Talks, Workshops & Classes for General Audiences

Topics can be tailored by Dr. Epstein to meet the specific needs of your audience.

Sample Topics

Click on a Topic to read a description.

Cancer has become an ever-present part of modern life and few diseases are more feared in our society. Yet, for many people, cancer is a wake-up call to create a new, more conscious life. Increasingly, people from all walks of life are living with or living past cancer. In many cases, people are living a life of even greater meaning and quality than ever before.

Intended equally for those who now have or have had cancer, for those who love someone with cancer, and for health professionals who work with cancer patients, this event provides an opportunity to immerse ourselves in the skills and attitudes that create a high-quality life while living with cancer and afterward. 

A Holistic Approach to Weight Loss

The recidivism rate for most popular weight loss programs is over 90% yet people keep trying the same things again and again, gaining and losing, up and down, like a yoyo. Why do diets not work? What does work?

Are you ready for an approach that really works? Are you ready to lose weight and keep it off?

It is possible to stop the yo-yo dieting and endless cycle of losing and gaining.

Learn how to create an individualized plan that’s unique for your mind, body and emotions that will support long term change and healing. Learn why and how to stop the addiction and insanity. This is not another program to follow, not a one size fits all solution. It is a process of self-love, self-healing and transformation. Engage your consciousness, mind and heart to find the missing ingredient for weight loss success.

Get ready to change! Get ready to lose weight and keep it off!

Disease tells a story, not just about 'our cells' and a diagnosis but about 'ourselves' and our lives . . . about stress and the mind-body connection. Listening to this story, we are led to the truth of what happened to us and the emotions that lie at the core of our authentic being. Healing happens when we embark on a journey to our true and authentic self. Healing vs. Curing and how to integrate both.
all sickness is home sickness, and all healing is self healing, the journey home to your true self.

Facing and healing the dis-eases of the body, mind, emotions and spirit.

We will explore and live the questions:

    • How can we deepen a healing presence within ourselves?
    • How can we mindfully and heartfully open to our stresses, difficult mental states, childhood wounds and life stories?
    • How can we use our healing journey and pain as an opportunity and vehicle to deepen and enhance our spiritual path?
    • How can we be with and relate to our pain, difficulties, health issues and symptoms in a way that is wise, compassionate and healing?

The classes will include periods of silent practice, lecture, instruction, discussion, Q&A and guided meditation.  We will explore and integrate therapeutic and spiritual perspectives on healing through teachings and practices that connect us with and consciously engage the authentic self, awakening qualities and ways of being that lead into the heart of healing.

Since mind, body, heart, and soul are indissoluble, a change in one is a change in all. In the spirit of inquiry, discovery, and beginner's mind, we will listen within to find the meaning, message, and opportunity of life's challenges and explore how biography becomes biology. We will work with the mind-body-spirit connection through clinical guided imagery and the principles of Internal Family Systems.

Through mindfulness (insight) meditation practice and Buddhist teachings, we will

    • Cultivate unconditional presence and wisdom 
    • Awaken the noble heart of compassion 
    • Learn to be fully present with and accepting of with all parts of ourselves. 

In the process, we will open to our heart wounds, our pain, and our suffering and directly experience how it is possible to free ourselves from our burdens, while awakening to inner peace, happiness, and joy.

Through lecture, discussion, sharing, and group support, we will learn the mind-body skills of meditation, relaxation, stress reduction and attitudinal healing perspectives.

The class will focus on learning to live life in the present moment. Finding joy, peace, happiness and serenity in the midst of daily life's inevitable ups and downs.

"Serenity is not freedom from the storm, it is peace amidst the storm."

Choose to Expand Your Vision of Growing Older.  Growing Younger while Growing Older - moment by moment. Learning how to expand your consciousness to meet your extended life span with peace, joy, healing, happiness, passion, compassion and adventure!

Attitude matters, and it's your choice how you experience growing older.

I will draw from a variety of disciplines in this discussion and experiential teaching exploring the experience of growing old and growing young.

What is happiness? Where does it come from? How is it achieved?

Paul Epstein, author of “Happiness Through Meditation” sheds light on using a mindfulness practice as a path to inner peace and happiness. This concise little book opens the door to this often-elusive state of being with new insights, guided meditations, helpful quotations, and much more.

Join author, Mind-Body Medicine specialist and mindfulness meditation teacher, Dr. Paul Epstein as he provides guidance for health, happiness and healing so that you may find meaning and purpose, work through difficulty, follow your bliss, live and thrive through the practice of happiness every day.

"As we are present in our lives and conscious of our power to choose how to be, we cultivate greater happiness in everyday life."  from “Happiness through Meditation,” by Dr. Paul Epstein.

Healing and the Mind-Body Connection

Our disease tells a story, not just of our cells, but of our selves. By taking the risk of listening, we may be led to the emotions, both positive and negative, that lie at the core of our authentic being. This workshop will focus on the importance of integrating the mind-body connection in health care, healing and treating disease, and how to listen to the meaning, message and opportunity of illness. We will explore how our life history, childhood wounds, traumas and stresses affect our health and how the body bears the burden.

If you don't know your history, are you doomed to repeat it?  How Have I Come To Be Like This?

All sickness is home sickness.  All healing is self-healing.  Discover how healing happens when we embark on a journey home to our true self.

The presentation will include lecture, discussion and experiential exercises of guided imagery and meditation.

A practical class to learn how to be with pain and difficulty in a way that is healing with wisdom and compassion and humor.  Practice mind-body skills and learn how to go from pain to "singing in the rain."

When you change the way you look at things, the things you look at change....even pain.

Explore the liberating experience of facing painful truth vs always only trying to get rid of it. There is another more effective approach. Learn to see with new eyes. Let's face the music and dance.

"Serenity is not freedom from the storm, it is peace amidst the storm."

How can I be with my pain from a place of wisdom and compassion? How would this help me?

We can learn to relate to our pain in a new way, to breathe in the pain and breathe out compassion. Once we become "aware" of our story and are willing to listen, we can fully engage our inner true self, our inner healer, our compassionate heart, our 'Bodhicitta.'

As we choose to embrace and re-member and welcome our wounds with compassion, we heal as we unburden ourselves and awaken peace and joy. We live freely to follow our bliss continuing on our journey of self-healing and spiritual awakening.

When you change the way you look at things, the things you look at change.
When you change the way you be with things, the things you be with change.

If my symptom, issue, or pain has a meaning, what might that be? Am I willing to listen with the ears of my heart to the other voices of myself speaking?  

You will be guided to look inside and dialogue with your symptom and your inner self-healer.

Healing is the experience of wholeness and involves embracing and re-membering of all your wounded parts, healing your relationship with your self.

The best of times is now, as you face life’s challenges and experience life’s joys!

Through discussion, sharing, group support and learning the mind-body skills of meditation, relaxation stress reduction and attitudinal healing perspectives, this talk (or interactive class) will help you focus on learning how to live life in the present moment and find joy, peace, happiness and serenity in the midst of life’s inevitable ups and downs.

“Serenity is not freedom from the storm;
it is peace amidst the storm”

Natural Therapies, mind-body medicine and a whole person natural healing approach for people with a wide range of health concerns, symptoms and conditions.

 

Natural healing for diseases such as chronic pain, arthritis, digestive difficulties, irritable bowel syndrome, heartburn and acid reflux, fibromyalgia, sleep difficulties, weight issues, stress and anxiety, migraines, headaches, allergy, skin disorders, and more. We'll learn not just how to treat these conditions, but also how to improve health in general while preventing illness.

Many things that can't be cured can still heal. You can keep seeing your doctors and taking your medicine and seek an approach for healing too, they are not mutually exclusive.

There's a lot that can be done, there's a lot you can do to support your own treatment and healing. You don't have to be ill and or have a specific issue to benefit from the class, one can learn about prevention and well and staying healthy and also share the information with family and friends. Dr Epstein will guide and coach you and empower you on how you can take better care of yourself to be well and stay well regardless of issue and age. Healing is always possible. Come learn how to transform stress, pain and illness into a journey of self healing, pain can be your teacher and illness can be an opportunity. Healing involves a lot more than the right diagnosis and drug. It involves natural medicine and also what you can do to participate in your own healing.. After years of teaching at the center and focusing on his expertise in mind-body medicine, he is expanding to also include and share his expertise as a Naturopathic physician using natural medicine in a whole person integrative medicine approach. 

This is a 6 part class. We will focus on a different class of health concerns each session.

Class 1:  Stress-Related Disorders and Chronic Disease

Class 2: The Big 3: Cancer, Heart Disease and Diabetes

Class 3:  Autoimmune disorders, Allergies, Asthma, Arthritis, Skin Disorders

Class 4:  Chronic Pain, Backaches, Headaches, Migraines, Interstitial Cystitis

Class 5:  Anxiety, Sleeplessness, Stress, Depression

Class 6:  Digestive disorders, Irritable Bowel Syndrome, Food allergies, Acid Reflux, Heartburn

In this mind-body integrative medicine lecture and experiential workshop we will explore the deeper meanings, messages and opportunities of pain, stress and illness. We will discuss the mind-body connection and the role of attitudes, beliefs, stresses and emotions in the healing process and how biography becomes biology. Through lecture, discussion, writings, drawings, guided imagery and mindfulness meditation you will learn to listen to your symptoms and inner wisdom and live the question of how to face and be with whatever arises in a way that is wise, compassionate and healing.

"When any experience of body, heart, or mind keeps repeating in consciousness, it is a signal that this visitor is asking for a deeper and fuller attention….Under all the tears, the pain, the fear, and the anger we have contracted ourself around, we can find freedom, joy, and ease in the face of all life." – from Jack Kornfield, A Path with Heart

In this workshop, we'll explore how mindfulness meditation practice can be integrated in the process of healing the dis-eases of the body, mind, emotions and spirit. Moving beyond stress reduction to explore mindfulness and healing, we will experience and live questions, see with new eyes and gain new insights.

    • How can we be with and relate to our pain, difficulties, health issues and symptoms in a way that is wise, compassionate and healing? 
    • How can we deepen a healing presence within ourselves? 
    • How can we mindfully and heartfully open to our stresses, difficult mental states, childhood wounds and life stories? 
    • How can we find inner peace and happiness, transform suffering and awaken joy?

Learn to cultivate healing qualities of being....patience, non-judgement, trust, and radical unconditional acceptance. The day will include silence, instruction, discussion, guided meditation, inquiry and contemplation.  Come with a beginner's mind and open heart.

"The real journey of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes it is in seeing with new eyes".

This course provides therapeutic support for people with stress-related disorders.  Learn how to move from the "Stress Response" to the "Healing Response." 

According to a study of the American Academy of Family Physicians, 80% of visits to the family doctor are for stress related complaints.

This practical and experiential workshop will focus on treating stress related disorders within naturopathic care by integrating and addressing the underlying cause ... stress. We'll discuss the basics of stress in health and disease and the sources, effects, coping strategies and evidence based mind-body skills and tools for self regulation, healing and healthy living.

While managing and reducing stress is an important therapeutic goal, we'll also explore moving beyond stress reduction alone to focus on transforming and healing the stress at its source.

We'll discuss PTSD and the effects of childhood and life trauma leading to stress and unhealthy lifestyles and stress related disorders,and the importance of mind-body psychotherapy and lifestyle counseling.

We'll review a study (ACE Adverse Childhood Experiences) showing childhood trauma is a precursor and predictor of chronic disease later in life and discuss how to integrate, "how biography becomes biology" as a component of treatment.

The workshop experience will emphasize mindfulness based practices and teachings, as well as exercises of breathing, relaxation, narrative medicine, guided imagery, yoga, journaling, perspective, cognitive restructuring and how to develop emotional resilience. Studies on mindfulness practice show its health enhancing benefits in treating people with a wide range of common stress related conditions and health concerns such as anxiety, depression, insomnia, weight, chronic pain syndromes, IBS, PTSD, high BP, immune disorders, skin disorders, fatigue, eating disorders and generalized chronic stress exacerbating all clinical conditions, illness and symptoms.

Facing, managing, reducing and healing stress is an essential component of naturopathic care.  

Healing can be regarded as an equation. On one side of the equation are the forces that may generate or contribute to an illness. On the other side are the external resources of medical science together with the body's internal healing abilities. Natural medicine has developed various modalities as to how to enhance the ‘healing from within’, be it through nutrition, acupuncture, hydrotherapy, fasting, herbs, touch or homeopathic remedies. Mind–body medicine1,2,3 is now expanding the picture of what true holistic medicine can be like: incorporating patients' emotions, images, thoughts, awareness and belief as powerful agents in the healing process.

In this mind-body integrative medicine lecture and experiential workshop presentation we will explore the deeper meanings, messages and opportunities of pain, stress and illness. We will discuss the mind-body connection and the role of attitudes, beliefs, stresses and emotions in the healing process. How biography becomes biology and the body bears the burden. Through lecture, discussion, writings, drawings, guided imagery and mindfulness meditation you will learn to listen to your symptoms and inner wisdom and live the question of how to face and be with whatever arises in a way that is wise, compassionate and healing.

This topic explores how illness can be a vehicle for spiritual awakening.

This talk (or workshop) will be an exploration of how the teachings of the Buddha and mindfulness practice can be integrated in the process of healing the diseases of our bodies, minds, hearts, and spirits. How we are with and relate to our pain is as important as what we do to treat it. This presentation will delve into these very important questions:

What is healing and how does it happen?

How can we welcome and open to our pain and illness as an opportunity and vehicle for awakening, and what happens when we do?

"All neurosis is a substitute for legitimate suffering" ~ Carl Jung

Our difficulties require our most compassionate attention. We will explore in depth our pain and difficult emotions and learn to open to them and to relate to them and be unconditionally present with them in a way that is mindful, wise, compassionate and healing...practicing right understanding, right intention and right effort. Whether of body, mind or heart, ("even the best meditators have old wounds to heal" – Jack Kornfield) our difficulties will become the center of our meditation practice and be a guide and a teacher in our healing and spiritual journeys. We will cultivate qualities of being and healing — among them, beginner's mind, patience, trust and acceptance and compassion. We will contemplate and live the question ...How can we find inner peace and happiness, transform suffering and awaken joy? and come to experience that "in the heart of the pain is the healing."

"Serenity is not freedom from the storm, it is peace amidst the storm"

"When any experience of body, heart, or mind keeps repeating in consciousness, it is a signal that this visitor is asking for a deeper and fuller attention…
Under all the tears, the pain, the fear, and the anger we have contracted ourself around,
we can find freedom, joy, and ease in the face of all life." - from Jack Kornfield, A Path with Heart