This is the beginning of my website – consider this the “beta” stage. Check out the links on the right for more information about my practice.
I’m excited to see where this leads and to connect with others who are interested in therapy, Buddhism, and meditation. Check out the About Brian section to learn more about who I am and what I do.
peace:
Brian Williams
How can Loving-kindness, Compassion, Appreciative Joy, and Equanimity support Community Work?
A meditation and discussion series on Monday evenings
May 7 to June 25 at the Lookout Training Room
with Brian Dean Williams / connect@briandeanwilliams.com / 778 320 8586
and Kyira Korrigan / kyira@diydharma.org / 604 505 7547
CONTENT
In this series, local therapist Brian Williams and dharma teacher Kyira Korrigan will be guiding participants through the Buddha’s teachings on the Brahma Viharas – also known as the immeasurables or the “sublime attitudes.” Training and guided meditations will be offered for cultivating Loving-Kindness, Compassion, Appreciative Joy, and Equanimity – as a form of support and renewal for our engagement with suffering in the community, and within ourselves. In a world full of greed, hatred, and delusion – practicing in this way is truly radical. So whether you are doing outreach in the Downtown Eastside, counselling in the West Side, or working with yourself on the Inside, this group is an opportunity to co-create community with supportive allies.
FACILITATORS
Brian has been practicing meditation since 2001, and trained with Noah Levine (author of Dharma Punx) in Los Angeles as a meditation facilitator. He has led mindfulness and meditation trainings for service providers throughout the Lower Mainland. Currently working alongside persons who struggle with homelessness, substance use, and mental illness, Brian is a counsellor with the Raincity Housing First ACT Team. He co-created the Mindfulness for Service Providers group in January 2010 as a way to support others doing compassionate work in the community. Brian lives with his extended family in East Van, and is also a musician, cyclist, and community organizer.
Kyira has been practicing and teaching yoga and meditation for the last 15 years, in Vancouver and along the West Coast of the U.S. She has practiced in both Zen and Theravadan schools of Buddhism, and was empowered by Noah Levine (author of Dharma Punx) as a Dharma teacher in 2009. Kyira focuses much of her teaching efforts on working in marginalized communities, including teaching at Onsite since its doors opened (among other locations). She is in love with conscious community building and liberatory learning processes. Kyira has lived in East Van for almost twenty years, since she immigrated from the U.S. in 1994, and is currently working towards a Masters Degree in Buddhist Studies from the University of Wales.
SCHEDULE
May 7: Brahma Viharas – an overview of the Sublime Attitudes
May 14: Forgiveness – letting go for others and ourselves
May 21: No session due to holiday
May 28: Upekkha – resting in equanimity
June 4: Metta – expanding loving-kindness
June 11: Karuna – engaging compassionately
June 18: Mudita – extending appreciative joy
June 25: The sublime attitudes as a support for our engagement with community
Time: Mondays. Doors open 5:30pm, session begins 5:45pm sharp and ends at 7pm
Cost: by generous donation, no one turned away for lack of funds
Location: Lookout training room, #206 – 524 Powell Street (above the Living Room drop-in centre – go to 2nd floor via street level entrance on Powell, do not enter drop-in centre on main floor as staff are busy with participants)
This is an open group and drop-in format – all levels of experience and professions are welcome.
While these teachings are grounded in the Buddhist tradition, there is no need to abandon one’s own beliefs, or to identify as Buddhist, to participate.
with Ross Laird (PhD, RCC) and Brian Dean Williams (MA, CCC)
Saturday October 13th, 9am – 4pm
Location: UBC Asian Centre Auditorium
The cultures of technology are now essential features of contemporary life. Social media, mobile devices, screens and applications of all kinds now fill our personal and family spaces. We’ve begun to migrate our social selves onto the web, and increasingly we seek technological assistance with personal struggles such as anxiety, depression, isolation, and addiction.
We’ve begun to create a networked world in which technologies mediate our relationships with ourselves. For many of us, these technologies leave us feeling more connected with our preferred communities, but also more scattered and disconnected from ourselves in the face of numerous emails, texts, and tweets requiring our attention.
Is this what we want? Where do we now find place and time for mindfulness, for purposeful inquiry, for experiences of nature and wonder? How do we now encounter ourselves in direct and authentic ways? Is it possible to bring greater presence and awareness into our interactions with technologies? Are technologies necessarily hurdles in this quest, or might they be allies? How do we know, and how we do find out?
In this one-day experiential workshop local therapists and educators Ross Laird and Brian Dean Williams will lead us through a series of guided meditations, interactive mindfulness exercises, creativity practices, and therapeutic discussions. This is an opportunity to reflect on our relationship with social media and technology, and to become more aware and intentional in our use and interaction with these tools.
Brian Dean Williams is a therapist from East Vancouver whose practice is enhanced and promoted by social media. Brian works in a program that assists people to overcome homelessness and mental illness. After his first meditation retreat in 2001 Brian went on to train as a meditation facilitator in Los Angeles with Noah Levine (author of DharmaPunx) and now leads meditation workshops for helping professionals.
Ross Laird is a best-selling author, award-winning scholar and poet, and craftsman in wood and stone. He has taught creativity, counselling, psychology, and new media at many post-secondary institutions. He is a consultant to a diverse range of organizations and educational institutions and is an advocate for personal health, educational renewal, and community development. www.rosslaird.com
Time: Saturday June 9, 9am – 4pm
Location: UBC Asian Centre Auditorium, 1871 West Mall (behind C.K. Choi building)
What to bring: an open mind, a gadget that you use regularly (cellphone, tablet, laptop), a bagged lunch (or, restaurants are available on campus), a water bottle, and a cushion for seated meditation (chairs are available)
Cost: $100, non-refundable ($20 deposit required to confirm registration)
To register: connect [at] briandeanwilliam.com , 778 320 8586
Brian Dean Williams (MA, CCC) and Scott Lawrance (EdD, RCC)
Preconference session at the Canadian Counselling and Psychotherapy Association’s Annual Conference
Thursday May 24, 1:30 – 4:30pm
Westin Hotel – Calgary, Alberta
www.ccpa-accp.ca/conference2012
Mindfulness-based practices have a proven efficacy for depression, substance use treatment, stress reduction, pain management, and for therapist “self-care”. However, mindfulness is just one aspect of a vast array of understandings and practices developed over the course of the 2500 year history of Buddhism. Join the dialogue that is beginning to emerge among Buddhist, collaborative, social constructionist, and post-structural therapies.
Scott Lawrance
Scott Lawrance is a counsellor educator who has worked extensively in schools, private practice, wilderness therapy, and EAP. He has been a practitioner of Vajrayana Buddhism for over 40 years.
Brian Williams
Brian Williams works with Raincity Housing First Act, Vancouver, and in private practice. He has led mindfulness training programs for service providers, participants in residential training programs, and at-risk youth.
A meditation retreat for service providers and others
Stowel Lake Farm, Saltspring Island BC
* postponed until Summer 2013 – data TBA *
with Scott Lawrance (Ed.D, RCC) and Brian Dean Williams (MA, CCC)
Workshop
Our world has many faces: lovers, friends, parents, children, strangers, rivers and inlets, wind and raindrops, clouds and cedar, cats, dogs, and yellow warblers. We love it so – our hearts hunger and thrill to its beauty and ache with its pain. Mindfulness attunes us to what arises in experience from moment to moment. Ancient and contemporary forms and practices of Buddhism provoke possibilities of resistance to the seemingly intractable forces of hatred, greed, and delusion that threaten our world both globally, locally and personally. Might we find these ways of assistance in reclaiming our powers to celebrate the beauty of this world and to resist that which threatens it?
We invite you to join us for a residential retreat on the beautiful Stowel Lake Organic Farm, Saltspring Island. This is a unique opportunity for us to gather with allies who are providing service in their community, and take some time to relax, reflect, and rejuvenate to support our engagement with the world. The teachers will be offering guided meditation, group discussion, creative expression practice, and individual interviews.
Facilitators
Scott Lawrance is a therapist who has worked extensively in schools, private practice, wilderness therapy, counsellor education, and EAP. He has been a practitioner of Vajrayana Buddhism for over 40 years. In addition to honing his skills as a father and grandfather, Scott is also a poet and writer who has published five volumes of poetry.
Brian Dean Williams is a therapist from East Vancouver who works in private practice and alongside people exiting homelessness via the Raincity Housing First ACT Team. Brian trained as a meditation facilitator in L.A. with Noah Levine, and has led mindfulness training programs for service providers, recovery centres, at-risk youth, and at various conferences. When he’s not meditating, Brian lives communally with extended family and is a musician, cyclist, and gardener.
Registration
Fee: (includes wholesome, locally-sourced, vegetarian meals): single room $510, shared room $450, camping $360, without accommodations $270. Plus dana for the teachers.
Deposit: $200 at time of registration. $175 is refundable until April 7, 2012. Balance is due by April 7.
Who may attend: All levels of meditation experience and professions are welcome. No need to abandon one’s own beliefs, or to be Buddhist, to participate. Intended to be safe, friendly, and inclusive for all persons.
Contact: For registration and information contact Brian Williams at 778 320 8586 / connect@briandeanwilliams.com
Enrolment is limited to 20 participants. Please register early.
Occupy Your Heart
It’s been a month of technology interfacing for me.
I designed and launched this website, got an Android smartphone, increased my presence on Twitter and Facebook, signed up for LinkedIn, and set up a new email account for my private practice.
Needless to say, my new phone has been blowing up with new things to “like”, new people to connect with, new opportunities, new passwords to commit to memory – multiple phenomena calling for my attention. The game Angry Birds in particular, seems to be designed to hook me into repetitive patterns and an insatiable desire to clear whichever level I happen to be stuck on. Rather than destroying greed, hatred, aversion and pursuing freedom, it’s become more important at times to obliterate blocks and liberate fowl on Angry Birds Rio!
The Buddha referred to this as papanca (pron. pah-PON-chah), or the proliferation of thought. He also offered the image of monkey mind – swinging from branch to branch, from one thought to another. I get the sense that some of these new technologies are feeding bananas to the monkey mind, giving it energy to swing wildly from one thought to another. At times, all this input of information has left me scattered and distracted. Attention has become fractured, dismembered. I’m left feeling Tweet’ked Out. Do you share in this experience with me?
In Pali, the language of the Buddha, what we now call “mindfulness” was called sati, which along with present-time awareness, also carries with it a sense of remembering. In line with the narrative therapy tradition, I like to think of this in its hyphenated form, as re-membering. As in, gathering parts of ourselves that have been dis-membered and reintegrating them back together.
In the case of new technologies, including social media, I think of them as neither essentially good nor bad. These new technologies are allowing me to connect with, and assist, colleagues and clients in ways I could not have imagined even ten years ago. At the same time, I feel called to be dilligent about how I’m interacting with them – maintaining my centre and staying grounded in the body, in the breath. In my better moments I’m able to read a tweet on my Android and notice emotions, thoughts, bodily sensations as they arise. A snarky email message from a colleague – I can open to the tension arising in the jaw, heart-rate increasing, and persecutory thoughts arising. Complimentary Facebook message from someone who attended one of my retreats – the mind starts weaving a tale of inadequacy and imposterism – or perhaps appreciative joy surfaces in hearing about their experience.
In these moments, I occupy a balanced and awake state, re-membering attention, opening to whatever arises – and I find that I can then respond in ways that are more compassionate and helpful for myself and others. It’s my intention to continue trying to practice in this way, while of course being revisited at times by the monkey mind.
Thank-you for being a witness to that.
Peace:
Brian
If you’ve known me previously, you may be wondering why I’m including my middle name on my website and marketing materials.
It’s basically a way to distinguish myself from the many other “Brian Williams” that are out there in the world!
I’ve also often thought that my somewhat generic-sounding name doesn’t reflect the innovative, edgy, unique aspect of my self and my practice. I remember as a child I tried to “change” my name to Dean at school, only to realize a few weeks later it was equally generic. The two in combination? Feels like a better fit – for now.
On a side note, Brian Dean Williams also sounds like Billy Dee Williams, the actor who played Lando Callrissian in my favorite film of all time, Star Wars – which has been a guiding metaphor for me in many ways since childhood in the 1970s.
So there ya go, secret’s out!
Hope you’re enjoying the website.
click here for PDF file of colour poster
Sunday March 25, 2012 from 8:30am to 5pm
with Scott Lawrance (Ed.D, RCC) and Brian Dean Williams (MA, CCC)
connect@briandeanwilliams.com / 778 320 8586
Workshop
Sometimes when assisting others with counselling, social work, nursing, activism, or other forms of engagement, we may neglect our own need for healing and renewal. The intention of this one-day retreat is to provide both mutual support and learning through meditative practices and discussion, for those who are engaged with compassionate work in the community.
Mindfulness has garnered significant attention in clinical settings in recent years. Buddhism has a rich tradition of practices that not only support and sustain mindfulness, but also have the potential to directly transform problematic experience and behaviour for service providers and clients alike. In the first Beyond Mindfulness workshop, we worked with the Brahma Viharas (also known as the Sublime Attitudes or the Immeasurables) of Loving-kindness and Equanimity. With guided meditation sessions, group discussions, and in small groups, at this workshop we will explore Compassion and Appreciative Joy. We will have opportunities to discuss how these practices might support ourselves in our work, and those we assist in our communities.
Facilitators
Scott Lawrance is a counsellor educator who has worked extensively in schools, private practice, wilderness therapy, counsellor education, and EAP. He has been a practitioner of Vajrayana Buddhism for over 40 years.
Brian Williams works with the Raincity Housing First ACT Team in Vancouver, and in private practice. He has led mindfulness training programs for service providers, participants in residential training programs, and at-risk youth.
Details
Cost: suggested donation of $30 – $150, no one turned away for lack of funds
Location: Child and Youth Mental Health Team office – 2750 East Hastings Street, 3rd Floor, Vancouver
What to bring: water bottle, bagged lunch (restaurants nearby if preferred), yoga mat and cushion for sitting meditation (chairs available if preferred)
Transportation: Pay parking underneath building on P1 level, or on street / behind London Drugs. Bike parking in front of building. Hastings bus stops outside building at Slocan. Building is wheelchair accessible with street-level access and an elevator.
Who may attend: All levels of meditation experience and professions are welcome. There is no requirement to have attended part one of this workshop. While these teachings are grounded in the Buddhist tradition, there is no need to abandon one’s own beliefs, or to be Buddhist, to participate. This event is intended to be safe, friendly, and inclusive for persons of all cultures, persons from LGBTQ communities, and persons with physical disabilities.
To register: email connect@briandeanwilliams.com for registration information. Limited to 30 people. Non-refundable deposit of $20 is required in advance to confirm registration.
