eleven years at the Karmapa’s Office of Administration in Dharamsala, India.

Grace O'Keeffe is the Senior Seminar educator at Hudson HSLT, Breathe for Change Yoga and Wellness Champion, and future business student. Grace has been studying meditation for over 20 years and has had a 3-year daily practice.