Unlocking Meditation
A 4-week course on the essential foundations of a meditation practice
Sundays, January 19, 26, February 2, 9
10am – 12pm MST
Online
A space for beginners and seasoned meditators
Unlocking Meditation is the first of our 4-week courses of the 2025 Live Online Program, designed to support and deepen your meditation practice, no matter your experience level. Whether you’re brand new to meditation or a seasoned practitioner, this course offers fresh insights and practical tools to sustain and strengthen your practice.
This course is especially valuable for students of The Way, readers of Original Love and One Blade of Grass, and those drawn to Henry’s teachings on koans.
Each Sunday session will include a guided sit, a talk, and Q&A with Henry. We will cover three important pillars of meditation:
- The crucial foundations of a meditation practice
- Focused attention and open awareness
- Framing the whole path of meditation
Life happens, and even experienced meditators can lose momentum. This course gives you the tools to bounce back, recover from interruptions, and maintain your practice through life’s ups and downs. No more stopping, giving up, or feeling stuck. After these four weeks, you’ll have the skills to navigate any terrain life throws your way.
This is your chance to build a practice that lasts. Everyone is welcome. Ready to get started?
The essential foundations of a meditation practice
Struggling to make meditation a lasting habit? This course dives into the essential building blocks of a meditation practice and equips you with powerful tools to stay consistent.
You’ll explore the core challenges meditators face at all levels—like doubt, performance pressure, anxiety, and unresolved trauma—and learn practical techniques to overcome them.
Key skills include:
- Noting & labelling thoughts and emotions
- Connecting emotions to physical sensations
- Creating a space of acceptance and ease
Focused attention and open awareness
Second, we’ll explore two primary kinds of practice: focused attention vs open awareness.
- Focused Attention: Sharpen mindfulness by focusing on specific aspects of your experience—such as sensations, thoughts, or emotions. This practice helps you stay present, react less, and cultivate a peaceful, spacious awareness.
- Open Awareness: Embrace the entirety of your experience without judgment or the need to change it. This unconditional approach deepens your ability to remain calm and accepting, building on the foundation of focused attention.
Together, these practices enhance your mindfulness journey, fostering presence, peace, and resilience.
Framing the whole path of meditation
In addition to these specific tools and approaches, we will also explore a framing for the whole path of meditation. To stay motivated, it’s vital to understand the full spectrum of meditation’s transformative benefits. This course introduces four key zones of practice, showing how meditation can:
- Provide lasting therapeutic and healing effects
- Support psychological self-discovery
- Unlock beautiful flow states
- Deepen your sense of connection with the world and others
- Challenge assumptions about the self
- Offer glimpses of boundless awareness and awakening
Discover how meditation can be a lifelong journey of growth, insight, and profound connection.
Courses included in the 2025 Live Online Program
Unlocking Meditation is part of our 2025 Live Online Program. In the 2025 Live Online Program, Henry will be guiding us through the essential foundations of meditation practice – from how to successfully encounter difficult thoughts and emotions, all the way to deepening our understanding of non-dual experience.
Unlocking Meditation
- 4 Sunday Sessions 10am – 12pm MST on 19, 26 January, and 2, 9 February
- Live Q&A time with Henry to help develop your skills
- Lifetime access to the session recordings
- Become a subscriber to The Way App and enjoy an additional 20% discount! You can sign up for these courses via the app, click here on your mobile
2025 Live Program
- 4 four-week courses live with Henry Shukman
- Lifetime Access to all course recordings
- Enjoy an $85 savings compared to purchasing each 4-week course individually
- Become a subscriber to The Way App and enjoy an additional 20% discount! You can sign up for these courses via the app, click here on your mobile
Recordings
Each session will be recorded. If you can’t attend live, and it will be made available the following day.
Questions?
If you have any questions about Unlocking Meditation, please contact our program manager Jeremy. We’re happy to answer any questions and look forward to having you join us!
Scholarships
We warmly welcome you to contact us if a scholarship would allow you to attend this course. Please contact our program manager Jeremy for details about how to apply.
Here’s what students have said about Henry’s teaching:
What I love about Henry is his foundational approach to building a sustainable practice that is emotionally supportive and feels empowering.
I’ve practiced meditation with a number of teachers through my life over decades, but somehow Henry is getting through to me in a profound way. There is so much loving kindness in his voice and instructions.
I can’t say enough about Henry’s gentle, encouraging, compassionate, oft-humorous and always insightful support.
Part of what makes The Way special is how you invite Henry into your home, to guide your daily meditation practice. During these live events you’ll be invited into Henry’s living room, to gain a deeper understanding and have the opportunity to ask questions.
For the first time ever, we’ll be linking aspects of this course to sessions within The Way’s pathway to offer a thorough learning experience. Here’s a taster of some of the sessions we’ll reference in Unlocking Meditation:
- Retreat 1, session 4 – Arriving
- Retreat 3, session 12 – All three outer senses
- Retreat 4, session 6 – All three inner senses
- Retreat 5, session 2 – The first Hindrance: Restlessness
- Retreat 6, session 7 – Just sitting
Your Guides to Learning
Henry Shukman
Zen Master in the Sanbo Zen lineage
Henry is an authorized Zen Master in the Sanbo Zen lineage, and is the Spiritual Director Emeritus of Mountain Cloud Zen Center in Santa Fe, New Mexico. In addition to teaching meditation, Henry is an award-winning author and poet. His struggles and traumatic experiences as a youth, combined with a spontaneous awakening experience at 19, paved the way for Henry to develop a well-rounded approach to healing and awakening through meditation.
Kelly Boys
Guest teacher
Kelly Boys will join us as a guest teacher for a session of the Unlocking Meditation course. Kelly is a mindfulness trainer and coach, and specializes in the NSDR (non sleep deep rest) practice of yoga nidra. Kelly has co-designed and delivered mindfulness and resilience programs at the UN, Google, and in San Quentin State Prison. Kelly is passionate about the intersection of spiritual awakening and applied mindfulness, and is also an advisor to The Way.
