Why Learn the Easiest Meditation Techniques with Lorin Roche and Camille Maurine
You have heard that meditation is good for you. You may have heard that meditation is helpful for reducing anxiety, dealing with stress, enhancing deep recovery, improving sleep, and any number of other benefits. On this journey, you may have been or you might feel challenged by finding the meditation techniques that work authentically for you and your personality. There are so many styles, lineages, and approaches to this practice. The truth is that different practices and techniques work for different people.
How do you find the technique that works for you?
How do you fall in love with meditation?
In this conversation, I’d like to introduce you to modern-day meditation teacher and trainer of teachers Lorin Roche, PhD and his wife and teaching partner, Camille Maurine.
Lorin Roche has spent his life meditating as well as teaching people to meditate, and teaching people how to teach others to meditate. Lorin earned his doctorate from the University of California, Irvine in the 1960s. In his research, one of the things he studied was the language meditators use to describe their experiences. This allowed him to help people customize a way in to their experience and to finding meditation practices that are instinctive and enjoyable for them. The combination of this work of deep listening and of combining technique with observation gives him a unique perspective that comes through in his work with groups and individuals. This, along with his lifelong immersion in the subtleties of language and technique of the Vijnana Bhairava Tantra (an ancient text describing 112 meditation techniques), makes him one of the most accessible and ground-breaking teachers of our time
Camille Maurine brings a uniquely feminine and embodied approach to meditation practice and teaching. She is a dancer, an artist, a poet, a performer, a person whose skills in facilitation draw people out of themselves and into community as well as into the bliss of their own experiences. Meditation is not just in our head. A successful meditation practice is done with our entire bodies. We embody meditation and Camille guides this. Camille is also the coauthor (with Lorin Roche) of Meditation Secrets for Women and Meditation 24/7, Camille’s work with the Radiance Sutras, with the teaching of meditation, opens a portal to practice that allows meditation techniques to be effortless and accessible.
Together they teach the Radiance Sutras Meditation Teacher Training.
Even if you have never before thought about taking a meditation teacher training, and have zero interest in teaching anyone else how to meditate, now may be the time to make this commitment to yourself to your personal growth, to your practice, and to your own inner peace.
Guiding People through the Language of Meditation
There are many times when I was profoundly struck by Lorin’s mastery of the language of meditation. One example took place nearly 10 years ago. We were in a small Santa Monica yoga studio on a Monday evening. The class was a drop-in meditation techniques for beginners. Lorin began by leading the group through a practice exploring instinctive meditation. Then Lorin deftly guided each individual through a process during which he asked them to talk about how they meditated, the words they used to describe their inner experience, the thoughtfulness of their flow state. He reflected words and phrases back to them, and even mirrored their body language as they reflected. Through this process, he provided ways for people to find their instinctive meditation practices. He showed people how to meditate in ways that are authentic and accessible.
Observing this and being part of this experience has changed the way that I think about meditation. It has changed the way I meditate. Practicing with Lorin has helped me understand exactly what meditation does, the rhythm and flow of meditation practice on the deepest most cellular level. And how meditation is an essential practice for recovery at all levels and layers of a person’s being.
The Radiance Sutras and the Vijnana Bhairava Tantra
The Vijnana Bhairva Tantra is a yogic text, written in Sanskrit, from the 7th or 8th Century. It is framed as an epic conversation between Bhairavi and Bhairava, deities exploring the nature of meditation, the benefits of meditation, and how to meditate. This text allows for the understanding that there are many forms of meditation. It also describes how different types of meditation work for different people. Over decades, Lorin Roche and Camille Maurine have explored the language and feeling of these verses describing meditation. Their work is found in The Radiance Sutras, a the modern take on the ancient text of the Vijnana Bhairava Tantra for the world we live in today.
The word “Bhav” in Sanskrit refers to the feeling state, a mood, or an expression of something. In this work, Lorin and Camille truly capture the “bhav” of playful and instinctive meditation for the modern meditator. If you want to understand the benefits of meditation in a way that actually allows you to practice, it is helpful to feel the joy and the playfulness of meditation.
The Radiance Sutras and Meditation
Poetry is one of the portals through which we can understand our experience of meditation. Over the years, I have seen the artistic creativity that Lorin and Camille bring to their interpretations of the Radiance Sutras. They have practiced this ecstatic form of spoken word poetry set to music accompanied by dance and movement with group participation at yoga studios, at retreat centers, in meditation teacher trainings, in yoga teacher trainings, at Esalen, at Kripalu, at Bhakti Fest, and in a number of other locations around the world.
The Radiance Sutra Jam Sessions is the ecstatic practice of meditation in action. Over and over again, I have seen these jam sessions introduce people to the joyful practice of meditation.
I remember one of the first times when I experienced this. A packed room. Musicians at the front of the space riffing on ecstasy. People taking turns standing up and choosing a stanza describing meditation. Spoken word repetition of evocative language that makes meditation real. Accessible. Fun. People lit up laughing and dancing. We often take meditation so seriously. Through the Radiance Sutras, meditation is joyful. Their way into the human psyche and the soul through this work is truly inspired.
Transformation takes place when you practice. Meditation made easy and fun makes practice possible.
I have also seen the implementation of the Radiance Sutras over time and the power of this text, this set of teachings, and how Lorin has used the modern language of poetry to talk about meditation. Through the Radiance Sutras, adapt this work in ways that are truly transformative and in ways that allow people to access this work who may not have related to it previously.
The Music of The Radiance Sutras
“Elixir: Songs of the Radiance Sutras an album that blends 10 songs into a mix of melodies that will inspire ecstatic dance, sensual expression, and meditative movements. It is a collaboration between Dave Stringer, Donna De Lory, Joni Allen, and Lorin Roche. Elixir provides music and vibration to complement meditation techniques.
This meditation teacher training program may be for you.
- If you are looking for an approach to teaching meditation that offers a number of meditation techniques.
- You are looking for ways to find your authentic and instinctive meditation practice.
- You want to learn more about the benefits of meditation.
- You have been frustrated by other meditation courses.
- You have been challenged by finding out how you want to meditate.
There are many meditation classes, and even a growing number of meditation teacher training programs offered around the world. There is an art to teaching meditation.
Teachers Speak about the Radiance Sutras Meditation Teacher Training
Over the years in Los Angeles, and around the world, Lorin and Camille have collaborated with some of the most noteworthy teachers practicing today. In teacher trainings, at retreat centers, in studios, and on stages, leaders in the field speak about this intuitive approach to meditation with reverence.
Dr Eden Goldman on Studying Meditation with Dr Lorin Roche
Terra Gold: On Studying with Lorin Roche
For over a decade at Loyola Marymount University, I brought Lorin Roche in to guide foundational level yoga teachers and yoga therapists skills for practicing and teaching meditation. It seemed to me that the best way to help practitioners understand the value of meditation, was to help them unlearn whatever they thought meditation was.
Every year, Lorin would come in and remind the students that if they had learned a style of meditation that had given them the impression they couldn’t do it, or if they felt inadequate at it, then it wasn’t the right style for them…and it may have even been detrimental for them.
I watched hundreds of students melt what was for some of them, years of shame and grief over feeling inept as meditators.
With each person in the room, Lorin artfully guided personalized meditative experiences that were so natural people didn’t even realize they had gone into meditation until they came out and felt the profound effects of where they had been. The experiences were poetic, profound. Each year the students’ feedback was filled with people being uplifted by the experiences. Students were feeling more present, awake in their senses, embodied and vibrantly alive.
Most of all, students left empowered and trusting their own unique ways into mediation.
Beyond those events, I also shared experiences of learning from Lorin directly in his workshops at Esalen Institute, in his teacher training course for meditation teachers, and most favorite of all, over tea on his couch with him and his wife Camille, and sharing walks together.
I’ve found that many of the metaphors Lorin uses for describing qualities of meditative states, stay with me, largely because they are such natural sensorial expressions, are practical, and they are truly experiential.
He’s a master of honoring the mundane as the sacred…recognizing a flower, a melody, a texture or color of fabric, a word, a fond memory and how each one can invoke full samadhi (awakening moment, to moment, to moment) NOW.
Lorin Roche is a pioneer in the field of meditation, but most precious of all is how he consistently reminds me that growing as an elder can be elegant, wild, unique to each’s own, and he reminds me that each and every moment of life is so worth experiencing FULLY.
–Terra Gold, author, yoga therapist, east/west medicine practitioner, mother
Become a Certified Meditation Teacher
What You Learn in the Meditation Teacher Training
This perspective on meditation teacher training is accessible for everyone. You will explore your own unique approach to meditation.
During the course of this experiential training you will develop a successful meditation practice FOR YOU.
- Practice meditation techniques that are effortless.
- Learn how to teach meditation to a variety of people and in many situations.
- Understand more of the scientific research around meditation.
- Speak the language of meditation.
- Discover the easiest meditation techniques that anyone can practice.
- Explain meditation and how to meditate to your family and friends.
- Practice meditation as a form of stress reduction.
- Experience how meditation enhances peak performance.
Explore an intuitive approach to meditation through the Radiance Sutras Meditation Teacher Training.
It has been an honor and privilege to study and practice with Lorin and Camille over the years. They add so much to the community through their unique and accessible approaches to meditation practice. Now is the time to transform your meditation practice by working with Lorin and Camille. Don’t miss this opportunity to study in the Radiance Sutras Meditation Teacher Training.
Felicia Tomasko has spent more of her life practicing Yoga and Ayurveda than not. She first became introduced to the teachings through the writings of the Transcendentalists, through meditation, and using asana to cross-train for her practice of cross-country running. Between beginning her commitment to Yoga and Ayurveda and today, she earned degrees in environmental biology and anthropology and nursing, and certifications in the practice and teaching of yoga, yoga therapy, and Ayurveda while working in fields including cognitive neuroscience and plant biochemistry. Her commitment to writing is at least as long as her commitment to yoga. Working on everything related to the written word from newspapers to magazines to websites to books, Felicia has been writing and editing professionally since college. In order to feel like a teenager again, Felicia has pulled out her running shoes for regular interval sessions throughout Southern California. Since the very first issue of LA YOGA, Felicia has been part of the team and the growth and development of the Bliss Network.